English
29 June 2009
Today is my brother Samuel’s birthday, and as a present I got him the album Wayfaring Stranger, an album of hymns played on the cello, from BlueBehemoth.com.
BlueBehemoth.com is a Christian music, audiobook and video store, run by the The Vision Forum. It’s somewhat similar to Apple’s iTunes Store or Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace, except that its selection is carefully chosen. Here is a quotation from the ‘About Us’ page on the website:
Every item for sale on BlueBehemoth.com is carefully reviewed to ensure that its content conforms to high standards of excellence—both in professional quality and biblical propriety. While each family must ultimately determine what is acceptable and worthwhile listening and viewing material in its own home, we strive to make this review process easier for parents by vetting each potential BlueBehemoth.com product prior to approving it for sale.
BlueBehemoth.com one-ups Apple in making its downloads only 95¢ instead of 99¢. In addition, its downloads are in the unencrypted MP3 format instead of Apple’s MP4 format (which does not work on Microsoft’s Zune players) or Microsoft’s WMA format (which does not work on Apple’s iPod players). Shopping can be done online, so there is no need to download software to use the store.
The store (formerly named simply Behemoth.com—the name was changed to be more search-engine–friendly) gets its name from the behemoth, a creature—possibly a dinosaur—described in Job 40:15–24. The name in Hebrew (בהמות) is a plural form of בהמה behemah, which means ‘wild animal’. The word behemoth may be in the plural form just to indicate largeness, or it may have been derived independently from another language, and its similarity with behemah is just coincidence. I tend to agree with the first possibility.
2 July 2009
One downside to Behemoth is that the site has too many bubble graphics, and thus loads slowly. Also, I think the large type/formatting will become inconvenient once Behemoth starts adding on more music, etc. In summary, nice-looking, user-friendly site that could be more functional.