All performing and composition rights licenses included!

November 10, 2015 by Guy Lewis

The Melody Pods’ service includes the regular flow of music, the delivery service to your locations and the performing rights licenses.

How is this possible? surely you still need to pay for the performing rights license yes?

Performing and composition rights agencies will tell you that if you are playing music you are likely to need to pay them for playing that music in a business location.

You only need to pay (in every country other than Germany) if the music you are playing has been assigned to that performing or composition rights agency for collection.

All of Melody Pods’ royalty free music is licensed to us directly, so it is either wavered from right collection in a public area, or the music isn’t registered with an agency at all.

This means that the agencies do not have an legal contract to collect royalties on behalf of the copyright owner of the composition or the performance (the recording).

The copyright owners agree with us directly, and we pay them when you use their music. Simple.

This means our service covers everything up to the point of your local amplifier and speakers, so when you price up the benefit of Melody Pods, not only do you take out the cost of acquiring the music, but also the royalty licenses.

So you are getting a great service for what in most cases is far cheaper than could be achieved any other way.

Dear Google, please let us know when you fix Chrome

November 3, 2015 by Guy Lewis

Chrome has been presented as a leading browser in today’s market yet is has continued to cause fundamental problems for many users, across all operating systems for many years now.

Whilst the issues are still ongoing with no clear bug fix in site the issues resolve around Chrome’s inability to play music or video streamed, or downloaded to play via a playlist.

The issues mainly focus around Chrome cutting the play of a stream, or stopping playing a playlist some way through.

Whilst this issue may have been tracked down if it was on one operating system (we had thought at one stage it was isolated to Windows 7) it actually occurs across all operating systems we have tested.

We know Firefox works perfectly well as does Safari so for all out customers looking to just stream from an existing laptop or computer, as long as you have good bandwidth and an idle computer then you will be fine. For better performance you will always find our download and play system avoids local and wide network congestion issues.

So please, Google, just let us know when you have fixed your issues and joined the rest of the leading browsers which are providing a great way to play music today.

Android miniPC / TV devices provide low cost, future proof solutions for media distribution networks

August 28, 2015 by Guy Lewis

Android MiniPCs plug and play for media distribution networks

I’ve been a fan of miniPCs for a while now.

Whilst the manufacturers focus on the TV markets for good reason, the benefits for businesses requiring intelligent devices for their content media distribution networks has not been well explored.

With businesses such as Landscape HD TV using mini devices to help distribute their TV channel to regional networks and Melody Pods using miniPCs for distributing multimedia content to client’s locations it is clear this is just the start of more opportunities.

MiniPCs have some great benefits for businesses looking to distribute media to multiple locations.

Low cost of acquisition (the RK3288 illustrated here costs around US$60 retail and less than US$30 in volumes.
Low cost of maintenance: no moving parts, high mean time before breakage.
Low management costs: remote monitoring and management means most issues can be solved centrally (with the Melody Pods monitoring and management service option deployed).
Low cost of use: low energy requirements; no screen for example.
Low cost of labor: Android technology is a popular technology and so any setup and maintenance is straight forward and training courses are regularly available.
Low network costs / increased quality of service: with batch downloading (the preferred method of music distribution for the retail market for example) these devices enable local playing of media rather than relying on centralized servers to be live and local networks to be consistently clear for quality media channel throughput.
Secure connections: using ASL + HTTPS to connect to centralized media distribution servers

Other features which may have benefits for business depending on their requirements include analogue and digital outputs.

Whilst most come with HDMI that can be converted, with additional cable conversion boxes to analogue VGA and analogue stereo audio, the RK3288 also offers up a 3/4 inch analogue out socket for plugging directly into a sound system.

Connecting these devices to a managed content network such as Melody Pods to enable batch download of content is simple. With Ethernet and WiFi connectivity as standard, the device can be deployed in a range of locations including where no 3G / 4G network exists. With add on products via USB sim cards can be used where local networks don’t exist.

Future proofing of a network of these devices is assured because of the wide range of file standards that can be distributed and deployed with these smart machines.

For example, mp3 music audio, mp4 video, mp3 message / advert audio and control data such as playlists, schedules, html and java code is straight forward and provides future proofing since these devices can be remotely monitored and managed with auto updating of systems and applications.

Talk to us today about your media distribution networking requirements:

Testing MiniPC devices for audio networks

August 6, 2015 by Guy Lewis

Mini -PC devices running Android & Melody Pods enables low cost audio networks for background music in business.

Today we successfully tested the Imito MX1 working with the network schedule system.

This small device reduces the cost of deploying a music network to a fraction of the traditional cost of devices such as the Nel-Tech iLink.

With a large choice of MiniPC devices available today, and options to have your own batch of devices built to your specifications there is more opportunity to create low cost, ‘hands off’ background music networks across businesses.

So, if you have a large enough audio network requirement, getting a Mini PC with an analogue audio-out to connect to the location’s audio amplifier and speaker systems as well as providing music on hold is straight forward.

You can set up the devices centrally with the music and settings required and ship them to your business locations with instructions for plugging in, or hand to your local integrators to install on your behalf. Once plugged in and powered up, the devices will open Melody Pods and call back to a central server to report service availability and royalty reporting for artist rights.

However many don’t come with analogue audio out and focus on HDMI as the way to output media, and digitally, to TVs since this is currently the target market for most manufacturers.

However, with HDMI – VGA convertors such as the HDelity easy to acquire, audio out, without connecting to a TV is readily available.

We tested the Imito MX1 along with the HDelity to output analogue audio to a powered speaker system and the solution worked perfectly well.

The Melody Pods’ schedule operated on time and changed playlists as set out by the schedule created online and downloaded to control the device.

Soon we will also test the overhead messaging / advertising schedule system and also an additional Mini PC with its own direct audio out socket so there is no need for an additional convertor.

These devices are also pretty future proof as well since they are powerful enough to play 1080p HD video and so with video becoming available soon at Melody Pods your business can just switch those services on without having to upgrade all your hardware.

Please enter your details below to enquire about how Melody Pods can help to set up your audio network with remote hands off devices such as the Android Mini PC.

Lovely samples at cafe customer The Shed

August 6, 2015 by Guy Lewis

Music & Food Samples At The Shed, Cornwall

Two of us were lucky enough to share these two samples of Jess and Will’s new menu item today.

Absolutely stunning.

Thanks guys!