song

What's lossless audio and do I need it?

Digital Living A typical song as it is on a CD takes about 50MB of memory. A decent-quality, 256kbps MP3 of the same song is around 5MB -- that's a massive amount of data lost in the compression process. A typical song compressed into a lossless format, such as...

18 July 2007, 12:55

Which UK music download store is the best?

Digital Living Sounds good, but if you stop paying every month then you can kiss goodbye to every single song. Instead of paying for tracks individually, eMusic offers three monthly subscription plans, priced at £8.99, £11.99 and £14.99 a month for 30, 50 or 75...

2 May 2007, 17:12

Which MP3 bit rate should I use?

Digital Living However, whereas an average song encoded at 128kbps will be around 3.5MB, the same song in lossless format will be around 30MB. Using VBR allows the MP3 encoder to use lower bit rates during quieter or less complex parts of a song, and...

16 May 2007, 15:24

Consumers frustrated by online music catalogues

Digital Living Yahoo undermines RIAA calculationsOn his blog, Mark Cuban (the Broadcast.com billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team) has echoed Barry Ritholtz's speculation that Yahoo's new subscription service created a new standard for...

16 June 2005, 12:44

What's DRM and should I avoid it?

Digital Living Putting DRM in every song sold legally means only you can play that file. I want to start buying my music from online download stores, but I've been told to avoid sites that use DRM. What is DRM and why should I avoid it?

20 June 2007, 11:49

How can I convert my vinyl collection to MP3?

Digital Living You can then clean up the waveform and convert the song to MP3 format at a high bit rate. Hello, call me a luddite, call me an Antiques Roadshow viewer, but I have a problem. I like my MP3s, but I love my old record collection.

6 April 2006, 12:28

The digital won't let me go

Digital Living I'm searching with a nephew for a song by an obsure Japanese band when Google freezes. Helping to launch this Web site has given me plenty of time to think about a simple question, one I look forward to trying to answer in this weekly column.

16 May 2005, 12:40

The new podcasting tools

Digital Living Right now, it's a mix of music and talk shows, as well as hybrids that play a song, then comment on it. Podcasting is a growing phenomenon that gives anyone with a computer, a microphone and an Internet connection his or her own radio show.

Tags: stations, searching, mix, talk

9 May 2005, 15:48

Beware the industry of cool

Digital Living As the hero's sister in Almost Famous puts it: "This song explains why I'm leaving home to become a stewardess. There are certain painful issues of identity and crisis bound up in the whole business of music.

16 September 2006, 8:00

Do more with your iPod

Digital Living But when you ask your iPod to produce another track it hasn't cached, it has to spin up the hard disk and access the song. It's easy enough to synchronise both iPods with just one computer, as long as both iPod users are happy accessing the same...

9 May 2005, 15:49