Kazaa has been sold to a company in Australia according to an article in MP3 Newswire. The company also resumed downloads of its client, something it stopped last week to partially satisfy a court ruling against the company last December.
This just in people, KaZaa has stopped the downloding of its program because of its recent loss in the Dutch courts. Those who already have KaZaa should still be able to use it, but for how long?
Sony has announced the MEX-HD1, an MP3 stereo for the car that rips CDs. "The user slips a standard CD into the head unit, selects which tracks they want ripped, hits the button and the chosen songs are compressed on the fly and saved to the drive. Eventually the CDs can stay home as, overtime, your entire collection of music is transferred to the unit". It ships in April and sells for $1500. The article includes a photo of the unit.
SONICblue has announced the new Rio Riot MP3 jukebox player. It looks to me like an iPod killer -- 20 GB hard drive, very nice interface (better than Apple's), built-in FM tuner, powerful "DJ" functions, Lithium Ion batteries. And, at $399, it's priced competitively. The only question is -- how big is this thing? The article includes a picture of the unit.
For those who don't want to shell out money for LimeWire Pro to avoid all that spyware/adware junk, someone has recompiled the open source program into a free version that strips away all that stuff called Clean Limewire."
In our Winners and Losers list for 2001 we listed the Ogg Vorbis digital codec as a product to watch for the 2002 lists, predicting it to be a watershed year for the open source format. With the start of the new year the long awaited RC3 release of the Vorbis codec is out.
The second of a two part year in review, MP3 Newswire runs through the Winners of 2001 in digital music.
Is that some stirring we see from the Napster camp? Can it actually be still alive? Napster just released a preview of its new service, due early 2002, with screenshots and an updated FAQ.
MP3 Newswire has run the first of a two part recap on the year in digital music starting with this years top eight losers. I can think of a few to add to this list.
Well under normal circumstances I wouldn't publish news of this sort, but deadalienx pointed me to this excellent 24x7 dance music site called The Womb. I must say, it's pretty damn impressive. Not only do they have LIVE DJs spinning 24/7 (don't ask me how they accomplish this) but they've even got webcams setup to capture the artist at work. It's like being at a rave and having a birds eye view of what the DJ is doing. Most excellent.
