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The new iPod shuffle from Apple is extremely slim with a memory capacity of 4GB making it the ultimate in the history of digital musical players with a unique talking player feature. The size of this iPod is half the size of a human thumb or more distinctively smaller than a normal AA sized battery.

The Apple iPod shuffle with a 4GB capacity allows storing of around 1000 musical numbers and with surplus space to help you organize your play lists as well. The device is easy to control with it being present on the right ear chord, thus saving space on the device making it easy to access and operate. The new Apple iPod Shuffle 4GB comes with the unique VoiceOver feature. This feature at the touch of a button announces the name or title of the artist or song to you. The voice over also verbalizes the name of the playlist along with the exciting feature of your music player announcing to you before hand of the low battery and thus for the need for the shuffle to be charged. This feature of the voice over is sure to attract your attention. Your favourite songs and playlists can be easily organised and arranged with the iTunes software like all other apply music players. The unique feature of voiceover is generated after sync the iTunes completely with the shuffle. The shuffle Voiceover surprises you with its multilingual choice making it a device over the edge in the music player industry.

The Apple 4GB shuffle is easy to store, is eco friendly with a “flame retardant free” material, light weight and wit ha battery that last for up to 10 hours. The Apple iPod 4GB shuffle is the smallest music player with massive storage capacity and voiceover features making it a uniquely stylish device.

The only problem that has been bugging the music industry is illegal downloads. Would you believe that almost 95% of music was downloaded on the internet illegally? However the digital music industry saw an increase in its sales by over 25% with sales touching $3.7 billion across nations.

Online piracy has always been a case of concern for those in the music industry with figures touching new highs according to the department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform or BERR, which is a regulatory body that fights illegal file sharing among peers. Apparently, efforts by the recording industry, and government, such as DRM protected files, have not been enough to thwart digital pirates. Moreover, popular music download service iTunes, used for managing music on your Apple iPod nano, classic, touch etc, has decided to do away with DRM protection. Clearly, new and innovate steps must be taken to deal with online music piracy.

The government has come out with a new set of regulations that are formulated to replace existing laws to restrict internet service providers. Internet service providers are bound by legal codes of practice that ensure internet users are restrained from flouting laws.

Claims by the BPI, a voice of the British music industry claims a loss of over 180 million pounds in revenue from illegal downloads in 2008 alone. Last July saw a memorandum of understanding being signed that ensured that ISP mail out to 1000 subscribers every week over a three-month period. These subscribers have been found to engage in illegal file sharing on the internet. Though the ISP’s have sent out warning letters, they are opposed to any plans of disconnecting their customers. Internet Service providers feel that a workable business solution to tackle illegal music downloads needs to be worked out so that users stay clear of piracy and music rights owners slapping legal action against them. P2P file sharing of copyright material, which is strictly unauthorized, is an important issue that requires immediate action.

If you are hunting for an eminent DJ player, which not only suits your personality, but also offers sophisticated functions, then the Cortex HDC1000 is for you. It is one of the smartest DJ players on the planet today. Developed by Cortex, the company well known for its acoustic products, the HDC1000 hosts a variety of features that offer the user full control over the tracks.

This DJ player not only plays the audio tracks but also gives the professionals an opportunity to remix the songs and modify them according to their needs in a number of ways. With Cortex HDC1000, you can play MP3 files, CBR and VBR at any bitrate up to 320kbps. Besides this, you can also connect your portable music player, like the Disney Electronics High School Musical player and then play the directly from it. The two integrated USB 2.0 ports ensure that you get all your acoustic gear connected to the HDC1000 and via a USB hub you can connect and manage up to four USB devices (including external hard disk drives and CD/DVD ROMS) to it simultaneously. The device is a real feast for the professional DJs ergonomically. It has got easy to operate buttons, jog wheel and sliders that are positioned so intellectually that you can access any one or more simultaneously to add loads of effects to the track.

Another very useful feature of the Cortex HDC1000 is its intelligent database that can be used to search particular tracks on the basis of string, title, artist or genre. It also supports playlist creation via PC applications like iTunes. Besides this, the device offers all the standard features of a DJ player including seamless loop, scratch effect, shuffle, cue and much more. It also equips a bright LCD to display the necessary information.

Songbird is a yet to be released desktop media player, which has this unique ability of integrating many media and music services. Although iTunes is also an amazing media player which has been the market leader or quite some time now, with Songbird on the market, iTunes will surely be facing some tough competition. This Songbird media player’s programme has been based on the Firefox browser and bears many similarities to the Winamp player, with its innumerable skins and add-ons.

Songbird can be best described as a customisable open source music player. The efforts are being made to develop this media player as a cross platform, non-proprietary extensible tool that has the ability to enable all the new ways to discover, playback as well as manage the music. Songbird media player definitely showcases thoughtful, smart and excessive design. With the help of this software you can now sit back and make maximum of its music browsing functionality. It is quite smart in a way that it checks what music you have listening to and automatically adds that as a link.

Songbird is highly intuitive media player with amazing user interface. The main objectives of this media player are reduced PC RAM usage, faster search, reduced start up times, GStreamer Media Cores on all platforms and last but not the least fast media importing. All the effort is being put to make it better or at power with iTunes.

Microsoft has successfully brought in new software for their MP3 players. One interesting route taken by Microsoft is that they have named both their MP3 player as well as the software by the name Zune; this could actually cause identity crises. Zune can also be called a belated answer to both the iPod and iTunes. This Zune software has been designed to enable the user to view as well as manage songs, pictures and songs. It also gives you the convenience of ripping and burning the CDs, editing the information about albums and tracks and creating the playlists.

The Zune software is quite intuitive and supports an amazing user interface therefore making it quite easy to understand and use. It also features smooth audio and video playback. This software is capable of automatically importing your existing files including the audio and the video files from windows media player as well as unprotected (in fine print) files from iTunes. Since all the content of iTunes is protected, anything that has been brought through iTunes cannot be played in Zune. But Zune surely proves to be an alternative for all the Windows users who may feel that Apple gives them a second grade treatment.

Only the top right section instead of the entire top portion of the Zune software has been totally dedicated for burning files, creating playlists, viewing the current playing list and syncing media. This is a major improvement from other softwares as it saves a lot of clutter. Zune software is indeed a great way to keep all your music, pictures and videos organized.

The S series is the charm of Sony Walkmans. This series offers slimmer models with great functionality. The NWZ-S638F Walkman player is one of the frontrunners loaded with lots of features. It is pre-loaded with 8 music videos, including tracks from the Ting Tings, Sandi Thom and Chris Brown.

To offer you the best sound quality and depth, Sony has imparted its hi-fi acoustic technologies such as Clear Bass, Clear Stereo and Dynamic Normaliser with the device. A 5 band equaliser is also included in the menu, so that you create a customised listening environment, depending on your preferences. A new function called SensMe makes this player an intelligent one as it automatically creates a playlist to match your mood.

Apart from everything else, the player is easy to use. You can manage your songs easily and transfer the music within a blink of eye from iTunes in the form of audio, videos, podcasts and playlists having most popular extensions including mp3, AAC, WMA (DRM), AVC, MPEG-4 and JPEG. This model is one of the thinnest and lightest walkmans ever and you will barely notice it while carrying with you. The NWZ-S638F 8GB has an Ultra bright 2.0” QVGA LCD screen display, which renders ultra sharp images and videos. Its 8 GB storage space is more than enough to carry complete digital entertainment library with you.

The M4P convertor from NoteCable is a simple yet powerful audio converting tool, which is specially designed for virtual audio recording, and bypassing the DRM controls. The M4P converter first records the copy protected files such as M4P, AA, WMA while they are being played and then saves these recordings anywhere required as unprotected MP3 files.

The M4P converter allows you to convert any copy protected music to a simple MP3 within a few clicks, and to then play the files on any music device, such as an iPod, MP3 player, CD player like the D-NF340, mobile phone or PC without any kind of restrictions or DRM protection. The best part of this NoteCable MP4 converter is that it is completely legal and abides by all the copy protection rules and measures.

M4P converter automatically converts a large number of audio files simultaneously in the background. It is totally independent of the sound card, thereby granting the user the convenience of listening to other music while the recording is in progress. The converter’s virtual audio cable can be compared to the physical soundcard with a hardwired input and output. Recording and converting any audio files using the NoteCable M4P converter is quite easy and intuitive.

The NoteCable M4P converter supports various formats such as WAV, MP3, WAM and also almost all media player software such as iTunes, RealOne Real Player, Napster and Windows Media Player. Whenever there is a problem running a track on the MP3 player, the NoteCable M4P converter comes to the rescue. All the transfers that are made using this converter are all done digitally, making sure that there is no loss of sound quality.

The iTunes music downloading service has already been around for awhile and seen some remarkable success. Many people saw the service, where users paid £0.80 to legally download a new song, as the legal alternative to rampant online piracy of music files. Indeed it was seen as a compromise between downloading music illegally and for free using P2P networks, or spending upwards of £10 for a new music CD in a music shop. And while some pundits asserted the illegal method of acquiring music would still triumph, the iTunes Music Store saw unprecedented growth and even reached the 4 billion songs downloaded milestone in 2008.

While the service was started in 2003, it naturally took some time before it reached Europe and the UK in 2004. However, the success was no less apparent, with the online store having over 450,000 for one week in the UK alone. Naturally, it was expected that Apple’s online store would eventually extend to film and video content. This occurred in 2005 with Apple making episodes from certain television shows available for purchase on their iTunes portal. Although this time the rest of the world and the UK have had to wait quite a bit longer for the service to grace their presence. But now the wait is finally over, for the UK and Canada at any rate, who can have been able to purchase film content from the iTunes store since yesterday.

Apple reached an agreement with the major Hollywood studios and will begin with an assortment of over 700 movies, including many newly released hits. We can see this list only getting larger as time progresses. While many people are thrilled of the possibility of legally downloading entire films onto their computer in a manner that is both timesaving and convenient, others are equally enthusiastic over the renting option. All of the available film titles are also available for rental at a much lower rate. Users simply download a title and then have 48 hours to watch it as many times as they please.

Films are going for anywhere from £6.99 to £10.99, while rentals are starting at £2.49 and £3.49 for new releases. Still many UK users remain disgruntled over what they see as a cost bias, where UK users have to pay substantially more, and sometimes twice as much, for the same services as their American counterparts. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has countered these criticisms by saying the VAT is responsible for a large amount of the price difference and that doing business in the UK is “more expensive”. Of course, these reasons are hardly reassuring for consumers in the UK. Nevertheless customers are predicted to flock to the new and convenient service which could serve as indicator of how films will be purchased in the future. Especially because the service makes it simple to purchase films and then watch them directly on an iPod MP3 player.

We have heard how many universities have started putting free course work online, while other institutions of learning are actually entirely online based. The internet and technology are clearly indispensable in higher learning, and very well ingrained in the teaching methods. However, as if accessing all of one’s books and lecture notes online wasn’t enough, some universities have decided to offer course material for the iPod, to make courses truly portable. The laptop is already a staple and common site in most lecture halls, now it seems that students will be able to complete their work with only an Apple MP3 player.

The American Ivy league universities, Harvard and Yale, already have an iPod learning system in place. Essentially, the system works by loading course material, such as audio lecture notes, books, or course readers, onto the iTunes U service, where students can then download the information for free. This also means the service in not only open to the iPod, but actually any iTunes capable device, including the iPhone, iMac or PC. The step is largely believed to have been taken in an attempt to relieve the financial burden placed on many students who are forced to purchase expensive books for their classes. Moreover, it is also seen as a way to make education more convenient and accessible for students who might have scheduling conflicts with certain classes and might not be able to make it to lectures. At any rate, the new development adds one more use to the already very versatile and multidimensional iPod MP3 player.