Here's the story in todays paper.....
vancouversun.com
Last Updated: Thursday 27 January 2000 NETWORKS
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The Destiny of media
There is an Internet music revolution going on and it's impossible to predict who is going to win the software wars.
Peter Wilson, Sun Net Works Editor Vancouver Sun
In the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey, computers were able to sing -- but just barely. All angst-ridden Hal could manage was a hollow, reedy version of Daisy, Daisy.
So much for futurism circa 1968, Dave.
In real-life 2000, the Internet has pushed computers so heavily into music that no one would be surprised to hear their desktop machine belting out My Way in Frank Sinatra's voice.
Unless, of course, they'd actually downloaded an MP3 of a Ricky Martin song.
Every day, seemingly, new music software is being offered on the Net -- From MP3 players, to CD rippers to radio tuners to full-fledged media players to Web-page-embedded Java applications.
And then there's the hardware -- the MP3 players like the Diamond Rio and the FM transmitter that attaches to your computer and allows you to broadcast MP3s to your stereo receiver.
Predictions are that in a few years, as Web bandwidth increases, the primary method of music distribution will be via the Net.
It's no wonder then that traditional music companies like Time/Warner (which also has high-speed cable lines to offer) and EMI are amalgamating with the likes of the 20-million-subscriber AOL. All the better to keep the music in the family of established record firms.
Yes, we're in the middle of a full-fledged music revolution, largely based on recent compression technologies -- ones that shrink music files to allow them to flow more quickly over the Internet, while preserving most of the quality.
One of the many compression technology firms hoping to reap the benefit is Vancouver's Destiny Media Technologies (www.des
tiny-software.com), a 16-employee company founded in 1991 as a developer of a dozen computer games, including Star Seed II, distributed worldwide by MGM.
Oddly, it was the games background that has allowed the company to move into, among other online music developments, streaming audio.
"There's a big connection between video games and streaming and that's compression," said Steve Vestergaard, Destiny president and CEO.
"With video games you're always trying to squeeze the most you can out of a computer. So the compression that we use for audio actually came out of the games we did."
Destiny's most innovative product, says Vestergaard, is Clipstream (www.clipstream
.com), a java application that allows Web site operators and developers to provide sound -- music or voice or both -- either as soon as a Web page loads, or with a single mouse click.
"What's neat about Clipstream is that it doesn't require a player and doesn't require a server. You squish your audio down, you upload that audio, you upload the java player and that's it."
This technology, of course, has to compete, even if indirectly, with that of the likes of Seattle's relative industry giant RealNetworks (www.realnet
works.com) and its RealPlayer (www.realaudio.com), but Vestergaard says there are distinct advantages to Clipstream. For one thing, it removes the annoyance factor for the user.
"People like it because if you have a player and it pops up, it obscures half your Web page.
And half the time Real Audio tries to drive you off to their own Web site or tries to upgrade you."
As well, adds Vestergaard, users of established Web sound products aren't all that loyal. If they see a better solution they'll move to it quickly, so the advantage of being the big guy in the market could evaporate quickly.
Vestergaard sees Clipstream not only as a way of providing music, but also voice clips that would work in educational pages, on corporate Web sites for annual report, provide introductions to content and even assist users to find what they need on a Web site.
Not that Destiny is alone, even in this sub-field of providing Web page sound. Two competitors, AudioBase (www.
audiobase.com) and Emblaze (www.emblaze.com), offer similar products.
It's just a fact of Internet life that dozens upon dozens of firms have crowded into every area of the field of online sound and it is impossible to predict who will emerge a winner.
A second Destiny product garnering attention these days is Destiny Media Player (in both Windows and Mac versions). This is a free player that not only includes a good, solid MP3 player (with additional ability to play CDs, .wav, wfm and MIDI formats) but also allows users to tune in to Destiny's own selection of music radio stations.
Destiny's MP3 content partners are with Tucows (www.tucows.com) in the U.S. and Rolling Stone Bill Wyman's firm MP3 Ltd. UK (www.mp3.ltd.uk).
Hobbyists who want to run a radio station on the Net can use the program RadioDestiny Broadcaster (which works on Windows 98 and Windows NT) to set themselves up.
"Broadcasting is really easy. Once you get a signal plugged in away you go -- your station appears on our player."
So easy is it, in fact, that there are now 11,500 registered broadcasters, most of them hobbyists or experimenters. At any given time -- peaking in the evening and weekends -- there are about 50 stations available (listed at www.stationdirectory.com, which is updated every few minutes.
Commercial radio stations pay a registration of $3,500 US, on sale at the moment for $2,500.
Another innovative venture based on the Destiny media player -- and being produced in partnership with a California hardware company, Songboy -- is a cartridge that plugs in to the GameBoy, and allows music to be loaded into it from a computer.
"The Songboy turns a GameBoy into an MP3 player," said Vestergaard, who compares it to the Rio player.
Because of the GameBoy's video capacity album cover graphics can be shown. And there can be advertising as well.
"And the advertising will mean we can give the music away for free," said Vestergaard who emphasizes that Destiny's connection to the Songboy is limited to development of software, a Web site and the sales aspects of the site, through its own digital e-commerce system.
As well, users will be able to load their own MP3s into the player, but, naturally, won't get the album graphics.
Price of the Songboy (www.songboy.com), which Vestergaard says could sell for anywhere from $59 to $99, depending on it's memory capacity.
However, the Songboy is still in prototype while the California firm waits for its second round of financing before it goes into production.
Vestergaard says that Destiny is working to improve its compression format for both the Clipstream and radio products.
"The quality is going to be a lot better with our next release in six weeks. We'll have a completely redesigned compression format, which will be of much higher quality."
Vestergaard says Destiny is working to support a variety of hardware platforms in addition to the Songboy.
"Our ripper [MP3 creator], which is still in beta, combines MP3s, imagery and text into an encrypted rich, multimedia format [MPE], which we'll be licencing to a variety of hardware manufacturers."
Vestergaard adds that the MPE file can then be used to create what he terms "canned" Internet radio station.
"As you are listening to a canned station a Window pups up with the imagery and text. A user can purchase the CD or secure track as an impulse buy directly from the media player."
As the technology expands, and wireless use increases, Vestergaard foresees a day when the capacity to receive Internet radio will be built into car stereos.
"In the future Internet radio will replace traditional radio."
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