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What is Mindawn?

This information is taken from the Mindawn site and is provided for your convenience. Please click here to visit the Mindawn homepage.

Mindawn marks the most exciting revolution in digital distribution of music since its inception. It differs from the competition in three major ways: cross-platform compatibility, CD-quality song files, and virtually no digital rights restrictions (DRM). It also works with a variety of platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux, and any portable device.

Mindawn is the only online music service that offers FLAC and OGG Vorbis as standard music file formats. OGG Vorbis is a royalty- and license-free, high-quality compression scheme that is supported in many different players; meanwhile, FLAC compresses audio like ZIP compresses files -- it doesn't lose any quality but it does result in about a 50% reduction in file size compared to a full-sized WAV or AIFF file. What's more, FLAC files can easily be converted to WAV or AIFF formats -- thus you get a full CD-quality audio file that you can use on any media device, including standard CD players.

Mindawn’s prices are in line with or lower than our competitors. For OGG format songs, we charge $0.99 up to a 10 minute song and an additional $0.99 for songs longer than 10 minutes. For the same song in FLAC format (lossless), we charge $1.24 for up to 10 minutes and an additional $1.24 for songs over 10 minutes. Even better discounts are available when whole albums are downloaded. We charge $6.99 for a whole OGG album and $8.99 for a whole FLAC album. No discounts on music downloads will be available, because we aim to insure that the artists make a reasonable amount for their creative endeavors. We are currently in the process of implementing a "rewards" system that we call "Mindawlers", where customers earn some percentage back on each purchase, which they can apply to purchases later.

Benefits of using Mindawn as a UCR student

• Normally there is a $50 fee to open an artist account on Mindawn. We will waive this fee for UC students, allowing them to put music up immediately for sale.
• Mindawn will host up to 5,000 audio lectures (or any other form of audio content). This may include professor lectures, public domain recordings essential for courses, or recordings of student recitals. All hosted material must be in compliance with US Copyright Law. Material can be password protected to allow for only authorized users to access.
• Mindawn will also waive the $50 setup fee for University-created content. If the content is exclusive to Mindawn then a 75% royalty will be paid, if it is listed with other services then a 55% royalty will be paid.
• Specialized links between online courses such as Blackboard and Mindawn can be easily created on demand.
• Mindawn is an excellent method for Student Service organizations to find musical talent to bring to campus-events.
• All customer data is treated with the utmost respect and privacy. No information is ever sold to 3rd party organizations. Financial data is processed using a 128-bit fully encrypted server transaction certificate through Geotrust -- we do not store it on our servers. Access to the customer database is only afforded to the President of Mindawn and the Chief Financial officer. On occasion, Mindawn may e-mail users with announcements regarding new versions of software and new artists/labels joining their community. These announcements are strictly opt-in. We would only e-mail people directly that isn’t on an opt-in list for critical notices and not for marketing purposes.

Visit the Mindawn home page