Batting at number 12: Music

Hello I'm an iPod and brrrr I feel cold.

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:16:39 GMT

You'd think walking in freezing cold temperatures with some peppy music might make you feel a bit warmer. Not if the music is playing on your iPod! My iPod froze to death yesterday trying to survive the cold wave in northwest. Ironically the last song it played was from "Garam"(Hot) Masala.

It's rated to operate between a comfy range of 32 to 95 F so keep an eye on the temperature next time you take it out for a ride. As for me, it looks like the rest of the winter is going to be a cold n quiet... <-- That's my diePod nano lying dead singing it's last song...

Zune++

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:09:25 GMT

iPod/iTunes when they came out really changed the game. The best thing that I think the duo did was to liberate a good song from a mediocre album. Thanks to iTunes (and now Zune), I don't have to shell out 10-15 bucks just to get a couple of good songs from an album. I decide what I like and just buy that a lot cheaper. The music lables hated this but they seem to have realized that this is what the music lovers really want.

I think the next big thing would be to liberate mediocre songs from the media hype. A hyped up song is hot for only a few months and there are so many of those in the wild... (IMO almost all the pop music is like that. But then mebbe thats just me) Unlike the classics, most songs fall off of charts (and public memory) in a couple of months or years. Then why do I have to buy those songs for their lifetime? I should be able to "lease" a song for the time I think it will be hot. I know I want to be cool to have shakira's next hot song on my zune but nobody would care about it a year down the line. Heck even I won't want to listen to it next year. So why pay for it for the next year and the years to come? Lease it to me for half the price such that it expires a year from now and you've upped my purchasing power by 100%. Sure the labels won't like this but they'll learn and hey didn't somebody say "the customer is the king"? So better treat him like one ;)

Today though the song costs me only a buck, I make really sure that I like it before I buy it. if it gets even cheaper, I'm likely to experiment even more and buy many more songs. In the context of the type of music that we listen to in India, the bollywood music, this is even better. I can't even recall the hot himmesh reshammiya songs that I was crooning a year ago. Songs come and go and I want my library to have both - the best and the latest. A buck a song gets me my best and my song lease gives me my latest. A scheme like this would really make me buy some music rather than getting it off some illegal bittorrent/P2P site. Zune with its new and fresh image has opportunity to offer it. I hope they come up with some game changing ideas.

Zune Preloaded

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 07:36:30 GMT

Looks like Zune will come with some preloaded content. I like that idea. Another thing that I thought to be cool was that it would let you loan tracks to your friends for a day.

I say why not combine those and let me add whatever music I want to my zune before I order it. The tracks will only last for a day after I hear them for the fist time or for 2-3 listenings. This gives me a great opportunity to try out new music before I decide to buy it. In fact why not let me downoad any track for listening once in full... may be at lower quality. If I like it I buy it. This 30 second try out on most music sites is just a joke. I hope they change that model... I'm waiting...