Category: UPnP AV / DLNA

Article

This is about bringing the vinyl record to the UPnP AV / DLNA Home Media Network

The Pro-Ject T2 W wireless turntable looks to accelerate the vinyl resurgence | T3

From the horse’s mouth

Pro-Ject

Pro-Ject T2W Wi-Fi turntable

Product Page (English, Deutsch)

My Comments

The vinyl revival is upon us whether you are a young person who didn’t grow up with playing records or an older person who habitually played records on that stereogram or hi-fi system and maintained that record collection. But a significant number of turntable manufacturers have moved away from the purely-analogue “back-to-basics” approach to the classic LP record by bridging digital technologies with that classic music medium.

In a lot of cases, turntable manufacturers have issued at least one turntable model in their range that uses Bluetooth to stream audio from that record to Bluetooth speakers or headphones. Yamaha recently issued the MusicCast VinylPlay 500 turntable that streams the record you are playing through your home network to their MusicCast speakers and amplifiers or plays online sources using a MusicCast app.

But Pro-Ject have come forward with a network turntable that uses UPnP / DLNA to stream the music off that record you have put on to a wide range of network audio equipment using your home network.

Pro-Ject have had a significant hand with the vinyl revival. This is with designing and releasing a value-for-money manual turntable that answers the expectations of “born-again” vinyl enthusiasts and participating in the Australian edition of Record Store Day which celebrates independent “bricks-and-mortar” record stores.

The Pro-Ject T2W Wi-Fi turntable is a belt-drive manual-operation turntable that works with 33rpm and 45rpm records. Records are placed on a glass platter rather than a plastic or lightweight-metal platter, which does a better job of absorbing unwanted vibrations. The tonearm is equipped with a Sumiko Rainier moving-magnet cartridge most likely

But this turntable streams the music content over your Ethernet or Wi-Fi home network to any UPnP / DLNA network audio endpoints with it supporting a best-case FLAC lossless audio stream. The Wi-Fi wireless network connection works best case to Wi-Fi 6.

You have to use the Pro- Ject Control App on your smartphone or tablet to set the T2W up for your home network. But this also works as a UPnP / DLNA Media Controller, allowing you to “push” the music stream from your currently-playing LP to a DLNA audio endpoint. The turntable also has a button to “push” the music stream to the last-connected DLNA endpoint so you don’t have to get out your smartphone to do this before you lift the arm on to that album. The Pro-Ject Control App also can allow you to use Sonos or Apple AirPlay 2 compatible equipment to hear that album.

Between the moving-magnet phono cartridge and the Wi-Fi streaming subsystem exists a high-quality analogue split-passive phono preamp which also yields the sound from that album to a line-level input on an amplifier. This would come in handy with music systems that don’t have a phono input that you would typically connect a turntable to. I have done further research and there doesn’t seem to be the ability to run the audio signal to an external phono preamp such as the one built in to that 70s-era hi-fi receiver.

Pro-Ject recommends that you use the control app associated with a UPnP / DLNA capable network multiroom setup to discover the turntable and push its output across the speakers in that setup. This is to assure proper synchronous sound output because one device would be used to “collect” the signal and synchronise it across the different member endpoints in that setup. Pro-Ject doesn’t assure that the T2W’s UPnP setup will lead to proper sync across different devices due to differing buffering capabilities.

This may appeal to people who have an Internet-capable audio system that uses UPnP / DLNA and want to play records through that system via the home network without it being necessarily close to the turntable. But I would like to see Pro-Ject or another company offer similar functionality in a standalone box that can be connected to existing hi-fi equipment.

But I see Pro-Ject’s effort with the T2W as linking the vinyl revival with the home network using standards-based technologies like DLNA. Time to put that record on through the home network!

How you can use a Chromecast or Apple TV in that hotel room

There are situations where you may want to use a device like a Chromecast, Apple TV box or a network printer in a place like a hotel that has that headline public-access Wi-Fi network facility. Or you may want to make use of a portable Internet radio to listen to that Internet-hosted radio station at the worksite you are working at which has a public-access Wi-Fi network.

But you will find it difficult to use these kinds of devices on these networks for many reasons.

One of these is that if a public-access Wi-Fi network is properly setup, each device that is on the network is to be logically isolated so that other devices on that network can’t discover your devices. This is more to assure user privacy and data security for all network users.

But this will interfere with arrangements where you need to discover another device that you own that is on the network in order to use it, such as to “cast” media to a Chromecast or Apple TV. It can also interfere with file sharing between two computers or the use of portable NAS devices.

Sony CMT-MX750Ni 3-piece music system – this has been used to try Internet-radio functionality via a public-access Wi-Fi network

As well, some of these networks are set up with a Web-based captive portal or implement Wi-Fi PassPoint / Hotspot 2.0 or other authentication approaches. This is even if it is about assenting to the terms and conditions of service for use of the public-access Wi-Fi network. Here, these kinds of login experiences don’t work at all with devices that have a limited user interface like a small display or a user interface based around a D-pad. In a lot of cases, you will deal with devices that don’t even have a Web browser at all to work with these captive portals.

I previously covered Wi-Fi mobile networks and how they work. This included the use of travel routers or Mi-Fi devices, or NAS and similar devices that support “Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi routing”.

Travel Routers and portable NAS devices

Wireless NAS as a bridge between mobile client devices and another Internet-providing network. This is a similar setup for travel routers that support “Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi” operation.

One approach is to use a travel router or Wi-Fi-capable portable NAS that supports “Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi routing”. This means that the device connects to the public access network while creating its own Wi-Fi network, acting as a router. With Wi-Fi-capable portable NAS devices, you have to enable this function through something like enabling “Share Wi-Fi Connection”. You have to set the NAS so that the data that it has is not shared to the Wi-Fi network it is connected to, something you do when you set up “secure” or “private” operation.

Newer multimedia-ready hotel-room networks

Be also aware that there is an increasing number of network solutions being pitched to hotels and similar lodging establishments that create small home-network-grade Wi-Fi networks unique to each room or apartment. Some companies are even pitching this as part of their public-access Wi-Fi solution or building-wide network / Internet solution for residential or accommodation places like hotels or build-to-rent apartment buildings.

This is achieved through a distinct room-specific network served by a router installed in the room or a VLAN specific to a room or account and operates for the user’s tenure that works like a small home network.

These setups may also be to support a TV or audio setup enabled for Google Chromecast, Apple AirPlay, DLNA, Spotify Connect or other common home-network media protocols. The TV or audio setup is something that a hotelier would like to provide as an amenity to their “switched-on” guests who make use of online services and smartphones for their multimedia consumption. Such networks will typically have a “small-network-standard” Wi-Fi network covering your room or suite and will have an SSID network name and password peculiar to that network.

Most likely, if you do bring along your equipment and have it work with the room-specific multimedia network, you will be able to discover it as long as your computer or mobile devices are linked to that particular network. This could mean that your Spotify-Connect-capable wireless speaker could work with Spotify on your smartphone like it does at home if all these devices are connected to the room-specific network.

You may find that the hotel you are staying in may be set up this way and there could be printed material in your room about this kind of network existing and how to “get on board”. Typically this requires you to connect your smartphone and your devices to the room-specific network once you have activated that network connection.

Your regular laptop computer as a travel router

Your laptop that runs Windows 10 or MacOS 13 Ventura or newer operating systems also offers this same functionality

Laptops that run Windows 10 or MacOS 13 Ventura onwards can offer this same functionality natively. This is infact an approach that I used to run my Chromecast with Google Play as an audio-video output device for my Samsung Galaxy A52s smartphone at the Elsinor Motor Lodge in order to play my music through the motel room’s TV speakers.

Windows 10 onwards

Enable the Mobile Hotspot option in Windows 10 or 11 so your laptop becomes a travel router or mobile hotspot

1. Select “Settings” which is the gear-shaped icon to open the Settings menu
2. Select “Network and Internet” on the left of the Settings screen to open the Network and Internet window.
3. Enable Mobile Hotspot whereupon you will see the setup for sharing your computer’s Wi-Fi connection.
4. To see your hotspot properties, click the “ > “ next to the “Enable Mobile Hotspot” toggle. Note down the Network Properties on this screen which correspond to the SSID (Network Name) and Password for the Wi-Fi hotspot created by your Windows computer.
   

   These are the settings you need to go over to make sure your mobile hotspot works. The network details refer to what your devices need to be connected to.

MacOS 13 Ventura onwards

1. Click the Apple icon at the top left of the screen and select “System Settings”
2. Select “General” then select “Sharing”
3. Look for “Internet Sharing” and click the i nearby that option
4. Select the network connection that has the Internet service – this could be Wi-Fi or Thunderbolt Bridge.
5. Select the network connection the other devices will connect to using the “To Computers Using”, which will be Wi-Fi
6. You then have the option to create a Network Name (SSID) and Password for the hotspot network. Note down the SSID and Password you created for the hotspot,
7. Once everything looks OK, click Done and toggle Internet Sharing on.
8. Click Start in the pop-up message to confirm Internet Sharing.

Setting up your devices

Then, set up your devices like your network media player or network printer to link to the hotspot network you created in the above steps. Most network media devices will require you to go through the “manual Wi-Fi setup” process with some devices, especially speakers, requiring you to link to a “setup” Wi-Fi access point integrated in the device and running a setup Website hosted by that device.

That also means that your smartphone or tablet has to connect to the hotspot network if it is to benefit from the devices that you connected to that network. This would be important for media-sharing protocols like Chromecast or DLNA, or network-printing protocols like AirPrint or Mopria.

When you are finished

If you are using Windows or MacOS as a travel router, turn off the “Mobile Hotspot” or “Internet Sharing” functionality before you pack up your equipment. This is to assure secure operation and also saves on battery power for your laptop computer. With a travel router or portable NAS, you just simply disable the network-sharing functionality when you pack the equipment up.

Remember that the settings will stay the same for your Mobile Hotspot or Internet Sharing functionality so you don’t need to connect to a new Wi-Fi network if you use the same method again. This also holds true for travel routers or portable NAS units that implement network sharing.

In the case of that multimedia-ready hotel room network, you will still have to connect your equipment including your computer or mobile devices to these networks when you set yourself up in your room. This is because the guest credentials are likely to change as a means of protecting guests’ own equipment and experience.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Technics SL-G700 Network SACD Player – the first of its kind to fully reproduce SACDs

Panasonic USA (Technics)

Energize music from multiple sources with the Grand Class Network / Super Audio CD Player: SL-G700 (Press Release)

My Comments

Over the past few years Yamaha and Marantz have put forward a relatively-new type of hi-fi component unit in the form of the network CD player. These are CD players that connect to your home network to play audio content hosted on equipment on that network or on an online service.

A core advantage these units have is you only use one line-level input on your amplifier or receiver to serve one piece of equipment that plays a CD or to listen to an online audio service or something held on your network-attached storage device. They also fit in well when it comes to upgrading or replacing an existing CD player that you have and you want to benefit from your home network and online audio services.

For a long time, Technics was the hi-fi arm for the original Matsushita (National Panasonic) brand, offering value-priced and premium hi-fi equipment such as the legendary SL-1200 series of DJ turntables. It was while they were applying itself to musical instruments made by Matsushita. This brand even started the idea of the main Japanese consumer-electronics names running a separate brand for their hi-fi equipment through the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But through the late 1990s and the early 2000s, Technics evolved itself to the musical instrument and DJ equipment market while having value-priced audio equipment under the Panasonic name. A few years ago, they rebuilt the hi-fi image by focusing on equipment destined to the high-end hi-fi market with them supporting vinyl, optical-disc and network / online delivery.

Now Technics have come to the fore at CES 2019 by premiering the Grand Class SL-G700 Network SACD player. This is a network CD player that is optimised for audiophile high-end listening by providing full playback of SACD discs along with file-based or CD-based audio content based on the high-end MQA standard. Here, it is infact the first network CD player to provide full playback of SACD discs.

This unit’s digital-to-analogue path has been worked on through the use of premium DAC circuitry that is built with a dual-mono approach. It is as if two digital-to-analogue signal paths are created within the unit – one for the left channel and one for the right channel.

It also includes circuit-based isolation to prevent digital-processing noise from creeping in to the post-DAC analogue signal path. As well, a separate digital-analogue signal path exists for the unit’s headphone jack. There is an operation mode that effectively provides SACD/CD direct sound when you play a regular CD or high-end SACD.

As far as I know, the network aspect for the Technics SL-G700 network SACD player supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. There is support for AirPlay and Chromecast audio streaming from iOS, MacOS or Android devices. It also has access to Spotify, TiDAL and Internet radio online services.

What I see of this player is that it is another brand’s attempt to focus the network CD player towards the high-end audiophile market who may be maintaining their CD collections but make use of online music services. This is more so if the premium amplifier that they use has as few line-level inputs as possible.

Article

Synology DiskStation DS415play – an example of these full-function network-attached-storage units

Synology DSM vs. QNAP QTS: Which NAS is right for you? | Windows Central

My Comments

Increasingly Synology and QNAP have become strong rivals when it comes to full-function network-attached-storage devices that do more than what WD, Seagate and others offer. Here, they are made by two NAS specialists who are running high-end NAS-focused operating systems that can be run headless or with a screen and keyboard “head”. Some manufacturers like NETGEAR and ASUSStor are following on with Synology’s and QNAP’s efforts to join in the pack when it comes to

QNAP TS-251 2-bay NAS – another example of what a full-function NAS is about

offering full-function NAS units for home and small-business use.

Recent iterations of these devices typically have the same kind of computing power as a relatively-recent low-end regular personal computer but put this power towards file handling and serving. Most of them will support at least a two-disk RAID setup in the low-tier varieties with the mainstream models having four or five disk bays for a RAID 5 setup. The “brain” in these devices will be mostly an ARM-based CPU but higher-spec variants may use an Intel or AMD processor expected in a very low-end laptop computer. You may also find some NAS units like the Synology “play” NAS units running a graphics processor as a co-processor for media transcoding. A significant number of models will even support upgradeable RAM to allow them to work more quickly and handle more data traffic.

But the operating system is of a similar standard to one that would drive a regular personal computer. Most likely it would be a variant of a desktop Linux distribution and would be regularly updated as well as allowing users to install apps from the NAS vendor’s app store. Once you log in through a Web-based user interface or a keyboard / screen / mouse “console” attached to the NAS, you would experience a user interface similar to Windows, MacOS or desktop Linux running a graphical user interface.  But most of these user interfaces can’t allow for cut-and-paste between the host computer and the NAS user interface.

The apps will typically convey particular file-handling functions like syncing to online storage platforms, BitTorrent server functionality and DLNA-compliant media-server functionality. There is also apps that “tie” the NAS to native mobile-platform client apps supplied by the vendor to allow transfer of data between the NAS and a mobile-platform tablet or smartphone. It is typically a way to push a NAS as a “personal cloud” by working with a vendor-hosted “DNS-mapping” arrangement to allow you to upload content from your iPhone to your NAS even while you are out and about and connected to the Internet. This is in addition to various “client-backup” server tools for regular-computer platforms along with NAS-NAS backup tools.

Let’s not forget software like media-player functionality or IP-camera videosurveillance recording functionality. In some cases, there are various server apps for email or WordPress content management so you could easily purpose these units as a business information server. In some cases, adding peripherals to these NAS devices opens up paths for extra functionality with, for example, TV-tuner modules converting these NAS units in to Tivo-style PVRs that can share live or recorded TV content over the network.

QNAP’s QTS and Synology are very similar in many ways but Synology is focused towards simplified operation while QTS is focused towards taking advantage of faster better hardware. There are other similar full-featured NAS platforms like Netgear’s ReadyNAS or the ASUSStor NAS platform existing but there doesn’t seem to be the same kind of third-party developer base built up around these platforms.

But what can be done to make the full-featured NAS market better? One approach could be to allow the licensing of one or more of these NAS operating systems and app platforms to other companies on a “white-label” basis so they can launch their own full-featured NAS product range. This can avoid the need for a company who wants to develop their own NAS product to “reinvent the wheel” when building software.  As well, the creation of one or more large platform bases for NAS operating systems can give software developers the confidence to create software for these devices. Therefore it can avoid the home and small-business NAS market becoming like the games-console market which is focused towards vendor-specific solutions with a limited path for delivering additional software.

Personally, I would recommend the full-function NAS units of the Synology or QNAP ilk as being suitable for those of us who want more out of a network-storage device. In some cases, I would see it as appealing for an upgrade path for people who see their NAS device do more than just host files from your computer and share them to your Smart TV. Similarly it would appeal to those of us who want the basic abilities like DLNA media serving to be done in a more capable manner.

Articles – From the horse’s mouth

Yamaha R-N402 Network Stereo Receiver – can even stream audio from sources connected to it into Yamaha MusicCast speakers

Yamaha

R-N602 Natural Sound Network Receiver (Product Page)

80W / channel 8 ohms 0.04% THD 20Hz-20kHz

(Analogue Inputs: 1 phono, 2 line-level, 2 tape loops; PCM Digital Inputs: 2 Coaxial, 2 Optical)

R-N402 Natural Sound Network Receiver (Product Page)

100W / channel 8 ohms 0.2% THD 40Hz-20kHz

(Analogue Inputs: 3 line-level, 1 tape loop; PCM Digital Inputs: 1 Coaxial, 1 Optical)

R-N303D Natural Sound Network Receiver (Product Page)

100W / channel 8 ohms 0.2% THD 40Hz-20kHz

Analogue Inputs: 3 line-level, 1 tape loop; PCM Digital Inputs: 1 Coaxial, 1 Optical

DAB+ tuner

My Comments

Previously, I had touched on the issue of availability of “full-width” network-capable stereo receivers that have the same expectations as the traditional hi-fi receiver that has been seen as the heart of many hi-fi systems. This was when I had called out the Onkyo TX-8050 network stereo receiver and the Yamaha R-N301 network stereo receiver.

Here I was focusing on people who value the idea of creating a hi-fi system that is about playing music rather than a home-theatre setup that is about showing what Hollywood has to offer. Situations that I think of include creating a formal lounge area where you want to focus your activity on entertaining guests, reading and playing or listening to music; or simply maintaining a separate home-entertainment system optimised for playing music.

Yamaha are still pushing through with stereo receivers that can connect to your home network. The latest examples are underscored with the R-N602, R-N402 and R-N303D Natural Sound Network Receivers which integrate the concept of the stereo receiver with the home network and multiroom audio thanks to the latest iteration of the Yamaha MusicCast network audio technology.

This technology that Yamaha implements in these receivers isn’t interlinked with any overarching multiroom network-audio standard adopted by many manufacturers. But they can also work with network audio sources like DLNA-capable media servers including NAS units, or online sources like Spotify or Pandora. Those of you who use an Apple device running iOS or a recent iteration of MacOS can also use these Yamaha receivers for your device’s audio output.

One of the features I am calling out is the ability to stream audio from a source device connected to these receivers to other Yamaha MusicCast devices. For example, in the case of the R-N602, you could start a record playing on the turntable connected to this receiver in the formal lounge room. Then you use the Yamaha MusicCast Controller app on your iOS or Android smartphone to hear that record through the Yamaha PLUS (WX-030) speaker in the kitchen.

Similarly, these receivers are implementing Bluetooth not just as a source but as an alternate output. For example, one could hear a local radio broadcast on the receiver’s integrated tuner through their Bluetooth headphones without the need to worry about the length of their headphone cord thanks to this functionality.

The Yamaha R-N602 does cater very well for legacy media by providing an integrated phono stage for a turntable equipped with a moving-magnet cartridge, as well as two tape loops which can come in handy if you still record to tapes or other media, including using a computer to archive old recordings. But the Yamaha R-N402 and R-N303D has its analogue inputs being line-level only with one tape loop.

At least Yamaha haven’t forgotten about the network-capable stereo receiver as a product class for devices that serve as a hi-fi system’s hub. Instead, they have made sure that there is a range of equipment that suits different needs and budgets, allowing us to consider how to build out that music system as we want.

The WD MyPassport Wireless mobile network-attached storage – can offer data to the host Wi-Fi network when set up in hotspot mode

Increasingly, data-storage device manufacturers are adding to their mobile network-attached storage devices the same kind of network-based data storage and access features typically offered with a standard desktop NAS device. This is rather than these devices just being a lightweight file server for smartphones and tablets connected to the device’s own Wi-Fi access point.

I had previously reviewed one of these devices in the form of the WD MyPassport Wireless mobile NAS which demonstrated this kind of functionality. In the review, I had called out the DLNA-compliant media server that was part of that mobile NAS’s feature set, where you had the ability to show your photos and videos on one of the latest Smart TVs via the home network the TV is connected to.

Mobile NAS with hotspot mode set for “secure” or “private” mode

As well, some of the increasingly-sophisticated devices like the WD MyPassport Wireless Pro also are offering the same kind of Samba-based (SMB / CIFS) file transfer method that you can do with other NAS devices so you can transfer resources to these devices using your regular computer’s operating-system’s file manager and its network file transfer protocols. Similarly, the devices may implement FTP, WebDAV or other common network-file-transfer protocols primarily to allow you to upload photos and footage from your Wi-Fi-capable digital camera or camcorder to the mobile NAS if the camera honours these standard protocols.

How to have this work properly?

Here your mobile NAS unit needs to be set up for connection to an existing small Wi-Fi network as a client device of that network. It also needs to be set up to share its resources to that client network in addition to the network it creates using its own wireless access point.  Most of this configuration that I would be talking about here would be something you would do using the vendor-provided native mobile-platform app or, perhaps, a Web page that the mobile NAS creates as its management page.

Mobile NAS with hotspot functionality set up for file sharing mode

Typically, you may set this up as part of enabling a “Share Wi-Fi Connection”, “Wi-Fi Hotspot” or similar function that effectively shares a logical network connection between multiple devices that connect to the portable NAS’s access point. This function is similar to what most travel routers offer as a way to share the one logical (and usually permitted) connection to a hotel’s guest-access Wi-Fi service amongst the personal computing devices you and your travelling companions own. Similarly, this same function creates a “trust circle” between multiple devices connected to the mobile NAS’s access point allowing them to be discovered by each other even if the public-access Wi-Fi network that the NAS is connected to is configured properly with client isolation enabled.

When you enable the “hotspot” function on a sophisticated mobile NAS like the WD MyPassport Wireless / Wireless Plus series or the Seagate Wireless Plus, you will have an option to set this function to work in a “private” or “secure” mode or a “sharing” mode.  In the “private” mode, the data held on the NAS becomes available only to devices on the Wi-Fi network created by the mobile NAS’s access point. Conversely, the “sharing” mode will make the data available to devices on the network which has the Wi-Fi segment you connected the mobile NAS to as part of the “hotspot” mode.

To allow the mobile NAS to share its resources on your home network, you need to enable the “sharing” mode or disable the “secure” or “private” mode while setting up the “hotspot” functionality. It is a wise practice not to use the “sharing” mode on a Wi-Fi network used as a public-access network and this function wouldn’t work with these networks that are properly set up with client isolation enabled.

What can the manufacturers do to improve the Wi-Fi bridging functionality on these devices?

The “Wi-Fi hotspot” or “Shared Wi-Fi” functionality could be improved upon by allowing users to create preset operating modes for particular Wi-Fi networks. This would work in a similar way to the way Windows allows the user to classify each network they connect to as being a “home”, “work” or “public” network, causing it to adopt an exposed persona suitable for your home or office network or a private person for that public-access Wi-Fi network. Such parameters could be to determine whether to share resources with the host network or to always clone the client device’s MAC address when connecting along with remembered Wi-Fi network passwords.

Here, as a user connects the mobile NAS to a Wi-Fi network for “Shared Wi-Fi” operation, they are invited to save the configurations they have established for that network. Then, when they reconnect to that network, the mobile NAS assumes the operating modes that the user previously defined. These details can be referenced by the host network’s ESSID or a user-defined name for that network.

Conclusion

Once you know how to set up that highly-capable mobile NAS device and exploit the “private” or “shared” operating modes that these devices offer with setting up the “Shared Wi-Fi” or “hotspot” mode, you can then use them to make resources held therein available to other small networks you connect them to.

A lot of Millenials are preferring to use Spotify or similar “online jukeboxes” as their main music source, having the music play out of a wireless speaker or a network-capable audio system that supports these services.

What are these online jukeboxes?

Spotify – the preferred only music source for many Millenials but can be used as a music discovery tool

These “online-jukebox” music services all work work primarily on a subscription basis where you don’t effectively own your music library, rather you stream down the music from these services after you pay a nominal amount per month or year to use these services. Some of them offer a free ad-supported variant of their music service, usually as an on-ramp to the main subscription-funded service.

But some of us, like myself, use the above-mentioned “online jukeboxes” more as a music-discovery tool so we can identify musical content that can fit in to our library. Examples of this include playing playlists that convey particular musical styles or moods, or discovering and “trying out” artists, albums and tracks that pique our interests.It includes situations where a company may offer a branded playlist with songs that represent what they are about.

In my case, I showed some interest in one of the “yacht-rock” playlists on Spotify and there had been a few songs that piqued my interest, some of which would be hard to find on CD in Australia. What I had done was to visit one of the transactional download-to-own music stores that is run as part of a platform’s app store and subsequently bought these songs as audio files that I could download. This meant I could add them as part of a personal playlist that existed on a microSD card as well as on a NAS that is available on the home network.

How can the “download-to-own” music services fit in

iTunes – still going strong as a download-to-own music store

The way some of us add this content to our libraries is through a transaction-based “download-to-own” service like iTunes or Amazon Music. Increasingly most of the app stores associated with particular regular-computing or mobile platforms like the Windows Store and the Google Play Store are adding “download-to-own” music as part of their offerings.

Such services allow us to buy songs or albums as common media files to download to our computers or NAS drives, with a similar experience to buying the physical media where we effectively own it, but in a digital form. There used to be many of these services before the subscription-based music-streaming services took over the online music marketplace.

Microsoft Store -Microsoft’s latest entry in to the “download-to-own” scene, providing music as MP3 files

What used to be an advantage was for these services to sell most of the songs as single tracks rather than require the user to buy a complete album. This was very similar to the era of the 7” 45rpm single where people could buy these records for cheap if they are after a particular song. This appealed to people who were buying to build up playlists of particular songs typically to set a particular mood.

There is also the value that you are not dependent on whether the content you like is still available at the online streaming music service or whether you have burnt up your mobile download allowance by streaming your music while on the road. Some of the online music services provide for offline listening but the files that are stored are kept in a proprietary form that can’t be readily played with anything other than the software provided by the online service.

Viable niches that these services can answer

Some of these services still exist but could be taken further to support a range of viable niches whether in the form of content types or audio-reproduction standards.

Answering new and upcoming talent

The typical answer to this issue is to offer these services as an “on-ramp” for upcoming talent like new musicians, basement bands and DJs. Here, these artists who typically have a handful of content but aren’t discovered could be able to sell their content through these services. They offer a simplified “on-ramp” for this kind of talent and may even provide the promotion that it needs to be exposed.

You may find that some of these “download-to-own” music stores will have their “artist and repertoire” teams who “suss out” local gigs, buskers and community radio to hunt down the new talent whose material they can sell.

Supplying particular kinds of content

To the same extent, there are some suppliers who sell particular kinds of “download-to-own” music that suit particular tastes.

Beatport – the dance-music download-to-own store

One of these is Beatport who sell electronic dance music to DJs and those of us who like that kind of music. This is similar to how some dance-music record stores like Central Station Records in Australia existed, catering to this user class and were pulling out the stops to hunt down the latest beats.

Sometimes some record labels that specialise in particular kinds of content may run their own shopfront instead of or alongside the traditional distribution channels. It may be seen as a way to bypass import controls that some distributors and retailers value highly for controlling what is available in certain markets. As well, this approach effectively provides direct access to the talent the labels represent.

High-quality file-based audio

Another way would be that file types that represent high-quality audio could be available either as a standard or premium option. This can appeal for those of us who value high-quality audio or regularly use a top-notch hi-fi system. As well, there could be the ability to obtain high-quality masterings of the recordings that are available, including the ability to obtain a version prepared with or without high dynamic range.

Here, such recordings can be seen as a premium option for those of us who want something that is more special than what the online streaming services offer. An example of this has been the PonoMusic store that Neil Young started out with but is undergoing some renovation.

How can they complement Spotify and co?

But to continue making sure that these services maintain popular appeal, “download-to-own” music stores that want to cover a large market base have to have access to the current and back catalogue offered by most, if not all, of the major labels across the world. This includes being able to sell these recordings in to other countries, which may raise concern with music labels who don’t like the concept of parallel-importing of content in to other markets.

Similarly, they could partner with the likes of Spotify to offer the recordings that these subscription-based “online jukeboxes” provide for playback as a premium download-to-own option. For example, a media-management program that works with a “download-to-own” store and one of the “online jukeboxes” could offer a “buy this playlist offline” function where you can effectively buy your own copy of a playlist. Here, it would check which of the songs are downloaded or “ripped” from your CDs, then allow you to buy the remainder of the playlist from the “download-to-own” stores.

Conclusion

What has to happen is that, like the way radio and packaged pre-recorded music complemented each other, the download-to-own music services and the “online jukeboxes” of the Spotify kind need to be positioned in a manner to complement each other in the file-based music world.