MrKniceGuy.com

Tag: Google Play

  • DRM – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

    DRM isn’t a new term, but it sure has been gaining popularity as of late. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and to put it simply, it is the tool that manages how an end user accesses digital content. DRM takes on many different forms; from encryption, to license checks over the internet, to limiting the number of installations. When a user encrypts their data, they are employing a form of digital rights management (something you should be happy you are able to do!). An encrypted DVD is using DRM to prevent illegal copies from being made without permission. Or a video game technology with empty blocks used to prevent duplication.

    ServerDRM usually has a bad reputation, and to be honest, it’s earned it fair and square. Seasons of DRM content becoming unavailable due to a management server being shut down, or rootkits employed on CDs to prevent distribution have plagued users since the inception of DRM. And DRM is in a constant struggle over controlling digital media that is quite easy to copy and distribute (commonly called “pirating” media). There is a very real tension between trying to make content easy to access, but not too easy.

    Book publishers are in the midst of learning how to distribute digital media right now. Amazon has a pretty heavy-handed DRM approach to books, but users don’t have a problem with it at all. Why? The make it incredibly easy to access their content. Most of the devices they sell  to use the content (like the Kindle) can get it anywhere they have a 3G connection. Amazon is also a huge company with arguably some of the best servers in the world.

    Music has had a rougher go of it. During the time span between 2006 and 2008 several major music distribution services shut down servers that allowed users to listen to the music they bought. Not being able to access music that users paid for was, to say the least, frustrating to honest consumers. The growing pains of DRM has caused many people to be bitter about the whole process.

    Movies have yet to settle on a good method, although some are trying to make access easy and long-term. Services like UtlraViolet, Amazon, Google Play and Apple iTunes allow access to movies and TV, albeit heavily tied to DRM.

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  • Lot’s O’ Music – An Organization Post

    If you love music as much as I do, there’s a chance that you’ve spent hours ripping your CDs to MP3 (or if you’re like me you’ve done the whole process several times, just to get it just right), purchasing your DRM free music from Amazon, Google Play or iTunes and organizing and cataloging and, of course (most importantly), listening  to all your wonderful music.

    So how do you manage and keep track of all that tunage? I’m not claiming I’m an expert, but I’ve spent years working on my system. So I thought I would share it with you.

    File Structure

    This is the part that has gone through the most changes, but now that it is settled it’ll be staying like this for a long time. When managing thousands of files, a good folder structure is key. Especially if your ID3 tags get messed up! I use a folder structure like this:

    “C:/Music/A/Alice In Chains”
    “C:/Music/D/The Devil Wears Prada”
    etc.

    With all the different artists in my library it was necessary to break it down another level. Hence the alphabetical letters for each A – Z.

    The idea that all these artists could site in a single folder would never work for my collection. It may for you, but consider using what I’ve done here if you want to have room to grow your library.

    Format

    MP3 is where it’s at. I tried WMA, OGG and FLAC and by far the most flexible and good size to sound ration is MP3. I rip all my music to 320Kbps MP3. Now, of you might find that FLAC is more to your likeing because you can afford piles of hard drives. Or you’ve got a Windows mobile device and WMA works better for you. But for me (and most of the world) it’s MP3. If you dump thousands of dollars into a home stereo system consider FLAC since it’s lossless. But I find 320Kbps sounds just great. And I do hear a difference. I listen the most on my JLab Bomoba TEKST headphones, which sound amazing by the way.

    Tools

    Media Monkey Interface

    I’d be lost without Media Monkey. It’s the BEST audio manager tool out there. I would say you could get away with using the free version, but you really, really should just buy it. It handles my whole library with ease. In fact, I’m listening with it right now while writing this. Media Monkey provides massive library support, robust ID3 management and lots of transcoding options.

     

    Bonus

    If you want to listen to your music anywhere you’ve got internet access, there are two (pick your flavor) tools you can use. The first is Subsonic, a service you run like a server from your home. The other is Google Music which allows you to upload your music library (up to 20,000 files) for free and listen anywhere. Check them out.

     

    What do you use? Did this help? Let me know in the comments below.