Q. What is Mindawn?
A. Mindawn marks the most exciting revolution in digital distribution of music since its inception. Online music services were popularized by Apple Computer to promote the iPod and iTunes, but Mindawn has a number of very important differences.

Q. What are those differences?
A. First and foremost, iTunes, Napster and every other service provide only "lossy" compression audio files. What that means is when a file is compressed in to MP3 or AAC format, you lose quality -- digital information is dropped in the compression process. Mindawn offers the option of both "lossy" compression in the Ogg Vorbis format, or more importantly we offer lossless files in FLAC format.

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.

Q. How do I play Ogg/FLAC in iTunes or Windows Media Player?
A. For iTunes go here. For Windows Media Player go here.

Q. What about copy protection?
A. A lot of noise has been made about Digital Rights Management (DRM) -- mostly the record labels want it and the customers don't. With something like iTunes or Napster, you are really just renting the song instead of owning it, because they limit what you can do with it. A very good article about your actual rights to what you paid for through other services can be found here.

However, on Mindawn, there is no difference in buying a perfect copy from us or having an original CD. You can still send around perfect copies if you want to. We believe that in general people don't want to give away something that they paid for. We further believe that just because someone does happen to get a pirate copy does't necessarily mean that is a lost sale. We feel that having happy customers by giving them free rein with what they paid for is going to be better for all of us in the long run.

We like to believe in the basic honesty in humanity, when people are treated fairly -- so why should we impose more restrictions than are available on a typical music CD?

Q. So how do the prices break down for the customers?
A. We put a lot of thought into a price structure that accommodates the two file formats and that deals with long format songs. With our pricing system, everyone gets a fair deal:

$0.99 per 10 minutes of lossy compression (Ogg Vorbis format)
(each 10 minutes in length is another $0.99)

$1.24 per 10 minutes of lossless compression (FLAC format)

$6.99 per album for lossy compression (Ogg Vorbis format)

$8.99 per album for lossless compression (FLAC format)

Q. How do you handle demo songs?
A. Our Mindawn player will use your Ogg Vorbis files as the demo file. The user can play it in full up to 3 times, and thenthe local copy of the file will self-destruct. The file is not playable outside of our player software, and our player "knows" how many times it has been played. In addition, just by creating an account at Mindawn, you can play back the songs in any web browser without having to install our client, just click on the little speaker icon under the 'demo' column.

Q. How can I hear a demo version of a song?
A. You can either use our software, first, download the Mindawn Player for your platform, or use any web browser. Then register as a Mindawn user and then log onto Mindawn using the player or browser. You will then see a column "Demo" in the listing of tracks, if a demo is available for that track. If a demo is not yet available, please try again later.

The demo is in the "lossy" compression format (Ogg Vorbis), and you can listen to the demo up to three times before it self-destructs.

Q. What kind of content can I expect?
A. You won't likely find major label releases -- we're geared more towards supporting independent artists and small record labels. Our system is also not closed to anyone, and we are adding content at an exponential rate. You can use our sophisticated search technology to find music you will likely be interested in, as well as demo the available songs as mentioned above. You're likely to discover some hidden gems that you wouldn't have found any other way.

Q. I have an iPod or some other portable media player. How can I use content that I purchased through Mindawn?
A. We touched on this a bit earlier, but the beauty of our system is that by providing you a FLAC file and tools to generate WAV or AIFF files from it, this gives you raw full CD-quality data. You should try an AIFF file on your iPod so you can hear the difference -- but if you want your music in a specific format, you can use any freely available audio conversion tool to convert the AIFF audio in to AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis or whatever. There is also a freely available firmware update called RockBox that you can install on an iPod and a variety of other players that will natively play our formats. On the Mac there is an Opensource format converter called Max and on Windows a free trial for dbPowerAmp that are both very good. We have no affiliation with this company and provide no warranties. You have absolutely no restrictions -- this is the kind of freedom that no other system provides.

Q. What operating systems do you support?
A. Unlike any other option available, our Mindawn player and MARS software run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Our technology means just about anyone with a computer can buy and use your music through our system.

Q. Are there other advantages?
A. First, you have instant gratification -- unlike ordering a CD online, where it can take days or even weeks to arrive. Second, you pay less -- there are no shipping or handling charges, which can get rather high depending on where you are in the world. Third, you don't have to worry if an album or song is in stock. Fourth, the media effectively lasts forever -- you can't scratch it, melt it or otherwise lower the quality, and if you accidently delete it, you can always re-download it. Those are just a few of the many advantages to Mindawn.

Q. What is your privacy policy?
A. Your confidential information is only used so you can make purchases more easily. We do not sell, give away or otherwise disseminate your information anywhere else. The only time you'll hear back from us is to get a purchase receipt or if you signed up for our general or category specific newsletters.

Q. Can I give a copy of MARS or the Mindawn application to someone else or do they have to download it from you?
A. Both MARS and the Mindawn Player are free for both personal and commercial use and distribution as long as the original package and binary contents are not modified.

Q. Any plans to support video?
A. Video is available currently but works a little differently than audio, the artist will set the price and the format is not enforced by us, but the artist will clearly indicate what type it is so you will know. There is also no preview function for video.

Q. How about a rewards program or gift certificates?
A. We have both and we call them "Mindawlers". You can earn rewards back by giving a link to others to click through and buy songs and you can also buy gift certificates for other people. Just check in "Your Account" for the referral programs.

Q. How do I use your system?
A. You'll want to download our Mindawn player/browser so that you can play demos and search for music. You can search and buy through the web site as well, but demo songs are only available through the Mindawn player/browser.

Create a user account in our system, and you can instantly buy music with either a credit card or through PayPal. That's all there is to it.

Q. What about refunds?
A. Since you can demo any song ahead of time, and the music is electronically transfered, there are no refunds, all sales are final, there is no way to return the merchandise. If you find a flaw with an audio file, let us know immediately and we'll make sure it gets corrected.