Royalty-Free Music from Stock20

Just found out about a new group today that is offering royalty-free, unlimited drop production music for $7/track. The company is Stock20 and you get your first track free. The account is free as well, no annual fees for access.

Now, with the big promo line out of the way, what's the value? Well, having browsed through the selections myself:

• the library is quite small so far (clearly a new endeavor)
  
• the music sounds like production music
  
• all tracks are available for multiple intervals (0:30, 1:00, 1:35, 2:00, 2:40, etc) all for the single purchase price
  
• it's $7.00 per track.
  

I'll leave you to make your own judgements, but my opinion is this: for $7.00, you aren't going to get John Williams. Ever. It's legal, unlimited uses for a single price, so no more breaking (or bending) the law to make your work that looks professional sound professional. And hey, sure it sounds like production music, but it's decent production music at a seemingly impossible low price with no annual contracts or commitments.

At the very least, go find one track you think you could use and sign up for your free account to download it. Good luck to them, they're definitely on the right track.

UPDATE: Two updates actually. First, they have just released 6 new tracks for March. Secondly, if you use my referral code, we both get an extra $7 in free music.

Here's how:
1) Click this link to use me as your referral, then create a free account (it takes about a minute).
2) Your new account will automatically be credited with $7 (enough to get a free song).
Then you will get an additional gift certificate by e-mail, just for creating an account. $14 worth of free music...pretty snazzy.

Adobe Production Studio Premium - What Will We Find?

I picked up the upgrade for the Adobe Production Studio Premium a little while back, and have yet to install it due to a bit of other work I'm trying to wrap up on the old versions first. I really do not want to chance flubbing the computer until I know it would be okay to do so.

First off, a plug for the fine folks at Atlanta CAD Services (ACS) for getting me a good price on the upgrade. In total honesty, there were some Adobe-related shipping issues that delayed the software for a little while, but it arrived nonetheless and ACS kept me posted and did not charge me until I had the product in-hand - kudos to them for being good business people. When I picked it up, they talked to me briefly about some related 3rd party hardware and software, and warned me that it would take about 1.5 to 2 hours to install the whole package. ****UPDATE: Install only took about 45 minutes for all disc content on my machine END UPDATE**** Good information to know upfront. This is a good company to do business with and they can answer lots of questions for you before and after your purchase (though they are not a 24/7 tech-support, so don't expect that). Give them a look-see.

Some non-technical items....the packaging is sort of different from some other software vendors, though similar to packaging from Adobe in the past. The box has a clear plastic slip cover with a sturdy box holding all the user manuals and software. One side of the box is "open" which is nice. I found in the past that to access the user manuals (without just leaving them lying around) I had to pull out the box and slide out the holder to get to the manuals. Now the box sits on the shelf with easy 1-step access to the manuals whenever needed. A small consideration but interesting that they thought about that enough to change the design. Nice for people like me who tend to reference the manual frequently.

The discs are in two cases - 6 software applications in one case (5 discs) and training materials in another (2 discs). The training is from Total Training, and is a few hours worth I believe. The software discs are only labeled Disc 1, Disc 2, etc. Previously discs were labeled per the software that was contained on the disc and each software was installed one at a time. Now you pop in Disc 1 and it runs through the whole bundle install, apparently letting you know when to insert the next disc. Of course, users in the forums have been complaining that this prevents you from installing just that software that you want on machine #1 and the rest on machine #2 (leaving out software you don't plan to use). Maybe piracy is part of the reason for designing it this way, but it does seem intelligent for Adobe to decide - by design - how they would like the package to be installed and in what order everything is done. I have no qualms because I use all of the applicatons and they get installed completely on two machines.

Not a lot of substance to this post, but I thought someone may find it interesting what was "in the box" so I stuck it up here for your reading pleasure. Once I install it and run it a while I'll post back about any crashes/bugs as well as what 3rd party plugins are included this time. Judging by my workload right now, installation is still probably a week or so away.