According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, TheKompany.com today formally launched Mindawn, a music download service that, unlike iTunes and Napster, targets Linux desktops. Mindawn is claimed to provide CD-quality song files and “virtually no” digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, offer full previews of the entire songs, and provide downloads in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, and other formats. Update: Deleted some extraneous text outlining which formats are “lossy” and which aren’t.
flac is not a lossy format.
“http://flac.sourceforge.net/features.html“
” FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality”
Im pretty sure that the blurb did call FLAC a lossless codec, and THEN went on to mention the other “lossy” codecs you mentioned. Or am I just as blind?
Considering the music selection this site has, I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to iTunes and Napster.What’s a Pop category without Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, any Jackson, Elvis, Destiny’s Child, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, a Simson, etc. I haven’t read the article, so maybe I’m missing something, but Mindawn has neither of these (regardless of whether or not someone would actually want to listen to them…) which is rather silly. I do see in their FAQ that they cater more to independent artists, but still…
“Im pretty sure that the blurb did call FLAC a lossless codec, and THEN went on to mention the other “lossy” codecs you mentioned. Or am I just as blind?
”
you are right. i shouldnt have mentioned flac being lossless
i should have mentioned that ogg vorbis is lossy. thanks for correcting me but the article above is still incorrect in that aspect
http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp#lossy
“don’t think it’s fair to compare it to iTunes and Napster.What’s a Pop category without Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, any Jackson, Elvis, Destiny’s Child, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, a Simson, etc. I haven’t read the article, so maybe I’m missing something, but Mindawn has neither of these (regardless of whether or not someone would actually want to listen to them…) which is rather silly”
thats because these artists settle with exclusive labels. you will have to find independant artists and gain popularity before you find better names in the industry willing to sign up with you
you didnt think its a big company with truck loads of cash. they are just starting out. the technology is good. the market can be potentially good and has a focus on Linux which no other music store does at present..
so give them a break and see if they can succeed
not to mention that its a good technology demonstration of ogg vorbis and flac open source codecs
You’ve got it backwards, flac is lossless, while vorbis is lossy.
This can’t compete with Allofmp3.com, which offers files in mp3, ogg, flac, and a variety of other formats for extremely low prices.
What’s a Pop category without Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, any Jackson, Elvis, Destiny’s Child, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, a Simson, etc.
Better than those that contain them :>
Is Elvis really Pop music?
This can’t compete with Allofmp3.com
Which is illegal in many countries, including most states of the USE afaik. If I get my music illegaly, I’m not willing to pay for it.
Is Elvis really Pop music?
Nyes. Pop as in popular, definitely.
What’s a Pop category without Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, any Jackson, Elvis, Destiny’s Child, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, a Simson, etc.
That kind of stuff is what I call “crapp….”
I’m very, very impressed. It’s great to see a company who are trying to make some money out of music and the internet rather than crying and wringing their hands.
I’m not totally confident it’ll take off; I’d be interested in buying stuff off them if I actually saw anything I liked, but of course I didn’t.
Good luck to them nonetheless.
let me know when they actually have CONTENT!
I checked about six genres, each had NO items. I used to be pretty ‘hip’ to the ‘underground scene’ and I don’t recognise a single freakin’ artist on the front page.
sigh
Why cant the internet actually deliver something I’d like to buy? Al Gore gave us the internets for shopping, and media. we should use it more for the media part (legally)
I’ve been waiting for a DRM-free music download service with decent file formats (FLAC and Ogg, not WMA and broken AAC).
Shame they have no titles or artists I’ve ever heard of.
The tragic thing is, the record companies will never sign up for a service without compy-protection, and it’s losing them business.
I will never buy a DRM’ed file, especially when it’s been encoded using a crappy format at a low bitrate.
I have mates who are DJ’s who would buy *shedloads* of music from iTunes if it didn’t have copy protection. They’re not interested in pirating it, they just have a need to edit, convert and play on numerous devices.
Put it this way, I have a friend who is in the process of ripping his entire CD collection and buying a 1Tb RAID array to store it all. He would pay to download the stuff if it didn’t have DRM.
But you need content. Even the non-iTunes sites don’t have enough content, this one has no chance of competing.
Do they have MP3 downloads too, as without it, I can’t see many Windows “Joe AOL” users wanting to figure out how to convert Ogg/FLAC to MP3/WAV.
Mindawn has decided to send a signal to the music industry and to potential customers by offering its music in formats that are not patented. I believe they will be huge. Established artists will stay with the well-known labels, but emerging artists will not.
If you want to do the right thing, support artists, who will get 50 to 75% of your money, and get music that you can freely move between your computers, you have to be smiling right now.
These guys get it. They released on Linux, Mac and Windows at the same time. They did using Flac, which is awesome and ogg vorbis, which is good for portable music players.
Get the Flac and re-encode it to whatever you want. I think this music store has great potential and if they can slowly but surely expand their catalog, they have a winner in their hands. I may post some screenshots of the music player a little later.
There are so many people who often say if there as a service that offered ogg vorbis at reasonable rates, I’d be there in a heartbeat.Well, it’s here and you can even sample the songs before you buy.
God do I dislike whiners, and gloom and doom people. Give these guys a chance. They are trying to do the right thing! Everyone said the ITMS store would flop. This is going to bbe the Bazaar of the new class of liberated artists that don’t want to be oppressed by their labels. I can’t say enough good things about the idea behind this service. I wish them the best of luck
A preview feature would sure be nice. I don’t mind artists that aren’t well known, but not without a preview. Since when does that mean they are bad? Have you heard the radio lately? Is that supposed to be music?
“Do they have MP3 downloads too, as without it, I can’t see many Windows “Joe AOL” users wanting to figure out how to convert Ogg/FLAC to MP3/WAV.”
Why do these dumbasses have to convert it? Winamp natively plays Ogg Vorbis, and a FLAC plugin isn’t hard to find at all. It’s probably no harder than persuading it to play something bought from the itunes store (this is a guess, I haven’t tried).
This is a Good Thing for free software; an alternative to the DRM’ed competitors. Now all I need is to package up their software client nicely for installing 🙂
The net can blow away all the traditional music labels with their DRM and their narrow-mindedness. Yes it can!
If people are willing to pay a fair price for music, if music fans are willing to support such services even if they do not immediately produce chart hits and if the community helps unknown artists become popular. The problem is that the majority of the music consumers is just looking for a free lunch. The filesharing services are not protests against everything that’s big and bad about the music industry, but networks of digital parasites. Magnatune.com is trying the same thing, and they permit users to choose how much they want to pay! Read http://blogs.magnatune.com/
Good luck to Mindawn and magnatune, and to hell with freeloaders!
I tried to install it on mdk 10.1 and ran into dependency problems all over the place. That sucks.
However, on a positive note I sent a comment to them about my problem and recieved a reply within 2hrs (and not even an automated one), congrates to The Kompany for customer service rarely found in the linux world.
Do they have MP3 downloads too, as without it, I can’t see many Windows “Joe AOL” users wanting to figure out how to convert Ogg/FLAC to MP3/WAV.<p>
Give me a break. Users are converting from mp3 to CDs without much of a problem. Converting from flac to wav is simple and fast. From there you can convert into any form you like.
go to “Downloads” and get their player, it has a preview facility. Now it would be nice if it was open source (what about BeOS users ? :p)
Besides, I think Winamp has been playing Ogg for ages hasn’t it ?
* They support open standards.
* They support the artists.
* They support the 3 major platforms.
My only concern now is, what does it cost?
Besides, I think Winamp has been playing Ogg for ages hasn’t it ?
IIRC since 2.81.
http://www.warprecords.com/bleep/
You can download high quality mp3s that are pretty cheap. Although you can only download songs from artisits that are on the Warp Records label. I wish more record companies would do this.
Is Elvis really Pop music?
Are you kidding? Elvis is the original pop music.
But unfortunately I believe 1,24$ is just far too expensive. A full CD should be charged no more than 9,99$.
However, I’m not gonna be a drag… it’s a great initative, let’s just hope competition can squeeze down pricing later on.
If you read their FAQ an album is $8.99 for FLAC and $6.99 for Ogg Vorbis. Seems reasonable to me, the only thing I want added to that is freely downloadble album cover art for when you burn a CD.
Went to the site and thought they had a scoop on a new Genesis album called Confusion…. great I though they have some decent content….Until I realised that Confusion is the band!
Ah well!
HipHop section — empty
Rap section —- empty
Trans section — empty
Reggae section –empty
Electronica — 2 albums, wow!!!
What a crappy selection. Hope it’ll get better in the future.
The just announced their service. they havent yet started. its just a preview. learn
Mindawn is an aggregator and distribution site not unlike many news sites. This is another option for artists to take advantage of the distribution and promotional capabilities of the web. The business model looks pretty decent, I wouldn’t give them exclusive distribution rights though, at least not initially. It’s still feasible to sell from your own site, and many hire a website consulting firm.
The RIAA companies own the rights to most of the popular music, so they distribute in patented DRM’ed formats which only work in certain players. The problem is, when users are willing to buy portable players that play only patented formats, it gives the patent holder the leverage to cut-off or control the content creation side, and not just music, but any and all forms of constitutionally protected free speech. Thats the real danger of users accepting players that won’t play non-patented formats which can be used freely by content creators (encoders) or end users (decoders/players).
I don’t think the comment about there being no MP3 option should be dismissed so easily. What about all those iPod users (and all the new ones coming after the holidays…)? None of them are going to know what to do with FLAC and OGG files (though didn’t I read somethere that iTunes will support OGG soon?). Converting? Huh? How?
“None of them are going to know what to do with FLAC and OGG files (though didn’t I read somethere that iTunes will support OGG soon?). Converting? Huh? How?”
flac can be converted easily into anything else. google it
whatever you do, dont buy a product from this company until its a real fully tested product. i have many products from these guys and in the end found them collecting dust, never 100% complete. somehow they manage to come up with great sounding ideas that never really turn out to be useful.
“whatever you do, dont buy a product from this company until its a real fully tested product”
i am not sure a music download service can be called a “product” but without specifics this is just FUD
“whatever you do, dont buy a product from this company until its a real fully tested product. i have many products from these guys and in the end found them collecting dust…”
erm, are we still talking about thekompany? you know the KDE guys? or are you posting in the wrong forum about some ebay vendor?!
oh, and about the ogg to mp3 conversion thing – you all got the wrong end of the stick, i meant that joe aol would have to convert them from ogg before playing them on their ipod or whatever mp3 player. only the geeky players (iriver, karma) play ogg.
” only the geeky players (iriver, karma) play ogg.”
are you trolling or what?
” only the geeky players (iriver, karma) play ogg.”
Trolling or not, it’s only half true. iTunes plays ogg. You just have to add the ogg library to Quicktime. I play ogg files on iTunes all the time.
And it works on the Mac and Windows versions of iTunes.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021103065300430
no i’m not trolling!
as far as i know, only some irivers and the rio karma can play ogg.
of course you can get software for your COMPUTER to play ogg, but i’m talking about MOBILE DEVICES, like the ipod, which i know doesn’t play ogg (even if itunes can on a computer).
i don’t know how to make it clearer, you all seem to be misunderstanding me! jees i thought i was talking english.
basically itunes first became popular because people could just download straight to their ipods. if you have to convert to mp3 or whatever first using thekompany’s service, then it’s extra hassle for idiot users.
personally i’d just use the ogg, but i have ogg-capable players (except my dvd players, they only play mp3).
“as far as i know, only some irivers and the rio karma can play ogg.
”
how exactly did they become geeky?. because they know have shit loads of cash to market it like ipod?.
iriver is technically capable and does what people need from it. period
”
basically itunes first became popular because people could just download straight to their ipods. if you have to convert to mp3 or whatever first using thekompany’s service, then it’s extra hassle for idiot users.
”
vote with your money. tell apple to support ogg vorbis format then or take your business elsewhere
”
i don’t know how to make it clearer, you all seem to be misunderstanding me! jees i thought i was talking english.
”
ya. People can continue calling IRiver geeky players and still speak English well. its not mutually incompatible
Everyone has a freaking IPod. Just goes to show how easily brain washed the masses can be but kudos to Apple for being so capable with their marketing.
Would be lovely if people only supported technology that was open but many have problems tying their shoe laces so I suppose one can’t expect too much. )-:
“What’s a Pop category without Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, any Jackson, Elvis, Destiny’s Child, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, a Simson, etc.”
Um, just for grunge crowd or whomever, Christina Aguilera is actually R&B, not Pop.