The Internet Audio BoomIt was expected!
Even separately, the words "Internet" and the word "Music" always brought to our minds some hippy geek staring into cyberspace, and an ethereal domain which could swoon you with its swirls, respectively. So when the two wor(l)ds merged, it was bound to create a sensation. And create, it did! In this brief article, we look at a few pieces of history, along with (as usual) some extreme devices which liven up our lives !A brief history of Internet Music:
It might seem that "Internet Music" means songs-downloaded-from-the-internet. While that may be partly true, it also includes the trading of music (either for free or purchased), Audio Streaming, Remote searchable archives, Video streaming, among others. Infact I would argue that it was an offshoot of the digital revolution, when computers were started to be used for creating and storing music. It was then we realised that we could treat "audio" as easily as any other piece of data, and hence could be transmitted digitally over networks. [Ofcourse, now Yamaha has come out with a computerised version of a Piano, and psst..it costs only a couple of hundred thousand dollars!]Well, any other piece of data ? Not quite. Music, and more importantly, its perception by humans, is not similar to say, a piece of text. We can tolerate delays between loading of web pages. But we certainly cannot tolerate sudden zero-volume gaps within the duration of a song. This assumes more significance in the context of multimedia, when we combine video and audio!
As markets changed, and the concept of PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants) came up, we started thinking of doing the same for Music too. Though the Lyra came first into the (IA) Internet Audio Player market, there is evidence to show that other companies thought about this much earlier [The author has posted his sketches here]. The transition from playing a song using the PC, and using a separate device itself had emerged. And though the PDA's themselves are offering similar facilities to an IA player, pricewise IA players turnout to be the winners, and also cater more to specific markets. And now we have not only just players, but jukeboxes, radios, and more...
Aha, now the extreme devices !
The first one !
The Diamond Rio was one of the first players [Saehans MPMAN being the first] to hit the market, and is still going strong, with change-able faceplates (skins?), and is upgradeable to support new music formats.The sleekest ones !
The Sony VAIO Music Clip looks slightly bigger than a pen, but hides a well thought out function set inside.
Downloads: Through USB
Internal Storage: 64 MB Flash
Music Formats Supported: MP3, ATRAC3
Security: SDMI compliant through Sony's Magic Gate(tm) software
[What is SDMI?]Pine should have delivered their "D'Music Mini", supposed to be the worlds smallest MP3 player, by now. Check it out [here].
The heaviest ones !
This jukebox, through the use of a built in HardDrive, can store upto 6GB+ of music content. Check out the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox [here].
And there are monsters waiting out there with 17 GB capacity too !Others:
Lyra from RCA [http://www.lyrazone.com/].
Yepp from Samsung [http://samsungyepp.com/].
MPIO from Daewoo
See more of MP3 players here [http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/].