iTunes is an a la carte model: you see the track you like and pay your 79p. A big drawback with iTunes is that it has inbuilt digital rights management (DRM), which prevents you playing ‘your’ music on anything other than an iPod [my emphasis], although iTunes has begun to introduce some DRM-free tracks. On Napster, you can listen to your chosen music for as long as your subscription is valid, including music stored on your MP3, but it too is not ‘your’ music (you can’t burn it off your computer onto CDs).”

It’s always disappointing to see how the press continue to misrepresent the iTunes Music Store: you can in fact play iTMS downloads on anything because you may burn each track to CD as often as you wish and any given playlist five times. The dealbreaker with Napster must surely be that when the customer (and it’s nice of him to write) stops paying his £14.95 a month, or when the service closes, the music files become useless.

It would surely be sensible to view iTMS as a shop that makes life ever so slightly awkward for customers who want to listen to files on their Creative Zens, iRiver or other mp3 player (as well as cassette player, minidisc, 8-track cartridge…) while Napster is a subscription radio station that allows its customers to choose the tracks which they would like to hear each month.

On a completely unrelated note: I was nearly mown down at a zebra crossing yesterday. The rider of the scooter in question made no attempt to brake until I stopped, irrationally, in his path (demonstrating the pedestrian equivalent of target fixation). He left two or more metres of rubber on the ground and stopped within a couple of inches of me. I tried to say something like, Have you ever thought of taking lessons to use that thing? but think I may actually have said, Have you ever hungmpht dabrkl…

As the rider repeated that I should go forth and multiply out of his way (or something on those lines) and then tried riding his bike through me, I rang the police while realising that the chap was now surrounded by witnesses who were noting down his registration number and giving me their details. The police are coming tonight to take a statement. At the very least, they should be able to prosecute the chap for riding on a street which is open only to buses, taxis and bicycles and for not giving way to a pedestrian on the crossing.

Manufacturer Roberts Radio and digital technology company Frontier Silicon have joined forces to develop the UK’s first DAB/FM plug-in for the iPod.

Digital radio stations will be able to reach a potential audience of millions by opening up their services to iPod users.

The device, which is “about the size of an egg” will be launched in late autumn. It will be sold by major electronic retailers for £49.99.

Obviously this blog is being read by industry insiders. I am a little concerned at the idea that the gadget will be egg-sized, perhaps because I first read it as egg-shaped.

Ordinarily this would not be an issue. After all, James would perform in their home town again.

Wouldn’t they?

Watching BBC NorthWest Tonight on the evening of 7^th December 2001, a week after we had seen Depeche Mode, we saw the flaw in our plan. Tim Booth was leaving the band he had fronted for eighteen years or so. Kate and I had spent years failing to see James. I had caught them on their 1992 acoustic tour, when they avoided Manchester and instead played a fine set at the Town and Country Club in Leeds. Kate had completely missed out on them live.

We were, to say the least, annoyed. Ever since the release of Laid in 1994, James had been my favourite band-that-actually-does-any-work (Ian Brown and John Squire being rather too keen having a holiday for my other favourite band to be a realistic live proposition) and I was one of that limited number of people who genuinely had fallen in love with the group before the release of Gold Mother (only by a matter of weeks, mind).
It was, then, without any hesitation that I bought the live DVD. Up until now this has been heard only rarely for one simple reason: iPods do not play DVDs.

Now, thanks to two pieces of software, this is about to change. MacTheRipper performs the useful task of extracting the audio (a forum post explains how) and the snappily titled AIFF from PCM converts the files to something iTunes can use.

Users of more recent iPods may well be pleased to see that this software can also be used to put video on their devices.

Technorati Tags: James, Tim Booth, Manchester, iPod, iTunes

One of my few irritations with my 4G iPod has to do with the volume when I connect it to the deck in my Cherokee. I have to turn the volume on the stereo and on iPod up…waaaay up. All the way to about “27? on a “33? notch scale for the stereo and to maximum on iPod, just to get some volume and rock out a little. The deck itself is nice; an Aiwa X504MP, which has a 3.5mm Auxiliary Jack on the face (great for connecting iPod). The X504MP produces rich, loud sound at about the “20? mark when I use it to play cd’s and mp3 cd’s, so the volume problem with iPod has just left me to assume that it not an iPod problem at all, but a problem with the Auxiliary Jack. I hardly get irritated about it at all anymore. Hell, I don’t even think about it much anymore.

Sarcasm aside, I haven’t chosen to listen to FM radio for the best part of two years. These days, I listen to DAB. I notice that the septics have given the world an FM add-on for the iPod. Could we please have something to let me listen to BBC 6 Music on DAB?

I walk more than I did before, probably because I know the walk will be accompanied by some fine music. I listen to music more, because I don’t have to spend time choosing an appropriate minidisc.

I was a little concerned at first that my music collection might outgrow my iPod. In fact, it did almost as soon as the device arrived. This does not, in fact, matter. I have iTunes playlists set up for:

• all my four and five-star tracks
• all the tracks I’ve not heard in the last five weeks
• all the tracks I’ve not heard in the last six months
• all those that were added to the iTunes library in the last fortnight
• and those audiobooks to which I’ve not yet listened. It’s a curious fact that my iPod led me to Audible and Audible led me to spend more time reading books.

As such, almost every track recorded by New Order, the Stone Roses and the Who is in my pocket at any given time. Paul Hardcastle is only there if I’ve not listened to him recently. I’ve not missed him.