Idolator
An Irish company has released a kiosk—that probably-not-coincidentally looks like an elongated iPod—which will let you rip and transfer your freshly purchased music to your digital device of choice while still in the store. Ripfactory's CD2 was just introduced in the U.K. a few months ago, with plans to spread out to Europe and the U.S. in the coming months. The idea does hold some appeal to me, but then again I'm an old man who still buys a hell of a lot of used CDs and misses the days when you could just pop your new purchases into your Discman when you walked out of the record shop. I'm otherwise kind of at a loss as to how much this would necessarily spur new CD sales, except perhaps among technology-adverse old folks unsure of how to work this blasted pod-thingee and maybe to encourage those who need new music right now to stop into a store when they can't get to their computer.
Kiosk Eases Portable Music Hassle [BBC]
frankenstein's mp3 monster
Comments
As someone who lives more than 20 minutes from the music store, I can honestly this is an idea that appeals to me. Would I use it? I don't know - are they charging extra? Then balls.
Everything I know about the iPod tells me that your player is linked to your library. I'm not sure how plugging it into some random kiosk would work as far as updating the database, for example.
Aside from that, it's actually not a bad idea... although I would add Lampbane's "balls" for any attempt to charge the customer for the service.
The players are set to do the synch automatically, but you can manually turn off the iPod synch, and load music through any software that will enable loading.
@Halfwit: "Everything I know about the iPod tells me that your player is linked to your library."
Not if you have auto-synch turned off. Granted, that's the default setting, but with a couple of clicks in iTunes, you have yourself an RIAA-defying music pirating machine that can download music from any computer.
How many people carry their USB cord around with them? I'd probably want to do this, only to realize after I ripped the songs that I have no USB to transfer the songs...
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