Get unlimited wi-fi for your iPod Touch at a tiny price

I recently subscribed to The Cloud’s iPod Touch service, dubbed “Cloud Unlimited Music”. It is a service designed specifically for the iPod Touch and gives unlimited browsing and downloading at The Cloud’s wi-fi hotspots for just £3.99 per month.

I decided it was worth it as it is handy to have instant internet access in many public train station. The company’s hotspots can be found in many public places – such as train stations, pubs, hotels, restaurants and as most O2 stores. Considering the small price, I can head out and just catch my emails or finish a download.

I’m really impressed at how well the system works. I signed up and added my debit card as payment, and then 2 days later (today) headed out to my local town to try it out. I walked into an O2 shop and tried to connect. Straight away I was on the net – no need to log on or anything like that.

You don’t need to log on because the system works by checking your iPod’s MAC address rather than a username or password. When you sign up, you provide your device’s MAC address and your account is locked to that code. By doing this, it means that you no longer have to log on when joining a hotspot.

In addition, I was also really impressed at the speeds. My local O2 store gave me a download speed of over 8 megabits per second (which is more than twice the speed of my home broadband).

So overall, I’m very happy with it. It’s great value and works very efficiently. If you need wi-fi access for your iPod Touch in town – this is for you.

Manage your overnight downloads without running up the electricity bill!

Do you ever find it annoying when you know you’ve got so much overnight download allowance with your broadband, but don’t want to use it because you’re computer uses so much electricity.

I have that problem regularly. It’s all very well having tonnes of usage allowance between midnight and 9am, but I don’t really want to run my computer overnight as a) it’s a fire hazard and b) it consumes a large amount of electricity.

So, yesterday, I found a solution to the issue. I found an app that will download your files for you and store them on the iPod. Then, when they are done, it will open up a port (8080) that you can browse to on your computer and download the files back locally.

The screenshot below is the file server page that can be browsed to in any web browser on your local network once it is activated within the app (click to see larger size):

I find this app so useful because I can run it all night and it won’t make a sound and won’t cost the Earth. Perfect!

You can get the full version here at £1.19, or get the free version here – but bear in mind that with the free version you can only store 10 files at a time.

The BPI (British Phonographic Industry) recently released the 2009 music statistics for sales across the UK. In the report, it mentions how our music industry has coped with the rush of illegal downloads.

From what they say, sales of albums have declined slightly through 2009, but this has been the trend since 2005 when sales of albums started to fall. I suspect this is due to the fact that people can now save money if they only pick the tracks that they want online – they no longer need to purchase the whole album. In any case, it now stands that 128.9 million album sales were made in 2009 compared to 133.6 million in 2008.

Sales of singles have rapidly increased in 2009. The total number of singles sold in 2009 stands at 152.7 million, compared to 2008’s 115.1 million. The increase in sales of singles started in 2003, but 2009’s increase is the biggest seen so far.

Bear in mind that that only mentions sales and it is unclear how many pirated downloads were made – but it is still believed that the proportion of illegal downloads is much bigger than the proportion of legal purchases.

I believe that 2010 will be the year for music streaming rather than downloading (or purchasing in a shop). With more and more of us gaining access to the internet, it is becoming easier for us to legally stream music from the internet. I think services such as Spotify will rapidly grow in 2010 as it primarily free – the company makes money from an advert being played after every fifth or sixth track.

Spotify (as far as I’m aware) hasn’t revealed how many streams were made in 2009, but it would be interesting to know. I believe that free music streaming is the only way to get people of P2P.

Credit for information to the BPI and the Official UK Charts Company.

Spotify, a big player in the music industry, has now introduced MP3 purchases.

They originally had it so the software could link you to sites such as 7digital, but it now looks like they are offering direct MP3 purchases.

The new Spotify update allows you to purchase tracks which you can keep forever. They are in MP3 format so they can be placed on any MP3 player or iPod. All purchased music is stored in your music directory and can also be accessed from Spotify.

It looks like the new concept is ran in partnership with 7digital, as the EULA mentions 7digital and their logo is shown.

Looks interesting – I won’t ever use it because I’m going to keep my Spotify Premium membership going as it works seamlessly with my iPod Touch. I doubt many long term Spotify premium users will use the new feature, but it might be handy for free users. Nevertheless, it is a nice addition to Spotify.

In the past, I’ve used many different music download services. 

I used Napster first, which in general was good, but very short lived after I discovered their credit card fraud issues. When I used Napster, I only really used it for buying music to burn to CD but not really for MP3 players because at that time I didn’t own a very decent one.

Then after I closed my account with Napster, I didn’t use any music download service for a while.

When someone bought me an iPod earlier in the year, I started using iTunes. I received a £15 voucher with it so I played around a bit and rented some films as well as downloaded music. I’m not a huge fan of iTunes but the service itself is generally reliable and apart from the fact you have to use an iPod with iTunes, it’s pretty good. Of course there is the problem that iTunes (and Napster) are both DRM sites so you wont get DRM free music.

Then I tried the Orange Music Store (since my phone is with Orange) and that’s slightly more dissapointing but still good enough for most people. The application itself that you have to use to download music is quite buggy and can cause some problems, but I find it useful that if you download the song that you want from your phone, it will automatically send it to your PC (and vice versa). There is still the DRM problem, though.

And finally I recently started using Non-DRM sites. I like 7digital.com because they sell MP3′s that you can buy with SMS payment, although it is £1.50 per song apposed to the average 79p per song in most stores. 

What sites do you use for buying music? Do you like them?