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In the online music sales battle, there are two groups: one that charges you per-song with no monthly fee, and one that charges you per-month. Apple’s iTunes Music Store is a good example of the first group, and Napster is a good example of the second. There are hybrid models like eMusic that charge you per month but cap the number of tracks you can download, and those tracks are yours to keep (they’re DRM-free MP3s, in eMusic’s case).

Each scheme has its advantages and disadvantages. The pay-per-song scheme means that once you’ve downloaded the song, it’s yours. You can play it whenever you want and wherever you want (at least, if you strip the DRM from it). If the music supplier goes bust or raises its prices, you can still listen to your music. On the other hand, if you’re a heavy music downloader it can get pretty expensive.

The pay-per-month scheme generally means that you can download as many songs as you like per month for one flat rate. If you go through songs like most people go through oxygen but you don’t have limitless funds, this would be the choice for you. However, if the company goes bust or raises its prices, you’re left high and dry. You could either continue to pay the monthly fee or not be able to listen to your music.

This disadvantage for the pay-per-month scheme is huge, and is the major reason why I think it’s the stupidest idea ever, and people who “buy” their music this way are throwing away their money. There’s an excellent example in Yahoo! Music — their subscription price is currently $6.99/month (or $59.88 if you sign up for an entire year), but tomorrow it’ll be going up to $11.99/month (or ~$120 for a whole year). If you’re paying month-to-month, then your rates will go up. If you don’t want to pay the increased price, tough beans, no more music for you. And what, theoretically speaking, would happen if a record label pulls out of the Yahoo! Music store? People would lose the rights to play that music, that’s what would happen. And there’s nothing you’d be able to do about it.

Contrast this with the iTunes Music Store. There are grumblings that the prices of tracks might go up from the current $0.99/track price. If the price goes up, Apple can’t retroactively charge you more money for the songs you already have. You could very well not give Apple any more money and you can still listen to your purchased music. Prices could go up to $50 a track, but you can still listen to your purchased music. If a record label pulls out, good for them, I can still listen to tracks that they put out and had on the iTMS when I purchased them.

I can’t understand why anybody would want to buy into a subscription-based music download model. Sure, it’s tempting to pay $60 (or even $120) for a year’s worth of unlimited music, but guess what? Ten years from now I can still listen to the songs I bought now, and I won’t have paid $1200 for the right to do so. And if you think the subscription prices are going to stay at the same levels they are now for the next ten years, then I have some nice land in Kalapana to sell you.

Pluto, the farthest planet from the Sun, must have a bit of a complex. With recent discoveries of large Kuiper Belt objects, some people have been trying to relegate Pluto’s status from planet to non-planet. Well, the controversy’s sure to get a little more heated with the recent discovery of two more satellites orbiting Pluto, bringing its number of satellites up to three.

Hubble Space Telescope data taken between 15 and 18 May 2005 first spotted the satellites, but in only two observations. Two data points aren’t enough to pin down an orbit, so more data was needed. Unfortunately the HST entered what’s called “2-gyro mode”, which limited the amount of sky it could look at, and Pluto will be outside of this zone until February 2006. Luckily HST’s data are archived, and data taken of Pluto on 14 June 2002 showed the faint presence of these two satellites. This is considered hard confirmation of the satellites.

The satellites currently have the romantic names S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2.

The Department of Space Studies of the Southwest Research Institute has a good background page on the hunt for the two new satellites of Pluto

I’ve updated my Last.FM Info with PHP code to include more functionality and make the code useable by others that might not have the cURL PHP functions installed. You can now use it to display any of the text-based lists supplied by Last.FM, including your top artists and top tracks. It can now pre- and append a string to each list entry, allowing for proper HTML lists.

Enjoy!

Last night’s hockey game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Phoenix Coyotes was, in the words of CKNW play-by-play announcer John Shorthouse, “the best hockey game ever at GM Place.”

Why? It wasn’t because the Canucks won, which they did 3-2. It wasn’t because Wayne Gretzky was back, albeit behind the bench of the Coyotes. It wasn’t because of anything to do with the actual game.

See, every Canucks game at GM Place they have a 50-50 draw. Half of the money goes to some charity, half goes to the lucky winner. Late in the third, after CKNW came back from commercial, Shorthouse and colour commentator Tom Larscheid couldn’t stop laughing. As Shorthouse said, “Leslie, we won the 50-50!”

Shorthouse won somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000. Twenty large. It was a wonder they could call the game after that!

Boards of Canada released their latest album, The Campfire Headphase on October 17, 2005, nearly 32 months after the release of Geogaddi. Boards of Canada have been one of the more popular purveyors of intelligent dance music (or IDM) since the release of Hi Scores in 1996. Their music is typified by ethereally-distorted ambience, bizarre and obscured voices (numbers stations are occasionally used), and a high amount of layered and blended elements.

The Campfire Headphase continues this tradition, but pushes it more into the analogue domain of music and sound. Drums and guitars are more prevalent than the synths of previous albums. Very few voices are heard. The title of the album is almost perfect, as the songs are reminicent of mashed-out ambientised distorted campfire songs — it wouldn’t be that hard to see Michael and Marcus (Sandison and Eion, the members of BoC) recording around a campfire and taking the results back to the studio to be run through the mill. Still, the ambience is pure Boards of Canada. Drums fade in and out. Textures float through each and every song. It’s different, yet it’s the same.

If you’re a BoC fan, you’ll like it. If you’re not, this album might bring you into the fold. I think it’s more accessible than their other albums.

A short review, yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to say. It means I don’t have the words to describe the album. Perhaps more words will come with more listening. As of now, after listening to it twice, it’s nearly as good as Geogaddi. Not one of their best, but definitely good. If I was forced to rate it, I would give it 3.75 toboggans out of 5.