CARRY A TUNE APPLE'S IPOD AND ITS COMPETITORS ARE CHANGING THE WAY WE LISTEN TO MUSIC.Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer You've probably noticed it, too. Kids at school, joggers on the street, passengers on airplanes - they're quietly tapped into huge libraries of music stored in gadgets no bigger than the palm of a hand. Thank the iPod for that. Since it was introduced in 2001, Apple Computer has sold 10 million of its sleek, stylish handheld digital audio players; more than 250 million songs have been downloaded from its iTunes Music Store in the last two years. It not only has changed the way people buy music but also how they listen to it. ``It's the new paradigm New Paradigm In the investing world, a totally new way of doing things that has a huge effect on business. Notes: The word "paradigm" is defined as a pattern or model, and it has been used in science to refer to a theoretical framework. ,'' says Phil Ramone, the celebrated record producer currently nominated for three Grammys. The soul of the iPod is a hard-drive-based player capable of storing up to 15,000 songs, depending on the model. In addition to buying music online, you can download albums or songs imported from your own CD collection, using software that converts the music to MP3 or other digital formats. ``Like it or hate it, this is the most popular machine on Earth right now,'' writes Seth Jayson of the Motley Fool Web site. It's no wonder the digital outgrowth popularized by the iPod has (in the Apple tradition) also spawned an array of imitators. Companies like Creative, Rio and Dell have rolled out their own designs with catchy names like Zen Touch, Carbon and Digital Jukebox DJ, respectively, that are comparable to the iPod but cost less. The players are the new tech gadgets to get. As students push past the double doors of El Camino Real High School El Camino Real High School (also known locally as "ECR" and by some more recently as "ELCO") is a public secondary school located in the Woodland Hills district of the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California. in Woodland Hills at the end of another day, cell phones aren't the only devices you'll see plastered to their ears. Brett Cowley, a lanky 15-year-old from Tarzana, removes Apple's signature white ``earbud''-style headphones Head-mounted speakers. Headphones have a strap that rests on top of the head, positioning a pair of speakers over both ears. For listening to music or monitoring live performances and audio tracks, both left and right channels are required. from his ears and takes out the iPod from his front jean pocket. The player is outfitted in a black silicone jacket with a cutout cut·out n. 1. Something cut out or intended to be cut out from something else. 2. Electricity A device that interrupts, bypasses, or disconnects a circuit or circuit element. 3. for the window and click wheel. It's certainly fashionable. But the attraction isn't just physical. Cowley has a 20-gigabyte player that can hold up to 5,000 songs, although at the moment he's only got about 530, a ``School of Rock''-inspired discography dis·cog·ra·phy n. Examination of the intervertebral disk space using x-rays after injection of contrast media into the disk. that includes Tenacious D, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd - enough epic rock to get him through the day. ``I take it everywhere I go,'' he says. ``I skateboard with it a lot. I even listen to it when I sleep.'' His classmate Carlos Canto can·to n. pl. can·tos One of the principal divisions of a long poem. [Italian, from Latin cantus, song; see canticle. - a 14-year-old from South Los Angeles South Los Angeles is the official name for a large geographic and cultural area lying to the southwest and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. The area was formerly called South Central Los Angeles, and is still sometimes called South Central. who also has a 20-gigabyte iPod - likes to shoot hoops while his player keeps underground beats by rappers Aesop Rock, Atmosphere and 2 Mex thumping through his ears. Before iPod, Canto and others like him lugged around stacks of CDs for their portable disc players. Not anymore. But while digital music players may have eliminated the need for CD players, they have yet to close the sales gap. The NPD Group, a marketing research firm based in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , reports that for the first 11 months of 2004, U.S. retailers sold 8.75 million CD players compared to 3.5 million digital players. But just give these technological tykes time. Digital audio players began dropping in lock-step with the peer-to-peer file-swapping phenomenon in 1998. The early models were high-priced and much too complicated. ``If you didn't already own the songs, then you had to go on some kind of peer-to-peer network like Napster, and not everybody was willing to do that,'' says Stephen Baker, director of industry analysis for NPD NPD New Product Development NPD Nouveau Parti Démocratique (Canada) NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder NPD Norwegian Petroleum Directorate NPD Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands . He adds that on top of everything else, people were still limited by the ability to load music onto their PCs. It was only after PCs started shipping with CD burners that the uphill battle of getting the music you already owned into your computer, and from there into your MP3 player, was eliminated. Even so, the players didn't really take off until Apple made its iPod compatible with Windows-based computers and introduced the iTunes Music Store in 2003. In little over a year, the iPod has become the next big thing, the latest in a line that stretches back to the phonograph phonograph: see record player. phonograph or record player Instrument for reproducing sounds. A phonograph record stores a copy of sound waves as a series of undulations in a wavy groove inscribed on its rotating surface by the in changing the way people listen to music. ``It's in style and everybody has one,'' says Canto. ``So I wanted one, too.'' And so does everybody else. The iPod's popularity has created business opportunities for companies that make accessories for adapting it to car and home audio systems, as well as for entrepreneurs like Catherine Keane, the 23-year-old founder of hungrypod.com, a service run out of New York that caters to people who are too busy to load music onto their own players. Keane got the idea after a Wall Street investment broker paid her $500 to load his iPod with all of his favorite songs. ``That's when I realized there's a market for this kind of service,'' says Keane, whose hourly rate is $25 plus $1.50 per CD and/or the cost of buying music online at stores like iTunes, Napster, Wal-Mart, Sony Connect and MSN Music. And that's another business opportunity. These online stores steadily are becoming a regular shopping destination for music fans both in the United States and abroad. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reports that in 2004, more than 200 million songs were sold through online music services, amounting to a tenfold increase from the previous year. And the new media research firm Jupiter expects the market, which it pegs at $330 million, will double in 2005. With so many shopping outlets for music - online and off - you'd think the biggest problem facing anybody these days is deciding what to put on their players, right? ``Not if you really love music,'' says Stephano Medina as he sits outside El Camino Real High School and listens to the silver iPod mini. With his leather jacket and mop of curly hair, Medina, a 15-year-old from West Hills, fashions his musical taste from the icons of '60s and '70s rock - the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, David Bowie - and has nearly maxed out the memory on his iPod mini. And soon, says the teen - who plays bass, guitar and piano - he's hoping to load the player with some of his own music. This is something Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic (LAP) is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. History Founded in 1919 by William Andrews Clark, Jr. , has been doing since he bought his first-generation iPod, which he calls a ``horn of plenty horn of plenty n. pl. horns of plenty See cornucopia. [Translation of Late Latin corn  c .'' In addition to his own compositions, he's got a handful of operas, jazz, Finnish rock groups, Italian pop singers and even animal sounds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology ornithology Branch of zoology dealing with the study of birds. Early writings on birds were largely anecdotal (including folklore) or practical (e.g., treatises on falconry and game-bird management). that he likes to listen to on long trans-Atlantic flights. ``I'm not a great hi-fi guy,'' Salonen says. ``When I'm at home, for instance, I rarely sit down and put on a CD unless I'm working on something where listening to a recording is part of the process. But the iPod has changed this to some degree because it's so easy to carry with you and the quality is so good.'' In fact, his only beef - if you want to call it that - is with the battery, which ranges in its continuous play time from model to model. ``If it's not used for a week, I usually have to recharge it,'' Salonen says, adding, ``otherwise, I think it's pretty damn terrific.'' Sandra Barrera, (818) 713-3728 sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com The players Thinking about getting a digital music player? Here are some options: Under $200 A slider A block of material that holds the read/write head of a magnetic disk. See flying head. on the back of the 512-megabyte Apple iPod Shuffle lets you toggle To alternate back and forth between two states. toggle - To change a bit from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This comes from "toggle switches", such as standard light switches, though the word "toggle" actually refers to between shuffle and ``Playlist A file that contains an index to a selected group of music files on the computer. Using digital jukebox software such as iTunes and Winamp, playlists are created by the user by dragging and dropping titles from a master index. The software may be able to create a playlist automatically. Repeat'' modes. But the downside is there's no display screen, FM tuner or recording capability, which usually come standard in other flash memory players. The 256-megabyte iRiver iFP-790 is the little red Corvette corvette, small warship, classed between a frigate and a sloop-of-war. Corvettes usually were flush-decked and carried fewer than 28 guns. They were widely employed in escorting convoys and attacking merchant ships during the great naval wars of the late 18th and of flash memory players. Load it with MP3, OGG, AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) An audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards. AAC, especially MPEG-4 AAC, provides greater compression and better sound quality than MP3, which also came out of the MPEG standard. and WMA (Windows Media Audio) An audio compression method from Microsoft. Known originally as MSAudio, this proprietary format competes with the MP3 and AAC methods. WMA encodes rapidly and is known to be especially effective at low bit rates. (sold by Wal-Mart and Napster) audio files or listen to FM radio. Best of all, it runs on AA batteries. Unfortunately you can't upload music from your player onto your PC for extra storage. Press the menu button and scroll. That's how simple it is to use the 256-megabyte JetAudio iAudio CW300. Includes extras like FM tuner and a voice recorder. The dim blue backlit An LCD screen that has its own light source from the back of the screen, making the background brighter and characters appear sharper. screen, however, could stand to be improved. $200 and up: Shuffle or browse. The 20-gigabyte Apple iPod makes it easy with the ``Click Wheel,'' which was first introduced on the iPod Mini. Just load your favorite music (MP3, AAC and AA audio file format An audio file format is a container format for storing audio data on a computer system. The general approach towards storing digital audio is to sample the audio voltage (which on playback, would correspond to a certain position of the membrane in a speaker) of the ) onto the hard drive and listen for up to 12 hours of continuous battery life. The dock, remote control and carrying case are not included. The 20-gigabyte Creative Zen Touch is hot on the trail of iPod in looks, features and sound. A sensitive ``Touch Pad'' lets you explore your virtual library of MP3, WMA, WAV and data files for, get this, 24 hours of continuous battery play - wow! Also features an optional FM tuner and voice-recording remote. Cons: The battery can't be swapped out between charges. Another strong contender is the 20-gigabyte Dell Digital Jukebox The Dell Digital Jukebox or just Dell DJ was a brand name for a series of digital audio players sold by the Dell Computer corporation. The Dell DJs were engineered by Creative Technology and based on the same hardware and software platform as their Creative DJ. It's heavier than the iPod and its scroll wheel doesn't move as fast, but it functions similarly. Browses MP3 and WMA audio files easily. And talk about battery life: 16 hours plus. But, like the Creative Zen Touch, the battery can't be removed. - S.B. CAPTION(S): 7 photos, box Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) POD people New generation of digital handheld audio players lets anyone carry a tune Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer (2 -- 4) Apple's iPod and other digital music players have become common sights at high schools across the country, including at El Camino Real El Camino Real (Spanish for The Royal Road or The King's Highway) was the name of a series of pre-automobile highways linking the various New World colonies of Spain:
Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer (5) Apple iPod Mini (6) Creative Zen Micro (7) Dell Digital Jukebox DJ The New York Times Box: The players (see text) |
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