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Sony Digital Downloads
Mad Gav writes "Sony's Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkmans have been around here in Japan for months, but the software from Sony has been lacking, until now. Sony launched their first stab at a digital download service in Japan, albeit with a limited selection of tracks. A single track costs 350 Yen (just over $3) to download. It looks like Sony is finally making serious moves into this arena, and I'd predict that it's only a matter of months before their entire catalog goes online..." The link is in Japanese, but you can understand what's going on there.
Cool, do you know about the patent and file size situations with ATRAC4/4.5? I still think we should screw over Sony's product for all the SDMI crap, but a better format is worth keeping an eye on. Plus, minidisks don't have any protection (as far as I know), so it would be nice to make life easyer for minidisk users (i.e. direct HD to minidisk transfers if they have a computer drive for them).
Jeff
I keep seeing this comment now and then, and I just don't get it. Is this the "90% of everything is crud" argument? I mean, most CDs have 0 good songs. And then there's the good bands, where usually the whole album is good, or maybe 1 or 2 songs are lacking in some way. So you're just saying that it somehow averages to 2 songs per CD? That's actually a pretty optimisic figure.
If you're saying that typical CDs have about 2 good songs, then I must conclude that you're from another planet, because in all my hundreds of CDs, I can't think of any of them that are like that.
Why do you think the Supreme Order of Nazi Yakuza is fighting MP3 and DeCSS so hard?
Slashdotizens,
I propose that a single day be dedicated to TROLLING of all kinds. That way, the efforts of all TROLLS can be concentrated into one horrifying day, every week. Let's make it every TUESDAY, so there is time to rally the TROLLS.
TollTroll
$3 is way too expensive for a single track of music regardless of whether you can archive it.
So what? If the SDMI player that was just reviewed is any indication, this is going to be a real pain to use and "SDMI compliant" as well.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll use MP3s, and consider not buying anthing Sony makes.
Can anyone give me a list of companies Sony owns?
What a pop music concentric point of view! [Granted, they're not on Sony but} would you want to rip only a couple of songs from Dark Side of the Moon? Or a classical piece? Some of us prefer ALBUMS, you dumb turd!
$36 a track is crazy, it's a milking for sony. I say by the CD and rip it. If it's propiatory just plain forget it.
Parappa is my friend, you dumb turd!
How long will it be until the snowblind allicence reverse the protocal for these new players?. The real question I have is *WHAT* is sdmi complient.. I understand the term.. but is this in the software or hardware of the player. Its prolly in the software.. would be eiser.. and less over head.. since we arent gunna see a sdmi complient linux app.. what then.. another deal like DE-CSS. Will they ever learn. prolly not.
The price of a download will go down as more and more people start using it? Like the way the price of CD's went down as more and more people switched from records and tapes to buying only CD's?
OpenDK
Thank you.
Yea, OpenDK does a lot.
Thank you.
yeah agreed. A CD in japan costs approximately $30-40
i will use sony's digital grits pouring system for pouring hot bowls of grits down my open source digital pants. thank you.
Considering people in Japan pay 1200 yen for a CD single, which normally has the one song plus a remix and 2 more karaoke tracks, 300 yen per track is great deal. And yeah they pay about 3000 yen per album over there too, so the price of downloading is reasonable.
1. for $3 i expect full 5.1 AC3 music clips, not mp3s
2. for 128kbps songs, they should be a lot less
3. will the PS2 play mp3s? Lets hope so
Actually, "saihan" law that prohibits disounting was revoked for CDs a few years ago, though it still applies for books.
Unfortunately, this is about what we should expect from The Music Industry(tm)(r)(c). They would like to appear to be supporting online music, but really, they are going to do everything in their power to ensure that it doesn't cut in to their sales of CDs. And, of course, I suppose they are going to choose some nice 'open' format like SDMI so that once you've downloaded it, you can't make any copies. Not that I would expect anything more from the company that brought us SCMS and helped stop the consumer DAT.
At any rate this is just another case where we need to just say no and vote with our dollars. Buy the CD instead and rip the music yourself. If you need a good MP3 encoder, may I suggest Xing. It's only $20 and you can get it for Windows, MacOS, or Linux (either Intel or PPC). Also, it's quite fast and sounds better than Opticon Producer (IMHO).
Remember how we laughed on various net-clueless movies like The System? How improbable the sale of illegal software seemed in Matrix?
The SDMI protection software can be reverse-engineered like any software distributed to a hardware near you. This means that utilities to convert the downloaded music to freely copyable MP3's will be created. Will it be illegal? You bet it will, if DeCSS is any indication where the matters are heading.
Somehow, now I have no problems imagining going to the hacker's den and paying him a couple hundred for a diskette with such a ripper.
No memory stick port on PS2, MiniDisc quite successfull in europe. That's all...
Wrong. Sony sells 80 minute MDs, you can record in mono for 144/160 minute discs, and with Sony's new all-in-one dubbing machine, you can record MDs at up to 4x speed, depending on the quality of the CD to be copied. Please get your facts straight before posting again.
One goes to a website, browses a catalog of music, and picks out an album. After paying, the company sends him a CD. However, not to keep the customer waiting, they make the contents of the CD available for download in MP3 form. Now, subtract the shipment of the CD. Good idea?
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Remeber first that these are not MP3's, but Sony's ATRAC 3 format like their Mini Discs and such... Does anyone know if this format is proprietary? Anyway, there is a review in my latest stereo/video rag that states that MP3's have to get converted to ATRAC before getting uploaded to the player.
MP3 - Lossy Compression
ATRAC - Another Lossy Compression
Make a copy of MP3 and re-compress it. How good does it sound to you?
Oops - My bad.
Stereo Review's Sound & Vision - Feb/Mar 2000
P 134 - Multimedia Maven Edited by Michael Antonoff
"Pocket Music" section
"Unlike the company's Memory Stick Walkman which must first convert MP3 files into Sony's ATRAC 3 format, the Music Clip accepts either format via a USB cable from your computer."
The files on the web site are in Sony's ATRAC 3 format too.
The price is fair as others have said in comparison to what the Japanese pay for their CDs. What isn't fair is the whole regional division thing. I'd love to download some J-pop stuff that is hard to find for me here in the USA, or just to sample some Japanese artists.
oh well
-Xen
"$3 a track = $36 for an album!!! Will people actually pay that when they can just rip from a CD?"
Actually, they probably will. If you want the whole CD, it's cheaper to get the CD, but if you only want 1-2 songs, then it's cheaper to get just the 1-2 songs. I personally have stopped buying more than about 2-3 CDs a year -- something about paying $20 for about $1 (if even that much) in raw materials.
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
MD is dead, dead, dead.
Have you ever played with one of these things? They kick ass. I dunno what happened to the idiot marketing folks (or if there was a lawsuit somewhere) but somehow MD hasn't caught on here. A friend of mine got one for Christmas, totally sweet, blows away my Rio (or any other portable MP3er).
That being said, i think they missed the window in the U.S. That window closes the second someone figures out how to put 128mg+ on a porty MP3 or play straight MP3 cds (6+hours per CD). Too bad, those MD players are sweet.
+&x
$3 worth of Yen will buy you a lot less in Japan than $3 in America will. So $3 is not as expensive as it sounds. But you'd have to be stupid to pay $3 per *listen*.
That said, the price is still too high. The cost of getting a single into the shops in the high street is high, and there's a risk that you won't recoup your costs if sales are bad. The cost of putting a single online for download is approximately zero (plus some web page development, which will be good for *all* online sales) and there's no danger of not recouping this cost. I wonder what cut the artist gets of online sales? Still the same old 2%?
OTOH if online music sales in general take off then this is probably good for places like mp3.com who are giving artists decent percentages and not ripping the consumer off as much.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
i was thinking more along the lines of internet access. I remember paying like a buck and hour for compuserve about 8 years ago. Or how about how expensive DSL service is when it first comes to an area, in Iowa City its about $700 for US West to set the line up. in Atlanta where more people use it, its only around $100, or at least i'v been been told thats the price.
Why is it that people say thats too expensive, so it must be the big companies trying to screw everyone? well guess what, Sony just started doing this, its only in japan where CD's are much more expensive, and there won't really be too much of a market for it, so the price is high but it will go down as more and more people start using it. Now the tech that sony is using is the bad thing, forget the price, sooner or later that will go down, but they formats and copy protection they are using are just terrible! i want to be able to move my music around as much as i want, wherever i want, so find a way to be able to only move a file around and not copy it! Yes i can't archive it, but at least its better than what they have now. And if the record companies really want to make some money, make a site with LOTS of banner adds on it and only charge like 50cents for a download.
MP3 is just not going to cut it, at least not in its current form, piracy is already rampent. i logged onto napster for the first time this weekend and i honestly think the record companies should be very worried, there are usualy around 900gigs of illegaly copied MP3's. a lot of artists put a lot of work into that music and there are thousands of people stealing it 24hrs a day! Its not the the record companies that are losing money, the artist are as well. The record companies will do what they have to in order to stay profitable, and if that mean screwing over the artists because a bunch of idiots are stealing the music instead of buying it, then thats exactly what they will do. So instead of complaining about what sony and others are doing, lets work on creating a tech. that does what we want while still ensuring that the material isn't stolen.
I'm an MD fan - I've a couple of hundred of them (all recorded from my own CDs). And I'm nearly a thirtysomething :)
MP3 is a great soft format, but until there's a hard format to match - or several - I'll stick with MD. I don't have half an hour to spend every morning downloading music to an MP3 player; I need to grab some music off the shelf and go! I also couldn't fit my (huge) CD collection, as MP3s, onto my hard disk...
MD is surprisingly popular, and will keep growing. It won't replace CD or MP3, but it'll sit next to 'em. Who knows, perhaps we'll all be storing MP3 files on MD?!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Is it? Considering that a brand new single CD costs around 1,100yen in Japan, 350yen is not too expensive. Another similar service which I have seen in Tokyo, is that you can download songs to your MD for a cost. Please remember that Sony is a corporation, they are out to make money, just like any other coporation. 2c
God this is cool. Where can I get one?
No, if you rent a single CD (not one CD but a single release containing about 4 songs) from a rental shop in Japan, you'll pay about 150-200Y (1.50$ to 2$ american), maximum.
Most people in Japan (well, thats an overgeneralization: I mean most Japanese people I know) have MD players. MD is HUGE here.
I dont know why Sony bothers with this whole "download one song off the net" garbage. It's easier just to rent a full length CD (about 300Y or 3$) and then copy it onto mini disc. Thats what a large majority of people and I do anyway.
Why pay 320Y to download ONE song off the internet when i can rent the ENTIRE single or full length CD for under 400Y (4$) and copy it onto MD without losing any sound quality?
Not really considering that most cds only have about 2 good songs, but its still the same price as a cd single, which you could rip too.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
I was refering to most of the pop music that sony would be selling on their sites anyway. I prefer entire cds anyway, but you should get a -1 troll anyway, dumb turd.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Anyone compared compact flash, memory stick, and SmartMedia cards? which one is fastest?
This may sell in Japan, but it ain't gonna pass muster anywhere else. Sony has been pushing their anemic "memory" stick down their captive Japanese consumer's throats. I think those memory sticks will be about as popular as chop sticks in the ole' US.
Given that CD buyers often are buying whole CDs to get certain key tracks, the 350 yen price makes a certain sick sense. Of course Sony is on crack and you can only feel for innocents that end up buying the cripple-ware players they are making...
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. [H.S.T.]
Well, they may let you download it, but don't expect to read about it. I can't believe a site like Sony has a page as illegible as this. What's with those two little frames? Yeesh.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
No, there won't be any lawsuits, at least not from RIAA et al. This is a very crippled device, according to a review linked here on Slashdot yesterday. The gist of it is that this uses the new, rip-off-enriched SDMI technology, which means that while you may own the hardware, Sony reserves the right to later cripple the software so that you can't use it. See the review here:
http://members.home.com/timruss/musicclip.html
Yes, it's neat, but let's don't encourage the crooks in the music industry by buying these things. Hold out for MP3 players, or we may never get any.
See what I've been reading.
$3 a track is a lot, but maybe 350 yen isn't. For one thing, pretty much everything is more expensive in Japan and that is what they are used to. For another thing, fifteen years ago, 350 yen was maybe $1.50. Even though the exchange rates have changed, 350 yen is still 350 yen to the Japanese, no matter what it means to us. It's hard to compare like this across currencies and cultures.
No, if you rent a single CD (not one CD but a single release containing about 4 songs) from a rental shop in Japan, you'll pay about 150-200Y (1.50$ to 2$ american), maximum.
Well, I didn't say anything about how much the rentals cost, because I didn't know anything about that, but you have a really good point.
In my original post, I was going to say something about renting a CD and then ripping it (to MP3 or CD-R) instead of just taping it, but I couldn't come up with the right words. Copying to MD isn't quite as "open source", but still just as effective.
When you compare this download thing to renting a CD and then copying it to MD, which also doesn't let you make a copy of the copy, you have something almost identical to what Sony is trying to do. The only difference is that an MD-discman is a little bit bigger than their "music pen".
Actually, there's one small difference. It's moving bits, not atoms. If it weren't for the "Japan-only" thing, this would make it possible for people who were not in Japan to import music without having to do overseas mail-order (expen$ive $hipping) or wait for local import stores to receive their own bulk-orders.
But as we know Sony is aiming for world domination anyhow, it is obvious they aren't doing this out of compassion for J-pop fans outside of Japan.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
$3 a track = $36 for an album!!!
Will people actually pay that when they can just rip from a CD?
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D BREAK - CONT repeats
Watch out for the RIAA lawsuit.
But that's not the end of the stupidity. On top of the ATRAC3 business, the Music Clip software also employs OpenMG. This is an encryption/authentication scheme that was developed by Sony in an attempt to beat SDMI to the punch. Sony is hoping that if they can actually implement a workable form of copy protection, the rest of the SDMI people will decide to go with that.
So what does all this mean in terms of using the device? Well since the music clip refuses to understand non-encrypted, non-authenticated MP3s, you have to "import" your entire library is order dump it on your device. Your MP3 library has to be converted to ATRAC3 and "protected" by OpenMG. You've just doubled the size of your music library.
Three things:
1) The current version of ATRAC is 4.5, not 3. Almost all Minidisc equipment you encounter these days is either ATRAC 4 or 4.5 and there is a HUGE sonic difference. ATRAC 1 was just horrible. ATRAC 2 was on par with about 80-112k MP3s. ATRAC 3 is on par with 128-160k MP3s. ATRAC 4 is on par with 192-256k MP3s and ATRAC 4.5 is damn near DAT quality (if you come from a clean source).
2) The quality loss of a conversion from ATRAC 4/4.5 to MP3 is minimal. If you like, I can prepare a little demo for you. I have an older ATRAC 4 MiniDisc and if I digitally transfer a CD over, and then take a digital copy back, then encode that to MP3 (at a high bitrate), it is almost totally indistinguishable from an MP3 made straight form the CD source and my gear is of fairly high quality. Even an analogue copy doesn't sound too bad, and the MD's D/As aren't great.
3) ATRAC is not an encripted format. SDMI may be, but ATRAC is not. It's just a psycoacoustic compression model, like MP3.
Sounds like a rip off to me. $3 for one track!!! No wonder Sony is rushing ahead with this.
Hmm, *nearly* there. I checked out the Japanese spec for the Memory Stick Walkman (as a PDF on Sony's Japan website), which is the first major application of this technology for Sony. What it appears they're trying to do is get you locked into using Magic Gate, which is their proprietary copy protection architecture based on a modified Memory Stick. You CAN'T use standard Memory Sticks with any of this kit, you have to use the special white sticks with the content control stuff built in, so forget using your blue sticks for your camera, personal stereo and Playstation 2.
Sony's content management software allows you push up to three copies of a track, so in theory you could make a copy for your home hi-fi, one for your Walkman and a further copy for the car. The way it does this is by using a standard software engineering type source code control system, i.e. you check your music in and out of the software. It will also allow you to rip CDs and do the same, and it will also read your MP3 files and turn them into Magic Gate ATRAC compatible files, for all the benefit that gives you. This is a pretty insidious move for Sony, as the next thing they're probably going to do is start watermarking their CD content, so that their Internet connected software can report unauthorized use, etc, etc. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Basically this is the first attempt by Sony to put the MP3 genie back in the bottle under their own steam. The RIAA have proved themselves to be impotent in dealing with MP3, because they're trying to address it in a very 'standards organization' kind of way. It'll never happen, and I'm sure Sony are fully aware of that. It's all very well saying 'just buy an MP3 player', but Sony are going to market this stuff to *death*, and within a year it'll be a widely understood technology by the non-Slashdot reading world. MP3 is great, but so were Betamax videos. That's what you've got to fear.
The best way to deal with tech like MP3 is to do what Microsoft did to Apple, copy it, f*** with it, then pile the cash into merchandising the hell out of it and locking your key users into it. When the Playstation 2 launches, I predict that Sony will do exactly that. They'll have a very friendly, easy to browse, Playstation 2 friendly web site and make it extremely easy for Joe Public to suck tracks onto their Memory sticks with the minimum amount of fuss, all billed to Sony's Playstation 2 dial-up Internet service. Clean and simple. MP3 will rapidly become a voice in the wilderness, unless the MP3 community can do unto Sony what Linux is currently doing to Microsoft...
Don't be so absolute! It's not a question of being either limited or unlimited, but a comment
on the fact that there are relatively few selections available. In case you haven't noticed, there is already quite a market (and grey/black market) for digital music, that does not involve sony. And there is already a certain expectation for the variety and number of selections that one my expect from such a service. Thus the comment was meant to say that Sony's selection is limited, in comparison to what we're already used to seeing.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Anyone know where I can source blank CD-r discs in the "CD Single" (3.25"?) size?
Is there any service which doesn't have a limited selection of tracks? If there is, I wonder where they get their unlimited supply of disk drives from?
Here is a good review of this thing (which was posted in the previous article, but somehow failed to get moderated above 0). Look down at the bottom of the review to see exactly why this thing a piece of crap designed to trick consumers into buying it instead of an mp3 player.
Here is a post I wrote for the previous article which gives one idea about what we can do to kill the sails of these things.
Finally, I feal I should clear up a little miss understanding about the usefulness of this service to us. Many people have suggested that we will break the encryption and pirate the digitally distributed music via mp3. This is not totally correct. We will crack the encryption, but we will probable need to redistribute the songs as ATRAC3 files since the conversion to mp3 will lose a lot of quality. Note: the lose of quality in the MP3 -> ATRAC3 conversion is part of why the RIAA likes this thing, i.e. it prevents mp3 only artists from having good music. Distributing unencrypted ATRAC3 files will not be a problem, but playing them could be a problem and making our own could be an even bigger problem (Sony may have patents on ATRAC3 algorithms so that they can prosicute the people who write the decoding/encoding software). Plus, Sony charges more for the songs then they would cost if you got them via CD, so there is no advnatage in getting this kind of digital music.
The moral of the story is: SDMI and Sony are evil, they must die.
Jeff
BTW> Now, a project to do an ATRAC3 to mp3 transition without losing quality would be cool, but it would also be difficult (mathematically difficult so Joe Average Hacker could not do it).
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Sometimes it seems to me that we leap to conclusions that large corporations are necessarily evil.
They're out for their own interests. For some, that's evil, but that's what most people do, so why should corporations do any better? In the case of content businesses (like movies and music) they have a clear existing interest: their present revenue stream. You'd fight to keep your job if you were unsure there was anything else and your present job paid well - that's exactly what these corporations are doing.
Yeah, large corporations (and large people, large governments, etc.) sometimes squash the little guy. This is called capitalism (or, if you prefer, Darwinian selection). It can lead to abuses. Name a system that can't.
Now before we get into a political flamewar, let me point out a few things about the VAIO Music Clip and its accompanying service:
The music industry knows they looked bad with the SDMI announcement coming out just after MP3 really hit the hype wave. It wasn't as reactionary as it looked, though. The music industry has been worrying about all things digital for years. Had the SDMI announcement come out a year earlier, we might have been saying "Cool! The industry is getting behind digital music!" How many of us have DVD players? Even if we don't like regional encoding?
It may look depressing at times. But if you think Sony's attitudes seem benighted now, well, two years ago, it was much worse. SDMI may not be what we want, but it took Sony two years to get to that point. They're moving in the right direction.
ObDisclaimer: I used to work for Sony. I personally know some of the decision-makers involved in these things - I saw them wrestle with the many issues involved, and in some cases, helped them understand them. But I don't work for Sony any more and don't have any stock or any financial interest in Sony doing well going forward.
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Klactovedestene!
mambo-x
then you just burn cdr or cdrw (of 10 hrs or so) and you're in business!
try THAT with MD. you can barely get 70minutes on an MD. and recording on MD is in real-time and no faster. if I'm in a hurry, I can grab a bunch of .wav files and create a cdr of .mp3 files in much faster than real-time (since my computer writes to cdr and not some analog or possibly real-time digital link).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
miniCDRW
like I said, with all the new neat things out there, MD is dead, dead, dead.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
when it comes to sony, just say no. they're not our friends. they don't believe in sharing and open software - they only believe in the almighty dollar (or yen).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
and this 4x dubbing box - I bet its not in the same pricerange as typical consumer gear? or even consumer computer gear?
what does it dub from? I bet you can't dub from a hard drive (pc or unix).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
...and you really don't need to be able to read Japanese to find out what it's about, because they put up an English page. I can read some Japanese, but I didn't need to.
:-) price of 350 yen! (about $3.50 US)
/.'ers should love: you have to use Windows Media Player! That's right, Windoze only! I think there is a non WMP player (called "Type E"), but I would expect it too to only runs under Windoze. Yes, I know that Microsoft is "considering" a Linux version of WMP, but I wouldn't be surprised if this music distribution system didn't work with Linux even then.
Anyhow, this is indeed SDMI, and you are only allowed to have a copy on one computer and transfer it one time to a digital device, for the low, low
The compression is Sony's ATRAC (the same one used in MiniDisc, which I've heard is a better quality compression format than MP3), and here's the part that
Their site says that "bitmusic will only be available to consumers in Japan; access from locations outside Japan is restricted.". I don't know how they plan to do this, other than by checking IP block ranges (post-CIDR IP blocks are assigned geographically, and I think Japan had only a limited number of IP blocks before CIDR routing was implemented).
And you have to turn on JavaShit to use the web site.
As for the cost, you have to understand the music market in Japan. CDs in Japan tend to cost about 3200 yen (about $30), though two-disc soundtrack sets are usually only a few bucks more. I think it's that high because CD rental and taping of rentals is legal in Japan. CD singles (usually two songs + karaoke tracks) cost on the order of 1000 yen (I think). So the cost really is comparable to that of a single track on a full CD. Oh, and for some reason I do not understand, in Japan, all CDs go out of print two years after original release. Apparently, this happens no matter how popular they are.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }