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digital music/video

10/03/2006, 10:55am, EDT

Tuesday, October 3rd

PayPlay.FM offers unprotected MP3s

PayPlay.FM today revealed plans to offer unprotected MP3s of its 600,000 tracks at the cost of $0.88 cents per track, rivaling Apple's iTunes Music Store's price of $0.99 cents per individual track and reducing copy protection to expand user freedom. The company provides digital rights protection of media files for independent artists, and timed its announcement to coincide with "Day Against DRM." PayPlay.FM also announced that it is offering free music downloads for new users who register on October 3rd. "In our opinion, the anti-DRM movement is not about making the music free or eliminating DRM, but about giving customers the freedom of choice," said Elliot Goykhman, CEO of PayPlay. PayPlay's DRM-protected tracks are priced at $0.77 cents each, and are encoded at 192Kbps -- significantly higher quality than Apple's iTunes tracks, which are encoded at 128Kbps. Unprotected tracks ($0.88 cents each) and are supported by any portable media player capable of playing MP3 files.


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mp3 quality is worse..
0
10/03, 11:04am, EDT
...at any codec or price... just got a 60gb ipod & ripped most of my cds in lossless format - with my 'real' headphones hard to beat in any portable player...

I just wish there was a 2.5" drive ipod that could go to 160gb... Perhaps in January...?
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All I know is that
0
10/03, 11:10am, EDT
192Kbps -- significantly higher quality than Apple's iTunes tracks, which are encoded at 128Kbps

Ha!

192Kbps MP3 < 128 Kbps AAC
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Joined May 2000
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The real question is...
0
10/03, 11:43am, EDT
The real question is, is there any music that you'd actually want to buy at PayPlay.fm?
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The real answer is...
0
10/03, 11:57am, EDT
I just looked.. Answer is no! lol!
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I guess not for you...
0
10/03, 1:04pm, EDT
eldorkus, I guess that not having Michael Bolton or Boy George on the play list means there is little for you there, but others can certainly find some interesting music.

You know-it-all fags really annoy me. Get back to flipping burgers before I call your shift supervisor.
Baninated
Joined Aug 2005
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Not only No Music...
0
10/03, 1:19pm, EDT
Not only No Music... but... WMA Files! And they want you to burn to CD then rip to MP3!

“Which portable devices can play PayPlay files? Most of the portable music players that support Windows Media Audio (.wma) files can play PayPlay files. This includes many players made by Creative Labs, iRiver, Rio, and RCA. PayPlay files work with an iPod if they are first purchased, then converted to MP3 format. For a full list of the 100+ portable music players that support PayPlay files, visit the Devices page on the Microsoft Web site.

Can I put PayPlay files on my iPod? Yes. Once you purchase PayPlay files, you are free to convert them to MP3 files for easy transfer to your iPod. First burn the files to CD as audio, then rip them back to your music library as MP3 files. Programs like Windows Media Player can rip CD audio for you. PayPlay files may not be burned to CD or converted to other formats until they are purchased.“

I wish eMusic would allow me to purchase individual tracks.

CVB
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nothing new here
0
10/03, 3:29pm, EDT
The price is nice but audiolunchbox has been doing unprotected mp3s at 192 for $0.99 for years (and has even had sales) and similarly it's hard to find the bands I'm looking for and most everything I listen to is indie. Of 20 bands I searched for, they had 0 but they did try to suggest other bands instead which actually might be interesting. Their wma sample downloads don't open in iTunes or Quicktime for me but their fair/poor quality previews play in Safari and automatically move from song to song.

It's no secret that it's not hard to burn a CD of ITS purchases, and then just re-import at 192 mp3. If I couldn't do this I would never have purchased a single song from ITS.
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read carefully
0
10/03, 10:25pm, EDT
First of all, they announced PLANS to offer MP3s, so let's not get bent out of shape that they don't have them yet on the site.

Secondly, it's 192kbps _VBR_, which IS better than 128kbps AAC.

Thirdly, have you people heard of indies? These are mostly unsigned bands, so don't expect to find big names here. Keep listening to what radio feeds you, don't expand your musical horizons, that would be too much to ask.
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