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Embedding Ads In MP3s?
icqqm writes: "According to this Wired article, a company called Digital Payloads is planning to embed small ads into MP3 files to generate revenue for the record labels. The advertisers would pay a one-time fee (since MP3s can't be tracked) and then the file would be relased to be Napster-ized, etc. The company is betting that people would rather listen to ths small ad than go through the trouble of having to remove it." OK conceptually this isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it would take about one hour before software existed to automatically strip it out: and open source gnapster clients would simply add a plugin interface to offer post download filtering before playing... which would strip the ads. I want a way to make MP3s kosher, but this ain't it.
If you give me a high-quality CD player there is nothing to prevent me from opening the case up and sticking a high-quality sampler right in front of the preamp. Assuming that the sampler is connected to a computer I have an instant MP3 encoder. Whee. Additional low- or high-frequency 'protection'? No problem - either an analog bandpass filter or Fourier transform will do the trick!
I've thought about this for quite some time. Technically, here is no such thing as pay-per-{view,listen}. Eventually it has to be presented as aural or visual stimulation to the audience's eyes or ears. At that point the content can no longer be protected. Whether the content is grabbed straight from the wire or recorded via videocamera, the content is technically available to everyone.
Legally, this is an entirely different issue, of course.. ;)
"It's no more obtrusive than an FM DJ announcing a song."
Have you ever heard a DJ talk and talk and talk over the intro to a song, only shutting up right before the singer starts the first verse? So that's what this might be doing...
Therefore, even if you could come up with software which strips the ads (and is able to tell the difference between ads and the "real" music), you still lose the entire intro to the song.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
give me pr0n and mp3's bundled together, and i will be happy.
--Hail Mary, for she has the largest shotgun of them all.--
This is what eperlman believes, is it not?
Keeping
Or you could just pay artists to record songs that are nothing but big advertisments. A certain Abercrombie and Fitch song comes to mind.
Do you understand the concept of "Better than having a fucking commercial?"
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seumas.com
No. In some European sports, the teams go in at halftime and come out wearing jerseys with different ads than they had on during the first half.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I really doubt it. I'd like to see numbers that support that, but given the number of ways that downloads can happen, I'll probably not see them. Now, if it read "...just people who didn't care to take the time to rip the music themselves," it'd be a bit more plausable. Still, I think the truth is "...just people who don't have a copy of the CD, don't intend to pay for a copy of the CD (for whatever reason), but still want the music."
Nope. The record company would be the one making this decision, I'm sure. That being the case, the included MP3s would be 64kbps/22K/Mono with embedded ads. That is, if the mp3's were included at all.
I think that they'd probably use the inclusion of mp3s to justify (in their minds) the further increase in the price of a cd. Thanks, but no.
Let's try this one:
If being illegal was going to stop anyone it would have done so long before this.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
What this company is also banking on is that if you take an ad-filled MP3 and put it on a big website with lots of traffic and stable servers etc. and flaunt it to everyone saying it's legal, they might not go to Napster. They have the song right there. I'm not saying it will work of course.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
The MP3 header is in binary, so of course you're not going to be able to just read it straight off the wire and say "Hey look! There's the header!"
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
It seems that there seems to be one big point of disagreement about MP3's, which is whether they hurt music sales or not. One group suggests that they hurt sales by discouraging people from buying the album, while another suggests that they help sales by letting more people listen to the music. Another point of argument is that some people claim that a lot of downloads are just people getting copies of music they already own because they can't rip the music themselves.
To solve this combination of problems, I suggest the following:
I'm pretty sure that if this version were implemented that the legitimate, artist endorsed MP3s would pretty much displace illegitimate versions. That would guarantee that anyone who copied the song would know where to get the full version, which is exactly the kind of targeted advertizing that's most likely to succeed. Furthermore, the web site could contain information about the same artist's other albums, tour dates, merchandise, etc. providing further income potential.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
It would be an audio ad, not an ad in the ID3.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
try searching for "i'm a porn star" or "you're a porn star" one of those.. parody of all-star. has the same annoying ad in all the copies i found.
Just throw in some silent noise.. The stuff that is usually removed from an MP3...
Worse yet...Not all mp3s are music...
Some songs stop in the middle
That little trick as a pandoras box waiting to scrap lagit MP3s....
I don't actually exist.
1). Advertising in MP3s is a good way to get the MPAA off our backs
2). Advertising in MP3s is about as useful as the "C sharp" programming language and will just make life worse for everyone
3). Advertising in MP3s will allow the RIAA to embed yet more secret mind control subliminal messages to take over our minds
4). This poll sucks
5). BLUE
6). This poll doesn't add up!
To create your own poll, simply follow the example above and share with your friends! Enjoy.
-- Jon.
http://www.jonmasters.org/
I heard a great pigeonhead song on the radio so I bought the CD the rest of the CD sucked.
I can't tell you how many CDs I have that have one or two good songs on them and rest are junk fillers.
War is necrophilia.
This is the START of a cool idea, but you'd need some kind of transparent and strong digital signature scheme; otherwise, any wiseass out there could render your MP3 out to a wave file, and then re-encode and re-release it with /HIS/ PayPal information encoded, and the listener would have no way of knowing the difference.
As soon as you start talking about sending money over the Net, you come up against the same issues of authentication and certification that have us all paying Verisign et al to vouch for the fact that we are who we say we are.
Nobody has a perfect scheme yet that is both strong/reliable and easy to use for Joe Average. Once that happens, this kind of idea will be cake to implement.
--
They only like a few songs because the radio station that they, their friends, and their whole community listen too only favors them. We wouldn't have this problem if you could all think for yourselves instead of automatically jumping to one side of the boat.
Rammstein? Yeah, I like hard rock...you know, if it doesn't have that cute little lightning icon next to, I don't listen to it. No sir-ee.
Christina Aguilara? Sure! Any woman that can't decide on what note to land on, all to imitate imitating singers from a race she might actually be a part of under all that makeup, in a style that was originally created to make up for poor/fewer backup singers, all so she can be the main star is my type! I'm sure glad its not the Christina Aguilara Band, because those others can't sing at all.
Never stop running
This is getting out of hand!
The common mentality of people offering anything on the net seems to be to support it with advertising! It's almost as if advertising is the fallback multipurpose revenue generator.
How much more of this do we have to put up with?
We already have websites plastered so thick with ads that you can barely read them!
I'll be brave. I'd like to actually question the wisdom to all this advertising.
If advertising actually works, there would have to be a lot of people clicking on the banner ads, right?
Yet I talk to people I know and they say that they barely ever bother with them. So for it to average out, there must be one helluva lot of people just clicking on every ad that comes up in front of them!
Actually, a while back (can't remember where) I saw statistics that pointed toward the fact that IE users click on far more ads than Netscape users!
So, taking the liberty of assuming that there are more Netscape users downloading MP3's. I wonder if the same applies to MP3's? I wonder if the MP3 using community fits into the same profile, and would reject the whole idea?
Food for thought!
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
While that would make technical sense, it wouldn't make business sense. Businesses like conformity, and all the ads will be of the same length you can bet.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
You, I and the average Joe Free Software User don't want this, and wouldn't stand the intrusion. But as a teaser, for the average Teenie Net User, it works beautifully. They'll get their bubblegum early (Have you heard the latest Too-Young-To-Shave Boys single?) and it will probably drum up store business.
Really, I don't see what the problem is. If everyone here doesn't like the ad-ridden songs (which most likely you won't), don't listen to them! (which most likely won't be a problem) Listen to your CDs or legitimate mp3s or even your illegal mp3s - I don't think you'll be getting Indie bands signing on to this type of business too quickly.
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I'm curious; will the software they develop track end-users as music is played? MP3 files are 'untraceable' as they are now (to an extent), but it software is provided to interpret digital signatures/data within the encoded MP3 file, could this software also report statistics or other information to a central database?
What if it worked this way:
When you click on the "Pay Artist" button, a message is sent to a central (trusted) server that says "User with credit card xxxx pay author of song with MD5 checksum of xxxx."
Whenever an artist wants a new song in the system (s)he registers it with the central database. That way no one can "steal" it.
-Harry
2. Most non-techies use Napster, not gnapster or gnutella because Napster has all the press.
3. Therefore, it might work.
One major point is being missed here. Most people aren't going to bother. Just because 90% of techies use mp3s doesn't mean that 90% of the people using programs like Napster are techies. One rule of advertising is that you make your ad as obtrusive as possible without being obtrusive. If it isn't more than 30 seconds long, most people won't even bother to even try to find and option to remove it.
All that has to be done is to make all the ads slightly different lengths. Now how are you going to make an option that strips the ad without potentially stripping some of the music? This might be a good thing to show that people really aren't downloading music to steal, only to preview it for themselves and maybe buy it on CD.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
According to David Boies, distributing cheezy mp3 rips of copyrighted music for no money is neither a criminal act or illegal. As long as it's not a commercial act done for money, it's not illegal- and therefore, Napster facilitating it is also not illegal.
Just for grins, I decided to see what inflation has done to record prices. Taking $17 as a typical price for a CD in 2000, I plugged it into the NewsEngin's Cost-Of-Living Calculator, and found that my $17 in 2000 was the same as $8.23 in 1980. As I recall, the typical LP in 1980 was in the $8-$12 range. If my memory is correct (some other old fart jump in here), then the cost of buying recordings hasn't changed a whole lot.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
amp3.net, when they were still themselves and not iuma.com or whatever they are now, would place a 5 second ad at the beginning of every mp3 downloaded... It would add the ad each time someone downloaded it, so the ad's were in constant rotation. This also generated revenue for the artists, as they got 5 or 10 cents for each download because of the ads. I made about $6 while it was still going on. Unfortunately they sooner or later ran into trouble with the company the liscensed the ad adding stuff from. I'm not really educated on the whole situation, but that's the best I can explain it. Oh, and the people that downloaded my stuff that I talked to didn't really mind the ads, as they weren't anything majorly annoying.
Huh? What's this? A Noise records-aware slashdotter? Yaaaaaay! I'm not alone. Cheese metal forever :-)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
gtk-gnutella (the gtk+ linux gnutella client) is GPL.
I think the trick is you can't have advertising that's so annoying it motivates people to go out of their way to write and/or download a program to strip them out.
.mp3 compression may be good, it's still gonna be a heckuva lot bigger than a banner ad.)
Look at banner advertising. I know that people have written plug-ins to strip out banner ads, but I've never really been motivated to go out there and actually download one. Why? I don't mind banner ads. They don't distract from my web-browsing experience, it's a small download, and I can very easily skip over them if I don't feel like reading them.
But to listen to 20-30 seconds of an advertisement every time I wanted to hear a song? You must be kidding! (Plus, while
I think the advertising model has potential. But you're dealing with a group of people who are savvy enough to strip out advertisements if they're inclined to do so. Companies are going to have to find a way to create ads without hurting the user experience.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
The way to make voluntary payments work is for the artist to release his/her work in chunks.
So basicaclly if you like the first track, he'll release the second when (and only when) he's got enough donations from the public through his website. Obviously what constitutes 'enough' is entirely up to the artist and depends on demand, past history etc.
A better idea would be to use some reserved area in the MP3 to append the payment info (and maybe some tetx about the artist, etc) into standard MP3s. Regular players that follow the standard would see the reserved bits used and ignore it, new players that support the format would display the new information.
It's not a big deal to require the user to download a pluggin because anyone willing to cough up some cash will likely download a small pluggin to allow this to happen. And if the pluggin allows more info, where 'liner notes' could go, everyone (paying user or not) would have an incentive to download the pluggin. Then they'd have the option to pay in the future, if they suddenly got the urge.
The security seems like it'd be fairly easy. You'd sort of CRC the music... strip out a lot of detail from the wave such that any two song rips (of the whole song) will have the same signature. Then the signature of the song is sent in with the payment ID. If the signture isn't listed for the artist (ie, payment for a song they haven't registered) then they don't get paid. And if someone shows up with the same song signature as Metallica, you investigate...
The whole problem is authenticating the song, some sort of fingerprint that works over lossy channels. (If someone rips a Metallica song off of CD and wants to pay for it, the system should try to match the song signature in the database to find the creator...) And ideally it'd work with existing non-watermarked media.
Then you could napster to you heart's content, sampling everything and paying what you want to keep.
Er.. Make that, legally illegal. Not that legality has ever stopped a corporation before.
---
seumas.com
The first day after this comes out, there will be a utility to rip the ads out.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
--
... all you need is someone with a CD of the album
to rip it and Napster it? Even if it was an 'ad only' release, then it defaults to the 'plugin will remove the ad' case.
Shurely shome mistake?
That said: I know who my competition is. It's the same major labels that have brainwashed generations into thinking that only majorlabel-signed acts are worth hearing, even though this is less and less plausible every year. As an indie musician (btw- buy one of my CDs for $5.99? Please? :) ), my mp3s compete against the 'unauthorised' mp3s of major label acts distributed through services like Napster.
If the major labels want to make their products more unpleasant through building ads into the mp3s or other annoying practices, I say great, go right ahead and do it. If they can magically replace _all_ the existing majorlabel mp3s (hah!) with ad-laden ones, woohoo, go ahead and do it! I am delighted to observe any method by which the music biz can destroy itself through arrogance and greed. I would love to be known as 'one of those people who makes mp3s which DON'T have annoying ads on them'.
Because here's the secret- the majors don't have a lock on worthwhile music. They don't even have a lock on well-produced, expensive sounding music- you just have to be enough of an audiophile geek to know how to make things sound right. I rejoice and dance about chortling smugly at every sign that the biz is going to leverage their supposed lock on all good music by building ads into the mp3s, or making their music SDMI-only, or making the CDs unrippable (and unreliable). They are only hamstringing themselves and doing great damage to the quality of their product, thinking that nobody can replace them. And today, you don't need to have the same kind of distribution networks to replace them... the rules have changed...
(do please go listen to some tunes of mine at the URL given above- they're free and they're up there to be heard, and there will be more and more of them)
They know the ads can be stripped, but only by those who know and have the time to do it manually.
But the way songs propagate in places like Napster, wouldn't it only take a couple of people to do the editing?
You could have your search result set, and only choose the songs that someone put in their 'AdStripped' directory or whatever...
Information wants to be beer.
Same way we do it with TV. Advertisements have a distinct signature audio-wise - the volume usually is higher than the TV programming. Simply normalize the output, and chop the high point. But that may only be effective for, say, classical music - Fear Factory might not have the same approach. Now most music has a prelude, a quiet opener, or atleast a distinct silence. You can't put that ad in the middle of the song or people will scream murder. So it has to be at the beginning or the end.
There's also the encoding - they might mismatch the bitrates. They will almost definately use 1 encoder - and probably not the one the MP3 has. So you can just analyze the MP3 and determine when the encoder changes - non-trivial, but considering how much geeks detest forced-advertisement, I'm sure it's possible. It's a BIG itch to scratch.
Another method I can think of is to simply visit the advertiser's site. Most of them are MORE than happy to provide ALL of their releases. A few waveforms and an FFT calculation later, and all your mp3's have had that signature removed.
Given that the primary method of MP3 distribution is currently online, someone could simply md5 sum the "bad" mp3's, and blacklist them. The servers (or clients) could then automagically purge them from the network. THAT is a trivial programming exercise.
Cheers,
Consider the possibility that the ad will be overlayed on top of the music, not a discrete segment of audio placed before/after or in the middle of the song. This would make it much harder if not impossible to remove the ad without disturbing the music.
true enough, advertising is annoying, but when you think about it, it might be the only way for these companies to actually in some way profit from "their" music. micropayments, for example, either don't work at all -- the files will still be available for free somewhere -- or, if they work (which would have to be on some kind of voluntary basis), they'll cut out the middle man completely -- a very sensible state of affairs, in my opinion.
another idea that's been pitched is that the music companies should provide a service similar to napster but far better & more extensive -- that people need to pay for. let's think about this for a second. first, no such scheme has worked online. second, the files, if provided on a pay-per-song service of some kind, will very soon after their release be made available on some other, napster-like, free service. this may be because people save the files in the same directory that their copy napster uses, or because someone cracks into the system and "steals" the songs, then redistributes them.
finally, the idea that these music companies could provide a file format so much better than mp3 that people would use instead of mp3 even if they have to pay for it, is ludicrous.
what this leaves as the only viable option then is advertising, a perhaps necessary evil that we may or may not be able to strip from the files, but one that may give us perhaps even legal access to an even greater amount of music than what is now available online.
eemeli
One solution for the record companies is to release low bitrate versions, or mono versions, or short versions, of the songs. If I heard a 32k or 64k version of a song, or one minute (as they do somewhat now) and I liked it, and a dialog box said "Do you want to buy the full version of this song at a much higher bitrate sampling for $1 and download it now?" I would be tempted. Of course, I would have to have an account at this website with a charge card to do this... Either pay first and get credit or be billed monthly.
If they're not happy with the security, they should develop their own audio format and their own player.
Offer specials for buying more than one track at a time from the same album, or more than one album at a time.
The really cool thing is, any band could be independent and sell their music online... or someone could start an 'online' label, and skip all this record industry bullshit about artists not getting their money.
The biggest problem is advertising and exposure for these bands. Well, if you want to sell something, you can't avoid that.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Back when I was a kid, I thought cable was kind of cool, because even though you have to pay, you don't have to watch commercials. Later, I realized that they were putting commercials on cable anyway. In the music world, I wonder what if we might see ads creep into recordings we actually buy.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Yeah, keeping with that theme, cutting off the advertisement-end of every MP3 is akin to a bris.
Btw, IANAR. (I am not a rabbi.)
---------///----------
--
I like to watch.
The way I normally go about splicing and editing audio files is I'd record the main body of my stuff using a simple recording program. Save that. Then load up a totally diffrent program.
That program I load in the origial file. An intro music file. Save in a diffrent format than the first two files and everything is as if it was originally recorded with the program I used for editing.
No specal magic... I didn't even TRY to make verything match. It dose simply becouse the whole file comes from one utility.
It's the most likely way they'll create such files..
I don't actually exist.
Or am I wrong and you can play an incomplete MP3 as long as you've got the 'header'?
My thoughts on how to make mp3's kosher
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
There are also parodies which feature a simple radio station ID as an ad, less than 2 seconds, and I never felt the need to take it out. It's a matter of making it small enough so that people won't bother, and I'm sure tests will be done to find out what that point is.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Talk about underestimating your audience.
(This is not a bid for karma, just an observation.)
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
They placed a 10 second at the front of every mp3 loaded to their site and paid the artist 5 cents a download. It was the only mp3 site that legit paid money to the artists. They're being sued by their ISP, who wants the patent.
- -------
You get used to the ads, to the point of ignoring them. A 10 second ad isn't really too much to bear as long as it's encoded correctly.. the real problem comes when the ad is encoded at a different bitrate than the song, and they're stuck together (it happened a few times, the mp3 player usually crashes, or else simply plays the 10 second ad and won't play the actual song.)
+----------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
I DO have the math background for this and I know something about the MP3 algorithm, so I'll take a shot at it.
Theoretically, it is possible. But I stress possible. There are a number of problems with this idea.
1) You would have to audibly interfere with the actual song. You see, one of the first things that the MP3 encoding algorithm does is strip off very high and very low sounds (to some degree, depends on the encoder), so only those in the threshold of human hearing (and less most of the time) remain. So no deal there.
2) All encoders are different. There is no one magical algorithm to make MP3s. There are a large number of parameters each of which will produce a different result (this is a good loosy compression scheme after all). So you'd have to make it so that somehow all of these parameters didn't make a difference and it always worked.
So basically, it wouldn't work due to the nature of the compression. RIAA's only hope is to come up with a proprietary algorithm, release a player for free, and publish all of their artists' songs. And still, the CDs will be ripped.
It's too bad, really.
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
In fact, it may even be less.
tcd004
Am I the only one sick of all this buzz about mp3s? I like mp3s, it's good quality, but if slashdot is pro-mp3 (as it were) then why post all this stuff and get people so angry and hurt and upset and argumentative? That's why it's turned into a war -- people want to fight about it. If it is NOT a war, then what's all the fighting about?
--
In Linux we call Winamp X11Amp, or, more recently, XMMS (X Multimedia System). He probably meant Winamp, I would guess. Sorry if that sounded sarcastic.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
MP3s with ads--
What an idea! (This haiku
sponsored by Compaq)
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I think they're close in concept, but not in execution. I would say, don't chuck a piece of audio in, make it a piece of graphic. We always think of graphics as high-bandwidth, but that's only compared to text. Put a few banner ads in there instead. Less revenue - yes. But way less intrusive, and you can easily get a nice little sponsor area of 32KB or 64KB - the equivalent of less than 5 seconds of audio. Efficient. Make the extraction an one-page (simple!) open standard. Forget about any encryption part, because Napster et al is effectively a broadcast model, where encryption doesn't work unless its also subscription. The catch is - you'll need a WinAmp plugin to see the 'ads'. But if there is useful stuff in there (like URLs to band sites) then you might readily choose to run the plugin. With a simple, open, extraction standard, there's no big impediment to most of the players - on any platform - adding it as an option. Finally - put it near the front, and it can be a type of digital signature. This makes it quick to find non-legit versions (meaning any files without the ads). Sources of legit files will tend to outweigh the bad sources - you could post a stripped version, but far more people are likely to post the good version. Some stripping will occur, but it isn't going to kill the business model. Last point - add some text-only stuff so that sponsors get a scrolling message even on the MP3 portables without big graphic capability. (Now I've just got to hunt down the URLs of the places where I've explained this idea before...)
Most people (think of all Windows users out there) wouldn't go through all this hassle. Remember that a lot of people who listen to MP3 don't even know how to encode! -- Even with user-friendly stuff as MusicMatch out there (many never heard about it).
Besides, and what if the ads were added with a fade in/out effect, as they do in radio? Then you would either cut a bit off the song or listen to the ad.
"I'm looking through you, where did you go?"
Ladies and gentlemen, let's just face the facts. The cat's out of the bag and it sure as hell isn't going to go back in any time soon. Wether it's Napster or Gnutella or FTP, people are going to share mp3's. If napster wants to fuck around with licensing or commercials or whatever, someone will come out with something better and people will use it.
;-)
I'm sorry, but i honestly see this as the great equalizer. Napster is the tip of the iceburg. Why? Because any regulation of mp3's is pretty damned unenforceable. Sure - put ad's on mp3s. Someone's going to use SoundForge or whatever and get rid of 'em - or make their own rips of tracks like people have already been doing. Sure - make mp3's illegal....then everyone will have to stop using them (just like people don't smoke pot, and minors don't drink? right?!?!) - Ladies and gentlemen: Welcome to the digital era!
RIAA - it was fun while it lasted wasn't it
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
As for placing ads in MP3 files, I already have some annoying examples on my hard drive.
T NEY_SINGING_WAY_OUT_OF_TUNE.mp3
O T_BLOOPER.mp3
1. Run Napster
2. Do a search of "bloopers" or "outtakes"
3. Download some of them
I have:
1.BLOOPERS,_OUT-TAKES_and_SCREW-UPS-LINDA_McCAR
and
BLOOPERS,_OUT-TAKES_and_SCREW-UPS-SEBASTIAN_CAB
Both of which have ads for Creative lab's Nomad MP3 player
2.Bloopers & Outtakes - Where's The Beef (Clara Pelter).mp3
has a ad for something called siteblazer.com (sp?)
All are located at the first few seconds of the file. I could take them out easily, but the idea that such an annoying ad would get me to buy a Nomad just amuses me for some reason.
Another idea I've had kicking around for a while that might work well here. Custom CDs. I know that anyone with a burner can create them, but that takes time. Usually lots of it. So if the band offers to make and sell custom CDs (choose fifteen tracks), complete with packaging/CD art (you won't get that on custom CD!) and charge only a bit more (one or two dollars more?) than it takes to buy a CD blank and burn it, I suspect a lot of people might go for that.
Comments, suggestions, problems you can see?
-RickHunter
BNL has also made the ads edit-resistant: how? They're funny. They're cracking jokes. And by and large, everyone's keeping them in.
I just think that as an artist, I would feel like my art was being butchered. If I was famous, I'd be getting enough money already so that it wouldn't matter all that much. If I wasn't that famous, I think I'd be to glad for the publicity normal mp3s give me to worry to much about a little extra money. That's just my opinion though.
Lia
I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. I'm betting that Metallica is getting some kind of kickback from the RIAA in order to promote this anti-napster business. I'd really love to hear that come out in the news, that'd kill almost any artist-centric arguement that the RIAA might have.
The statement you make in this article about software coming out in an hour to remove the ad after download is pretty silly, IMHO. The -exact- same thing could be said about HTML: You just chop out the code for advertisements from the HTML. Think about it: You could get most of them by looking for a which contained solely an img src, with that image being a link, and the whole thing being centered. You could nail almost all ads with that. So, then, why hasn't software come out to do that to HTML, eh?
In fact, you could have central 'black hole' banner ad servers: Once per day, there's a big tar.gz released of regular expressions (perl or sed style) to edit the banner-ads of the day from HTML. That way, doubleclick or whoever couldn't just keep updating their HTML to keep you from knocking it out, as people would look at the ad and put up a regex to handle it, and they'd only get about 4,000 impressions on that ad before it vanished from the 'net.<br><br>
Therefore, history implies that such software would not come out in reality.
OK- first off, backtracking from the output jacks, you get the usual 'hiss must die, even theoretical hiss' little caps on the output. This is just a teeny cap to ground- may even be something fancy like a tantalum, or it may be just a cheap ceramic, hard to tell from looking. There are markings on them, which you don't always get on ceramic cheapies. This is going to mess with the impulse response going up into the supersonic- a cap configured that way rings very slightly. I'm lifting these with quite a bit of confidence that it will improve overall focus and tone color without significant hiss penalty- I call these 'anal hiss caps', and frequently remove them in mods.
Moving on to the output coupling cap, I am shocked to discover a small cheap 2.2mf cap on each channel! The unit has surprisingly good bass, considering. These are being replaced by 50V 47mf caps- note however that the 2.2mf caps are also 50V. This is not because the circuit needs that voltage, but because pretty much all teeny electrolytics come in such voltages- apparently easier to make them that way. This could be an intentional decision on the part of Kurzweil because piano tones are well suited to choosing a more high-voltage cap even at the cost of bass extension- the piano does not have all that much very low bass, but it has a lot of low-mid kick that is enhanced by the heavier materials of a higher-voltage cap.
Moving right along, the wires to the (analog) volume control don't look terribly special. They did have to be foil shielded, which just goes to show they were picking up digital noise (like the analog stages of a cheezy soundcard in a PC enclosure). Looks like a job for JumperMan! Bypass the control entirely. I'm not certain if the circuit requires the resistance to ground that the dualganged pot provides, but if so it's a simple jumper resistor, no fuss.
Doing these mods (solder remove replace jumper) already delivers some very nice improvements. No jumper resistor was needed for the bypassed volume pot- 'Ballad Organ 1's low end took on a really lush quality- and the highs in general lost a faintly tinny quality that they'd had.
It's Further Caplifting Time! Going in to see if there are other caps that are anal hiss caps (this becomes a one-part-at-a-time exercise because you rapidly start to discover parts that actually do something), C25 is discovered to be borderline- lifting it produces a nice hyper-focussed sound, but also causes the synth to emit a quiet little 'parrp' noise at one point, almost inaudibly- a sure sign that the circuit wants _something_ there. Out with the 1 pf caps- and replacing of C25 and C70 on the other side of the chip results in a very assertively extended treble- since it would be unuseful to take the highs any farther, time to look at some of the other electrolytics on the board. C35 and C36 look to be power supplies, and there's also C23, which matches the two output caps- replacing 'em with 100mf adds a fullness and solidity to things, especially the pianos- and raises the question, "were those 1pf caps enough?" since the highs are feeling kind of overenthusiastic. Ignoring that for a moment, C7 and C6 look enticing- they look a lot like coupling caps, lead to an IC in the output stages, and Kurzweil clearly wouldn't be using 22Mf caps unless they had to- two 10V 470mf caps are found and installed in their place. This might also balance the highs- and in fact it does, but it also raises a question- this is not a 'flash' unit, it's meant to be lush and full, would it be desirable to pull those highs back anyhow? A quick switch of the 1pf caps with 33pf caps and the answer is 'yup', the resulting fullness and solidity is very appealing- and that'll do for the modding- back on with the covers, and tadah :)
Now moderate this down as offtopic, but it was nothing if not geeky. :) you try this with your own Kurzweil at your own risk- but the result _is_ bigger sound than the huge bloated gigabuck studios' Micropianos, you just have to be ready to hack :)
Most people can't manage to record a movie correctly from TV and eliminate comercials by stopping the recording. How can we expect a computer to be at least as smart? I can understand what you're saying about timing, but of course the ads can't be all the same length. And what about tracks which begin with dialog or tracks which are entirely dialog (comedy for instance)? Unless some sort of ad-library based scanner was to be implemented with constant web-updates to keep track of the newest ads, I can't imagine any scanner type solution to work more than half the time. Not so easy.
- learn mathematics - shoot dope -
If this sort of thing could actually work, I'm sure record companies would be thrilled. You'd have a system that's fully reverse compatible-- the cds play in the same old cd players, but can't be distributed on-line unless you want to start sending out full-sized wave files. So, hopefully more knowledgable than me will come out and tell me my idea is full of shit and let us all go back to downloading our pr0n^H^H^H^Hmp3s.
It's only software!
Same way we do it with TV. Advertisements have a distinct signature audio-wise - the volume usually is higher than the TV programming. Simply normalize the output, and chop the high point. But that may only be effective for, say, classical music - Fear Factory might not have the same approach. Now most music has a prelude, a quiet opener, or atleast a distinct silence. You can't put that ad in the middle of the song or people will scream murder. So it has to be at the beginning or the end.
There's also the encoding - they might mismatch the bitrates. They will almost definately use 1 encoder - and probably not the one the MP3 has. So you can just analyze the MP3 and determine when the encoder changes - non-trivial, but considering how much geeks detest forced-advertisement, I'm sure it's possible. It's a BIG itch to scratch.
Another method I can think of is to simply visit the advertiser's site. Most of them are MORE than happy to provide ALL of their releases. A few waveforms and an FFT calculation later, and all your mp3's have had that signature removed.
Given that the primary method of MP3 distribution is currently online, someone could simply md5 sum the "bad" mp3's, and blacklist them. The servers (or clients) could then automagically purge them from the network. THAT is a trivial programming exercise.
Cheers,
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You are a fucking moron.
Yeah, that could happen - but many people play (at least part of) a song while it's downloading, and can abort the transfer in favour of another one if needed...
And unless record companies stop releasing CD singles, people are still going to rip songs to their MP3 collection in the traditional way.
As long as the ad-stripped songs are a more popular download that the ad-infested ones, you know which ones are going to dominate the search result sets.
Information wants to be beer.
- As soon as you start talking about sending money over the Net, you come up against the same issues of authentication and certification that have us all paying Verisign et al to vouch for the fact that we are who we say we are.
What about PGP signing? I would think that the web of trust should take care of authentication, eh?Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Wow, thanks, I didn't think it was that bad (and, working with grams of metal as a currency every day, I should know). I guess I recall hearing that the price would go down to single-digit-land, and at the time (and yesterday evening) I wasn't even thinking of inflation. I sincerely appreciate the correction, though.
I still think Courtney Love was talking about e-gold without knowing it, and I wish I could get her (and others) to notice what it can do to reduce the artificial economic friction between artists & fans.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
As everyone here has pointed out, the tech-heads out there will have at least three different ways to circumvent these ads within an hour or two of their release.
So the question isn't "will this work?"
Because we all know it won't.
The question is will it convince the record companies well enough to get them off our backs for a while. If RIAA believes the ads are working, then they won't have a beef with Napster et al. So the real question is how stupid is RIAA?
AFAIK, ISP's don't need any kind of "protection from prosecution" deal, because they are already protected as Service Providers by the DMCA.
Simply, an ISP cannot be held responsible for material that passes through its servers. This has been upheld in court too.
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Ececheira
Given that you the average 128 Kbps stream .MP3 file is about a megabyte per minute of audio, adding any extra audio for an advertisement--even for 30 seconds--will increase the size of the file pretty quick. That's why I'm not too thrilled at the idea.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I don't think that advertising in mp3's would really catch on. A lot of people who have mp3's obtain them illegally, and I doubt that companies would advertise in illegal mp3's. On the other hand the advertised mp3's could be distributed illegally, however I believe that some one would probably remove the advertisements from them.
Quid rides ignare?
ozzfest rules. no other information is necessary.
Try looking at my opinion on freely distributed music. . .
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
I think the solution to this is to have a rating system, along the lines of slashdot moderation. That way, people would be able to avoid ad-encrusted mp3, poor encodings, misnamed files, etc.
It would also be a great way to find new music, based on the recommendation of the community. With a feature like this, Napster would be able to honestly claim they are promoting new music, not just providing a means of distributing copyrighted materials. It would also provide a raw, grassroots, rating system without manipulation by record companies or distributors.
I haven't read the article or all of the existing posts on this topic. I will now toss in my two cents anyway.
- anyway.com site and load them onto our home PCs, our Rios and (yes, saw this in Crutchfield's) our car stereos. This will be similar to our ability to turn on the radio and record all the free music we want. But wait! The catch, just like radio, is that some hack will be pimping a product for the first 10 seconds of the song-- right over the damn music.
Let's assume a few things. First, that a court will decide that a service like Napster cannot exist unless they make more serious efforts to combat "piracy". Second, that mp3s will continue to be ripped and traded by many (the format will endure, that is). Third, that advertisers can be found who will consider this a valid cost-- I mean, they fell for banners, and this is actually much better. Fourth, that the industry at large will go for this.
With those fairly reasonable assumptions we as persons who desire "free" music will suddenly be able to download mp3s from the britneyspears.com site or the cant-sing-cant-dance-but-got-a-big-label-contract
So the companies are able to maintain status quo basically. Oh, and then Napster is allowed to share all the files they want, but now that there are official, ad-laden versions of these songs available, files offered for sharing must match the name, bitrate, and filesize of the official version or be disallowed. Or, why bother sharing files over Napster when they are finally available from the source for free-- and perhaps a bit more reliably (I've dl'ed way too many partial cuts off Napster to be overly optimistic about the service).
What's going to be really annoying is when, once they've trashed the ability to share files independently and once they've accustomed users to going directly to the company to download their ad-laden mp3, that they will initiate the process of data collection. "Please fill out this form that tells us everything about you to start the download of your free songs! Never mind that we're still going to make you listen to ads! Don't look behind that curtain!"
I do not have a signature
Napster is a real problem for the record biz. It cost way too much to litigate all those little hosts of illegal music appearing and disapearing daily.
If ISP's had an easy way to log the MB's of MP3's(or DVD's) downloaded by people and combine that with an analysis of the popular bands by download sampling (ala Nielson ratings from server logs at random), charge a premium for MP3/DVD downloads to the customer and the ISP's pay a "protection from procecution" fee to the MPAA et.al. that gets redistributed to the artists and I think we could have a system that allows artists to get revenue for their creations and let people pay as they play.
I think it is likely that people would end up paying relatively little for their MP3's (~20cents a download) and ~$1DVD. People could even install programs that monitor downloads by content type and even whether the file was played >50% of content to allow people to settle disutes with their ISP.
Of course this would stratify ISP's along the lines of MP3/DVD enabled/legal and those that can't afford to keep track of such data.
So, a question to the network gurus out there....Is it possible to monitor net traffic of MP3's/DVD's in real time? Any other ideas for a fair system that allows certain data types to get charged a bandwidth fee?
Cheers
no sig.
The very thing online delivery advocates have been moronically advocating is that music will be LESS commercial while in reality it will be more. Much more. Lower margins means less risk, more conservatism, and less choice. Now we can buy music as a product - ok, that's inherently commercial, but once I buy it, it's mine and commercial-free. Now we are going to get commercials with our music, or should I say, music with our commercials. What'll you have with your cheez-whiz ads - Shostakovich or Sibelius? Hmm?
What's next - corporate sponsorship? Since Metallica can't make money from records any more, the only way for them to survive is corporate sponsorship. They'll have to change their name to the Qualcomm Thrashers or some such (hey, it worked for sports stadiums!).
Ok, that'd be bad, but let's look beyond that. Obviously corporate sponsorship also means controlling content. Music will just turn into jingles - the artists will sing about products and services. Look forward to a bunch of songs about fast food, long distance calling plans, and lower insurance rates, but precious little about broken hearts, angry protest, or innocent love.
And, when you go downtown to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra -- oops, I meant CitiBanc Orchestra, Inc -- perform the AT&T theme song between the movements of Mahler's Fifth -- remember:
YOU ALL ASKED FOR THIS. YOU ALL ARE THE ONES WHO THOUGHT MUSIC WOULD BE BETTER AFTER IT BECAME UNPRODUCTIZED.
And, of course, a big, fat I TOLD YOU SO.
I just bought the new Deftones cd because I can't seem to download a full song on my 56k dial-up
Makes you wonder if the real reason for the hold up in fully deploying broadband net access may be to stall until copy protection is ironed out...The problem I see here is that you are locked into someone else's software. The plugin is probably only going to be available for MS Windows. Maybe Mac. Linux (x86 only) is very iffy. The idea of it being available for other platforms is absurd.
I would never be able to play it on my Amiga, or on a portable music player (e.g. a Rio-like thingie) or perform any other unanticipated use, unless I removed the plugin requirement. (By re-ripping the audio out, or cracking/REing it.)
In order to be useful, it has to be open, and that pretty much flies in the face of the "The modified MP3 format would require the plugin to work" idea.
IMHO, all attempts to restrict usage and playback will ultimately run into this problem. That's part of the problem with DVDs -- MPAA's attempts to force people to play them a certain way, are getting in the users' way and making it harder to enjoy the movies. Your MP3 idea has the same problem.
Now, don't get me wrong: I think that have an extra chunk in audio formats telling people where to send the money is a fine idea -- you just can't do anything that would force players to pay attention to it. Throw out the "The modified MP3 format would require the plugin to work" part and it's a good idea.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I thought MP3s were already advertisements for the CDs and artists that they originated from. Sure, they're a replacement for some people.
Still the idea of putting advertisements in advertisements has some sort of sick irony.
"By now you've probably opened it already.
The sound.
The fizz.
The taste.
It's all there telling your senses to come alive and taste all that life has to offer.
Coca-Cola enjoy."
This is on a can of soda that I ALREADY FSCKING BOUGHT! Sorry. (turns ad to wall, though of course the 'coca cola enjoy' mangled-grammar slogan is written all around the top of the can and cannot be escaped) But it really, really bothers me. I have tended to stick to the same snackfoods and sodas, and this one attempt to further yell at me with mangled advertising even when I have already APPEASED the damned manufacturer by buying the damn product and should be left alone to drink it... it _never_ stops bothering me, all I can do is make fun of it.
Well- not quite true. I used to drink only Coca-Cola for soda- and now I have taught myself to like Mountain Dew, as a DIRECT result of this ad campaign on the cans. I give Pepsi another year or so before they start doing the same thing. There's always tea- that I can drink out of a nice big mason jar that stands up to making hot tea well, and has no tea advertisements on it :)
I doubt it would work. It is currently pretty easy to find any popular song on Napster (granted it's slightly harder to find those not-so-common songs, but usually still possible), so why would I, if I wanted a song, willingly download a version with an advert in, when I can just get "the real thing" from Napster?
You might argue now that I probably wouldn't know when I start downloading which versions have ads in and which don't. But I'm willing to bet that nearly no Napster users would put songs with ads in them in their uploads directory, so 99% of the songs on Napster would be ad-free anyway.
Because it's so simple to get an ad-free version of a song from Napster, even if one did manage to accidentally download a song with an ad in, it's easy enough to just download a "pure" version of the song again.
Basically, some simple Darwinian-style "natural selection" would ensure that songs with ads in don't survive in the Napster environment.
You can bet this has more to do with WSUX not being able to sell all their advertising blocks rather than any altruistic desire they have to avoid annoying you with commercials. If they could sell the air time, they would.
I agree that this format is doomed, though. As others have noted, software to strip out the ads will be on the net within minutes of the first one of these being released.
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WordSocket Voice BBS Software
That reminds me of that sig that a guy uses here, in bold characters:
I just bought 2 Foo Fighters CDs that I wouldn't have if I hadn't heard the MP3 first.
Well, if that is what MP3s are for -- getting to know different bands and then going after their CDs -- something I (and this guy seems to) do, then these MP3s with advertisements would "do just fine", right? It would be like listening to a radio where each song is selected on demand (especially when fast connections become popular).
I actually don't think it's a bad idea...
"I'm looking through you, where did you go?"
Money certainly isn't everything nor can money buy everything. However, money certainly is the issue when dealing with human produced items/content. People aren't going to spend 40+ hours of their week for free. Like it or not, people have to make money to live in the world as it is. I'd like it as much as anyone else of money and all its evils were no longer necessary, but things simply didn't work out that way.
Well, even if it wasn't automated, all it takes is for one guy to cut out the ad in popular songs with whatever sound editing tool he's using, and then release the "clean" version out to napster. Any song with file name "BSB-New Song (No ad).mp3" is going to spread way faster than just regular "BSB-New Song.mp3"
Oh yeah, and realize that in no way am I endorsing Backstreet Boys. I don't want punks out there to think I'm some yippe teenager...
-Kefabi out.
Instead of automating the removal of advertising, just give users the option of clipping the first 30 seconds off of an mp3 file, or however long the ad is. That way, a user only has to be inconvenienced once and the file is good for further use.
BTW, to hell with the RIAA. Those bloodsucking bastards can all lose their jobs as far as I'm concerned. Recording artists get such a small percentage of the proceeds of record sales that the whole argument of napster and gnutella taking money away from the artists is bullshit.
I think the first thing that we do to make life better for recording artists is give artist 3 or 4 dollars an album sold, instead of 1 or half a dollar. Let the artists produce and sell their own material, either online, or through an online distributor. It's not like anyone needs anything other than a cd burner setup and printer for album covers and an ordertaking web site and UPS or Fedex to ship to record stores.
Record companies can burn. Record execs should not be forcefeeding us what they want us to listen to. If something is good, than it will be rated well on sites like mp3.com and no other advertisement need be made.
If money changes hands, then at somepoint that money has to get from the virtual to the physical and that point is very well tracked and logged. Being anonymous on the net is easy, being anonymous when you get your credit card bill or bank statement is not.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"The question comes up how then can we legitamize mp3s and allow all this discussion to stop about illegal copying. It seems that either it will manifest itself in advertisements, much like some streaming radio and video providers are doing or else creating a highly encrypted limited use format of encoding."
:) Remember when places like barnesandnoble.com were offering Stephen King's e-book for free on the day of its' release? People had already cracked the weak encryption on the e-books while they were still being offered for free. Unless you're talking about tossing something like 128-bit encryption on these files, forget about it. Where there's a will, there's a way, and I'll bet the farm that somebody will find a way.
Time to respectfully disagree...
For one, slapping ads on MP3s isn't going to work well. As somebody already mentioned in this forum, people have practically become desensitized to ads on the Internet, just look at the click-thru rates for banner ads. And when you throw that banner ad into a pop-up window, you've already given yourself the kiss of death. Besides, what is going to stop someone from finding ways to removing the ads from MP3s? There are already filters out there that remove the banner ads and pop-up windows from your browsing experience, a filter that removes ads from your listening experience may not be too far off.
As for the encryption...you aren't new to Slashdot, are you?
IMHO, there's really only one solution to this whole problem of MP3s: the artists, the industry, and the companies like Napster have to work together to find common ground, because there is money in MP3s. I believe that the musicians out there should be compensated for their hard work, but taking the "Shut down Napster" route that Metallica is on is just counter-productive and very stupid. Everybody knows that if Napster goes down, then programs like Gnutella and Freenet will just take it's place, and the "Sue 'em 'til they die" mentality of Metallica and the RIAA isn't going to work. The cat's out of the bag on MP3 trading, and unless everybody is willing to work together, find some common ground, and adapt to the changes, this problem will remain, no matter how many Lars Ulriches, Hilary Rosens, and Howard Kings there are out there.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
But how long would it be before anyone noticed the theft was going on? The bogus MP3 would not nessicarily totally supplant the real one, and the person getting the redirected money might even send one in four payments to the real band to try and mask the drop...
Then, once they were found out, I do not think it impossible to obscure the trail to the real theives - what if the money went through PayPal into a swiss account? Organized crime seems to be able to launder money without trouble, it doesn't seem like this would be much different.
Again, it just seems a lot more sure to have the payment originate from a server where you can be somewhat sure the right person is getting the money. I know if I had to rely on income from music that I'd prefer a server based payment mechanism.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My observations - I've got no ideia how MP3s are supposed to be but this is how it works for me:
I've rigged an icecast server on a machine streaming voice audio and another machine capturing the stream and saving it to an MP3 file. I use netcat to listen and redirect the output straight to the target file, VERY simple and VERY reliable (believe it or not).
Opening the MP3 file with WinAmp as it's being written to causes the player to ignore the file (like it's malformed). After the recording, opening it in WinAmp plays the file exactly like it's supposed to, it reads the correct bitrate and time. Reading the strings in the file I get a little plaintext header (the icecast server data) and that's about it, no other info.
Anyway, I've never worried about any proper MP3 header but all I know is that these stream-saved MP3s work perfectly with aparently no header.
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
I think embedding ads in the music is an excellent idea. That will get the heat off this topic and (possibly) make the music companies happy.
We all know that stripping the ad off the MP3 file would probably be trivial. So what's the big deal? For those of us who are technically inclined, this is the best of both worlds: The music becomes available, and we have the means of stripping the ads if we choose to.
This is similar to how people deal with the blinking VCR clock: The technically inclined stop it from blinking, the average Joe is too lazy to learn and lives with it, we all use our VCR to the best of our abilities or our tastes. The same could be applied to ads on MP3s: It won't be that hard to strip them for those of us who choose to; the rest of the world can (or will) live with them, and perhaps the record companies will be off our collective backs.
Hm... something to think about...
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
if the ads were riped out, they got their money (as you said it would be a upfront payment since mp3 would be next to imposable to track) so if the ads got ripped out it dose not effect their bottome line, the companys that bought the ads would not like it though.
Since we're basing the proposed system on trust and not enforcement of payment under threat of death (noble, and novel idea), there's another technique that could work even better.
Rather than tweak the MP3 system, leave it the way it is. What you need is something like PayLars that allows you to send a quarter or a buck or whatever to a band, DIRECTLY. This doesn't have to be tied to a song, music, whatever. Just set up a page (on mp3.com, but why bother with THAT even, any site will do, even the band's official page - a band is much like a business, right?!?!!) where people can buy music, or t-shirts, or whatever.
You cut the evil record companies completely out of the loop, and you get your money. Some bands are already doing stuff like this, although, I'm not sure how much of the end profit they see. (See tbe Insane Clown Posse web site.
I would love to send some artists some money.. it might even be more than they get off the CD sale; Right now, I just make sure to go see bands I like in concert when they show up, because I know they get a good chunk of that money.
The RIAA are money-grubbing sons of bitches. The MPAA are evil, but different, since it's the studios putting up the big money for the projects (and I've NEVER had a problem buying a movie for $30, and they have a good distribution system via theaters now. Their tacticts with DVD are dispicable, but, this is Corporate America).
..don't panic
The only problem I see is the potential to "hijack" the MP3 file, and release a version that sends money to someone else!
I think the PayPal angle is a really good idea, I just think it probably has to be server based somehow...
---> Kendall
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess I'm going to have to update my theory to include every kind of recorded sound as well. (Which is already happening, actually -- the last time I called someone and got a busy signal, it came with an ad by US West saying that for 75 cents, I could have the phone company call me back when they hung up.)
Yuck. Re-encode just to remove a bit? C'mon, that's disgusting!
Go forth and find out how to use mp3asm to cut up MPEGs and re-assemble them frame by frame, since I suspect any record company with an eye toward expediency would use a similar tool (albeit nice and cute and graphical, I'm sure!) to tack ads on. Jeez, the way some people casually toss around re-encodes you'd think MPEG was totally lossless.
This Idea will fly the major concern is money .. like the web it is free to the users not to business to post ads that is fine and dandy
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish." -Albert Einstein
Advertising exists because many people are suggestable. I've taken hipnosis courses. I'm not all that good at it, but if you were sitting, just casually talking to me, I bet I could embed a few suggestions without you even knowing it. It's such a powerful tool.
Some people are not as suggestable as others, but MOST people are. It doesn't have anything to do with how smart you are or how skeptical or cynical you are. If I just straight out told you "Buy Pepsi!" it wouldn't sink in. But after years and years of seeing Pepsi commercials, Pepsi signs, Pepsi shirts, Pepsi watches, Pepsi cans, and the Pepsi challenge, it does sink in, and the suggestion that Pepsi is what you want to drink becomes a part of people's lives. I bet you feel thirsty now
Speaking as a (admittedly unsuccessful, at least according to today's standards *wink*) musician, I have to wonder what all the fuss is about. I definitely agree with most people that the MP3 format is a great promotional tool, but I wonder how far it can go. I'm not speaking about the poor quality, either...
The idea of selling MP3 'singles' for $1 is rather silly. First off, no matter how many people claim to now, I don't think anyone would actually spend money on it. Secondly, aren't we missing what's important? As if the music scene isn't worse enough, we'd essentially be asking artists to make more "one hit wonders" and "singles" rather than be creative and well, artistic. Sure, you might argue that it would encourage musicians to stop making albums that only have one listenable song, but I think the reverse is true.
I don't buy CDs because I support the record industry or because I dislike Napster and such. I buy them because occasionally they can be seen as works of art. I'm talking about the entire package here -- artwork, lyrics, and the ever-important track-order. Yes, I've previewed some albums in MP3 (or Realaudio) before purchasing, but certain times when I've had entire albums in MP3 format I would never really listen to them. With most people, if anything a song or two from the album will get placed into a huge playlist and the entire meaning (and feel) is lost. But when I actually went out and purchased the said CDs, it gave a new perspective and I was able to listen to the songs the way they were meant to be listened to. There is definitely something to be said about the way an album is put together. Musicians such as myself put time into it .. , and I want people to have the whole experience, not just a snippet or two...
I'm rather sure that many people would disagree with me, but I'm just throwing another POV out there. *shrug* I still support the MP3 format and like to give out my music free, but I don't think it's a viable business option no matter how it's done. What really needs to be done is a boycott of the major record labels until they stop fucking over both the consumers and the artists...
www.innerworld.org
Of course, as someone pointed out, it appears said ads would be on top of the 5 -10 sec intros most songs have nowadays, which makes stripping useless.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Noise Records also has a bunch of MP3s from their bands on their web site, with a voice at the beginning explaining that it's a free MP3 from Noise Records.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What consumer is more targeted than someone who just downloaded Steve Millers' greatest hits?
tcd004
Sure, there will always be the tech savvy folk who will go to lengths to remove a short ad spot from the beginning of a MP3 song. However, think about this: there are a great number of AOL and like minded users who are just savvy enough to download MP3s and play them back. These are the same folks who drive home listening to their car radio which hey, guess what - puts those same ads in front of the songs they hear. They probably won't go through the trouble of removing an advertisement from an MP3 for two reasons:
1. It's simpler to just to cope with listening to the ad then figure out where to find and install a plug in for their player
2. A great deal of those "casual" Internet users (ala AOL, etc) feel that downloading free MP3's weighs heavily on their conscience. Some would pay for the songs if they were reasonably priced and available (which is something the labels are being silly about today). Simply listening to an ad kills two birds with one stone. They get readily available high quality music, and no guilt to accompany it.
This seems to me like a not bad way for the labels to make some dough off MP3's without having to deal with messy DRM solutions that create a useability nightmare for the consumer.
As an added bonus to the label, they get to bypass digital music distributors and retailers who take a piece of their pie. Nothing wrong with using Napster and Gnutella to your advantage.
Of course, I'll always keep my MP3 listening experience ad-free and "pure". I'd be the first in line to grab a hold of whatever hack becomes available. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't like ads, and I have no desire to turn my MP3 listening experience into a FM radio-like experience.
I know that personally I will fix or delete an MP3 that just has a bit of static at the beginning or end. There is no reason that I can conceive of that I would actually listen to the ad every time that I wanted to hear the song. Maybe the first time, but after that it would be gone.
Cheap Trick made Surrender '99 availiable online last year in MP3. The only catch? It came with a 10 second ad from the guys themselves saying "If you like this song, then go to cheaptrick.com and buy our new record." Rather nifty as far as promotion goes, I believe.
This guy is obviously a fake
That's presuming that you consider there to be only one Signal 11. Take my nick for instance, DreamMaster. I've had it for about fifteen years, and it easily predates my connecting to the internet. Now that I'm on, I find that are quite a few "DreamMasters" out there. Does the fact that I (probably ;-)) had my nick longer than them automatically make them "faking" my identity?
Slashdot seems to allow multiple people to register with the same nickname, and I for one am glad of it. There's nothing that pisses me off more than trying to register for some service only to find that every variation on my nickname is already allocated and "unavailable".
that was an *excellent* troll, Mr. AC. One of those trolls that really gets the original author all riled up. You even had me going for a second there. Then I realized - classic troll, and posted by an AC at that.
Ok. Let's imagine a scenario where the "No ad" becomes a popular thing. And what if the evil guys from the industry also put out on Napster the song with the ad named as "BSB - Crap Song (no ad).mp3" to confuse users?...
"I'm looking through you, where did you go?"
Not so easy to strip, also sort of "marks" the music as a "demo copy" legally distributed by the RIAA. This way if you want the full unedited version, you'd still have to buy the CD.
--
Twivel
One aspect that bothered me were the people who download mp3s because they don't want to buy entire albums because *gasp* they MIGHT actually like OTHER SONGS! People who buy entire CDs and wear one song out BOTHER THE PISS OUT OF ME. I know this is a my-own-opinion thing, but aren't all comments? If you download mp3s, wear out a song, and do nothing else to support that artist, you DESERVE advertising. Mp3s, in my humble (or not-so-humble) opinion should help get the music to the people. And after that is done, as Courtney Love once noted, you should buy the cd as a sort of "tip". Lets face it: the music industry is a service business. It may be a bit pretentious, but its the same as a high-class restraunt. They bust their ass, you leave a tip. An artist spends YEARS and MILLIONS making an album, and you download their music for FREE, you should 'leave something behind' as a sort of incentive that you appreciate it and support them. (ie. - Buy their CD)
And to get back to those 'people' who only listen to one song and kill it? As a musician, these people drive me INSANE. Albums are (9:10) meant to be listened to IN THEIR ENTIREITY. If your are one of those people who listen to one single song until it drives you crazy (are you listening radio?) then you deserve these advertisements and everything that comes along with them.
The best song in the world could be played a million times and everyone would hate it.
-Eddie Veddar
The results shocked them. VCs go for bad ideas. Real-world feasibility, profit potential, and technological innovation all showed ironclad negative correlations with VC interest. Impossibility, incorrect assumptions, marginal gain, and large capital outlay all drew VC capital in droves. In retrospect, it was obvious -- good ideas haven't been tried before ("It looks pretty risky..."), require technical savvy ("Tell me again about the packets."), and are often cheap and easy to implement ("What do you mean server software is free?"). Bad ideas are simple, and run entirely on their own internal logic ("People don't mind commercials on TV."). They're easy to understand. VCs always want to invest in The Internet, but they startle and confuse easily. Bad ideas help keep them calm and make them feel technological: I GET it! Selling ads on MP3's! Why has no one thought of this before? Why were all those other guys babbling about pier-to-pier and data covens?
With their newfound knowledge, these four geniuses used their remaining $2500 to start BII, which has been tirelessly working to plumb the depths of badness an internet idea can achieve. Although their standard fare is web-porno filters and pay-per-use software, they do come out with a real gem every now and then... I have to admit, this is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen. Rumor has it they're planning on starting a web site after they retire, showcasing for posterity their most stunningly awful ideas. I'm looking forward to it.
I don't think a compromise is the solution to this dilema. The record industry thinks they've figured out what we want. They think we are upset because they threaten this wonderful new technology. So, they made an effort to allow us to continue to utilize this wonderful technology and at the same their revenue won't be threatened.
What they fail to realize is that this fight isn't about the technology. What we are fighting for is the right to share with others. Why should the record industry be allowed to dictate who can share, what can be shared, and how it can be shared?
The solution is simple, place the power back into the hands of the consumer. Copyright was designed to promote innovation, not to protect Large business interests. The record industry may win this battle but they cannot win the war. Change is inevitable, it's just a matter of time.
Gee, this looks remarkably similar to this piece I wrote. Now the trolls are plagarizing me too.
This whole idea of embedding ads in music distributions is quite irritating but its not new. That British band\hype-factory Sigue Sigue Sputnik placed ads between the tracks of its debut album ("Flaunt It" I believe was the name). Bad enough hearing ads on free MP3s, imagine paying for them on CD.
(This is a response to numerous other replies on this thread) ,
MP3's, whether or not they have a true 'header'
such as an ID3v2 tag, are a streaming format by
nature. The mp3 itself is composed of individual
frames, each of which is less than 1/50th of
a second long. For VBR encoding, the encoding
changes from frame to frame. The frames
can be easily identified, even in a hex editor...
they all begin with a 'sync' signal,
being FFFX, byte aligned. Once you figure
out how long the frame is, from the data in the
frame's header, it's very easy to cut out parts frame by frame.
here's some perl code I wrote a while back for parsing an mp3 apart...
I used it to create a simple mp3 editor. (Can't find that right now).
Also, for those interested, you might want to go to ID3.org
which is where I got most of my info.
Just so this response stays on topic (hahaha),
I don't see how they could do this without
making it REALLY easy to strip them,
unless the ads were overlayed on top of the
audio data itself. In that case, some sort of
stripper (like the karoke plugins for XMMS)
out to be able to strip out the data.
In any case, as long as I can strip them out,
I love this idea... just like banner ads,
they make people money, and don't bother
me at all.
If anyone gets an actual example of such an
mp3, please post it here (or atleast email it
to me!).
-Slackergod
As long as they use the same ads repeatedly, just find the MP3 audio of the ad in one file, and search for that exact byte sequence in other MP3's.
It's unliekly that this would work. The same set of sounds can be encoded in numerous ways, and still be virtually indistinguishable from eachother. There's also other issues like frame boundaries, etc., that would change the bits, without actually changing the sound.
And what makes you think they'll just use the same ad over and over? Each song would probably have its own ad.
Alright, Tex. When you start paying for the services that you use every day on the web, then you can bitch and moan about having to view ads. Surely you don't think that running a server, having it hosted, and paying for content production is free. Should Yahoo, which is paying untold millions every year on hosting, suddenly drop all advertising? I'm sure they would if you would simply cough up the money so that they can still exist and make a profit. Until everyone starts paying for the services they use, people need to just shut up and count themselves lucky that they get all this great content for the price of viewing ads.
On Sigue Sigue Sputnik's album Flaunt they sold ads between each album cut.
It depends on who implements it. If a Linux geek does it, it'll be available for Linux. A Windows hacker, Windows. The best solution would probably be to make the modifications an open standard for anyone to implement. Maybe this could be an extention to OggVorbis?
The main problem I see with this approach is, that even if you use digital signatures to verify that the recipient of the money is legit, it would be easy to hijack. First, get the raw music from the modified sound file--it's been said many times before, but no matter how good the encryption is, it will always be possible to get ahold of the enencrypted sound data (if only at the hardware level). Then, add your own recipient data and digital sig. Pretend that you were the artist who recorded it. Distribute, let money roll in, rinse, repeat. The digital sig will only verify that the person who added the payment info is the person who added the sig, not that they actually made the music.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
OK, ad = caca. Period.
Anyway, seeing that the labels are now accepting the idea of not taking any money from a customer is a good thing.
Of course, there'll soon (or late) be ads removers, unless they are too complexly encoded in the song.
"Too complexly" ?
Ditto: This is a billion-buck market.
Any executive involved in this project will agree on giving caviar too some mathematics genious until he invents so Gordian a knot that themselves even won't be able to break them.
Anyway the hidden word here is "compromise".
It means that if you accept the ads, that you usually accept on the radio, then you can listen to anything you wish.
Now, we have to see how long, loud and disturbing these ads are gonna be... Which is another story.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Haven't you heard the hit song by LFO, "Summertime Girls"? (If you haven't, you are one lucky, lucky bastard) At one point they sing "I like the girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch" If that isn't product placement, I don't know what is.
Of course, nobody ever accused bubblegum pop boy bands of having scruples or artistic integrity...
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
well, my friends.... This is all well and good... But I do know for a fact that jellyfish are indeed edible for I have tasted one of these creatures myself. To imagine eating this delicacy... think about eating rubberbands. Oh, it is quite tasty if you like rubber band eating. There is a chance however that the jellyfish were improperly prepared when I had them, in which case perhaps I have to try them again. Well, thats all the news for now my furry little friends.
Now most music has a prelude, a quiet opener,
Ughh!!! Then they would probably keep talking during the opening parts of the song like bad radio DJs do.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Forget the ads.
Develop their own napster-like system, which is 200X better than the current one:
More reliable servers
better search mechanism
wider selection
etc...
Then advertise on the website and in the client software, as seen in Apple's Sherlock.
Think of the targeted ads you could develop. "Do you like the Beatles track you just downloaded. Buy it now by clicking here!"
The problem is they're too stuck in the old ways to consider this solution.
tcd004
Who say's they have to stick it before or after the music? What if they stick it at the beginning or end of the music itself? DJs on the radio will generally talk over the first N seconds of a song until the vocals kick in (or the last N seconds after the vocals have ended), so what's to stop the ad from being played over top of the music in the same way? I must say, I think I would find this easier on the ears than listening to the ads first as I think I could tune out the ads in my head if there were background music to listen to. Nevertheless, I think I'll be sticking with MP3.com for the forseeable future as no audible ads are even better still.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Trust the tale, not the teller. The above is not a troll.
Television networks sell commercial time to companies in order to make a profit from the free movies and shows they are broadcasting. Many television and vcr manufacturers include 'commercial skip' features which allow the viewer to black out or skip commercials while recording their own copy of the program. So far, I haven't seen the TV networks make a fuss about this. Why would it be a big deal for people to do something similar to commercials attached to mp3's?
Is that why /. has started displaying the user number in the link to User Info? I have seen people with identical nicks except for some unprintable characters, so that would explain it.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
if ads in mp3s become common place, then they can sell mp3s without commercials for more money just like cable tv premium channels. hey, it worked for them. bottom line, the producers want your money.
Go search on Napster for "Barenaked Ladies Pinch Me" and up will come a song by them that they've added ads for their new album in. I thought it was actually pretty cool that they'd decided to use Napster like they did.
A friend mentioned Mpcut to me (haven't tried it yet myself): http://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/Mpcut/
the real at&t mix
a heavy metal band - www.fearfactory.com :)
they were last year at ozzfest [or maybe 98, my memory is corrupted]. gotta love their remake of 'cars'
--- d'oh
Um if you've read any of my posts you'd know I post what's on my mind. That's all.
Or are you just listening to the drivel that they put on MTV?
Actually WHEN I buy a CD, it's usually from a group I've heard quite a bit already - either from live shows or a friend's CD. But have you looked in a music store lately? You have to do some serious digging to get beyond all the crap shoved in your face.
Thanks for listening.
SEAL
P.S. If I wanted to listen to crappy music with advertisements, I'd just turn on the local top 40 station.
Okay, so they want to put advertisements in mp3's. I don't know about you guys, but I would just fire up gnutella/napster/whatever and download some "old-skool" mp3s.. or make my own. I would suspect that the majority of mp3's on the net are homebrew (read "illegal") and will remain that way for a loooong time.
--The Groove
But that isn't the point. The point is to placate the RIAA. As long as they get their money, they won't really care what we do to the ad's. And since mp3's aren't really traceable, they can't tell whether or not the ad's are being cut out, so there would be no reason for the advertisers to pull their ad's. As long as it gets the RIAA off Napsters butt, I think it is a good idea.
IANAL... But I play one on
MP3s are already Kosher.
When are people going to realize that MP3 is just an audio format. There is absoutly nothing wrong with generating an MP3 file or stream. What is under fire is the generating of Copyrighted Music and then distributing them.
Guilt by association is wrong. Granted people here SHOULD know the difference between an audio format and an criminal act but the way 'the media' touts MP3 as an illegal format in itself sickens me.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
> Yuck. Re-encode just to remove a bit? C'mon,
> that's disgusting!
Oh come on. If these people will put up with ADVERTISEMENTS then they can tolerate a second generation mp3.
Ryan
I doubt this would be possible unless the MP3 format were changed to allow for some kind of ad header to be applied to the front or back. If it's just some audio that they encode and stick on the back or front of the MP3, how are you going to know which frames contain the ad audio and which contain the audio you want to hear?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Besides, why would someone listen to a free release with a commercial from a record company when they can just get MP3's from online or their friends? Duh!
I wonder how artists will feel now. If I start hearing advertisements for Burger King before For Whom The Bell Tolls I will consider Lars and the gang to have officially and irreperably sold out. I mean, what self-respecting artist would want to participate in this scam?
---
seumas.com
I bet he's wishing he'd patented that idea right about now.
Rock over London,
Rock on Chicago.
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters.
I think this is a great idea. Having a button like that is like having a "tips jar" on the counter. I know that in some occupations people (ie waiters/waitresses, etc.) make a good portion of their money from tips. I for one would be much more likely to give money to a band after hearing their song and liking it than before I get a chance to listen to it. While this may not be a big deal for bands with lots of radio time (cause you've probably already heard the song) it would be for little no-name bands. This would give unknow bands a chance to compete with bands signed by big name record. It wouldn't get them the same name recognition or anything, but it would put them on even footing in terms of distribution (cause you usually aren't gonna see mom and pop's record label down at your record store or on amazon).
The only problem I see with this is it necessitates having a credit card. I'm a highschool student and neither me nor most of my friends have their own credit cards.
It really is a great idea though...
Hi,
It would be easy to add a black list feature to gnutella. If you find an mp3 with an add, you could select an option and that server will be banned from the gnutella network. It could be difficult for a company to change it's IPs every day.
Stefan
Do you understand the concept of "Better than buying a fucking CD?"
I'm so sick of the advertising angle. Er maybe that's because I work late hours and arrive home to nothing but infomercials. Still...
I realize people feel the need to make money but this isn't the way to go about it. I'm even more amazed that advertisers would go for such a scheme. Look at the low click through rates on web banners. People are almost desensitized to this continual bombardment.
If the music industry (or small artists -- whoever) want to turn a buck off of downloadable music, I think selling individual songs is the better way to go about it. Charge more for the really popular tracks. But time and time again, people have shown that when you charge a fair price, many will cough up the $$ honestly. Many people dislike buying CDs because they get a song or two they like, and a bunch of filler crap.
Advertising in songs would just piss people off more IMO. I'm certainly not going to put up with that if I'm shuffling a large number of songs randomly all evening, for example.
Best regards,
SEAL
Buying a CD (hey, weren't they supposed to finally go down in price when we all switched from vinyl??) at $15 is not my idea of a fair tip for the typical song. Paying for every song on a CD also doesn't solve the problem of artists bundling crap with good stuff. That won't work anymore, artists, and you're going to have to deal with it just as Courtney said.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Perhaps not automated, but it wouldn't take much trouble. Convert MP3 to WAV, re-encode to MP3 -- setting your encoder to wait XX seconds before recording (most encoders have such an option). Voila. Done.
---
seumas.com
a tour organized once a year by ozzy osbourne. right now it's in its nineth year [actually, one of the most successful music tours in usa, imho]. :)
they promote a lot of new bands. overall, amazing show. i went there this year, in atlanta. 13 hrs of good music [although last years have had better bands], great fireworks [since it was 4th of july], and of course - OZZY
total cost:
44$ - tickets
9$ - beer at the concert [for 4.50$/cup it was too expensive]
20$ - beer before and after the concert
~40$ - gas
10$ - lousy acid
3$ - bottle of water [refiled at the fountain for the rest of the day]
0$ - sunburn, stickers, exhaustion, great experience.
overall, ozzfest is good. [www.ozzfest.com]
p.s., hfstival was great this year [www.hfstival.com]
--- d'oh
The question comes up how then can we legitamize mp3s and allow all this discussion to stop about illegal copying. It seems that either it will manifest itself in advertisements, much like some streaming radio and video providers are doing or else creating a highly encrypted limited use format of encoding.
Personally either format does not appeal to me, as I value the ability to have free control over a digital format of music while at the same time I want to listen to what I intend to listen to, not the advertisement which someone forces down my throat. The only other alternative that I see is for a change in the way people think of electronicaly distributed music, from the side of the artist and the "consumer". The consumer needs to realize that while the music industry sucks money away from the artist, the artist "stil" does make money and that revenue is the only way to produce more of the music which you apreciate. The artist needs to realize that there is a paradigm shift in how music and art is being distributed world-wide. No one wants to steal your creation, I haven't seen any reports of someone taking a Metallica song and trying to pretend it comes from the band Soil. If the artist can accept that we as consumers just wish to apreciate their creations, but are fed up with the high prices and difficulty in obtaining various formats then perhaps a happy medium can be obtained. I personally buy the CDs of artists which I feel are contributing to music as an artform and those who I enjoy listening to and I do think that this is the only way to legitamize MP3s.
Let the artists know that music distribution needs to be changed, while at the same time we still wish to support in some fashion the creative juices of great musicians.
Are we approaching a critical mass for advertising? I mean, people have accustomed themselves to ignoring ads on webpages- anything banner-like at the top of page I just won't see (except now you've read that you've looked, haven't you?)
Same with tv ads. Unless it's something incredible, as soon as an ad is over, there's no way I could tell you what it was, and I'm not special- How long is it untill advertisers screw themselves, and advertising just stops working?
Any thoughts?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
(I apologize for posting this offtopic comment, but as it concerns trolls, and I posted it in reply to a troll comment, I hope that moderators will at least credit me for trying. I do think that what I have to say here is of relevance to the Slashdot community at large, so I ask only that you please read the whole post before moderating me down.)
Do you hate trolls? Go ahead, you can admit it. Plenty of people do.
But what many people would be surprised to learn is that, when it comes right down to it, trolls don't want to be hated. Sure, they've been known to post lots of offtopic, inflammatory, or just plain stupid comments. But they're not doing it to get you to hate them. I mean, think about it. Does anyone really want to be hated? I'd venture to guess that no human being in all of time has ever harbored an honest desire to be hated. It's against our nature.
Some people say trolls do what they do to get attention, and in most cases, that's certainly true, even if only a small part of their motivation. But most trolls are just trying to be funny -- you know, in an endearing "class clown" sort of way. And some are trying to say something they feel needs to be said, perhaps even something truly insightful, though they lack to words to say it plainly.
Regardless, I submit that if trolls could do what they do, and still get people to like them, they'd jump at the opportunity in a millisecond. As someone with one foot in and one foot out of the "troll community", I think I'm in a good position to conduct an informal survey of what people's main gripes with trolls are.
Therefore, I'd appreciate it greatly if everyone who reads this would take a few minutes to respond to my Troll Poll. The poll options are several of the most common reasons people cite for hating trolls. I've done my best to make the list of options as inclusive as possible, though if you find that your reason isn't listed, please choose "other" and e-mail me with your thoughts. I hope that the results of this poll will be able to provide the troll community with some insight into how they might change their style, to make everyone happier.
Of course, trolls are welcome to respond to this poll as well. There are a couple of options that should suit them.
Thanks for your time. Moderators, if you still want to mod this down, fire away.
Take the Troll Poll!
One reason MP3's are taking off like wildfire is that CD's are *so fucking expensive*. We're talking $17 for some CD I may have never heard, that may have 2 good songs on it, or may suck completely. I quit buying CD's like 7 years ago, and have listened to nothing but dj mixtapes, vinyl and MP3s ever since.
:(
Here's your business model: a subscription service offering unlimited access to over 1.9 million tracks for $5.95/mo. At a price point like that, it becomes much easier for me to pay the subscription fee than to track the damn things down and jam up my precious hard drive space with them.
p.b., with no j
People can and do change channels during radio and TV commercials, and yet that advertising business model still works.
In conjunction with legal harassment of sites carrying "unlicensed" MP3's with the commercials removed, and crucifying an occasional unlucky user of such sites, I can see a scenario where getting the official MP3's and putting up with the commercials is the less stressful choice for enough listeners to make the business work.
I could even imagine this model pushing the pendulum to the other side with things like affiliate commision programs, where web sites have an incentive to spread the official versions and see that "unauthorized" ones are reported and prosecuted.
Do you mean there are more than six good bands a year? Amazing!!!!! Gee, I had no idea that the RIAA held bands back. But this is the way I've felt all along. The power is going to go back to the consumer to choose what they want to listen to, NOT what the "industry" feels like "selling" us. If the RIAA doesn't like that, well, too bad. Musical expression should be free (mabey not free as in no money but free from corperate control I mean) and that is where it is going to go from here. Since I turned 21 a year and a half ago, I have seen countless struggeling and talented local bands. The days of make or break are over. There will still be some big names, no doubt, but I believe it will be mostly middle ground level bands, with a multitude of choices for the consumer. The RIAA can stop Napster, mabey even Gnutella, but I doubt they will ever control people as a whole. Encryption won't stop an analog audio stream, advertisements can be edited, net connections will get faster, and MP3 or some format will be traded until something comes along to replace the computer. (now that's a deep thought, what would?) They are going to just have to face the music, no pun intended, and realize that their reign on musical control is over. Sorry guys!
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Get beyond that line and I stated what I think is a better way to profit. Plus, my point was that advertising is intrusive, and a poor angle to draw revenue from.
Of course, maybe you're just trolling. Who knows.
Best regards,
SEAL
Why get a free release w/ commercial instead of from a friend? Simple, to support and encourage your favorite artists. That would be enough to convince me, but those versions will be easier to find, and hosted on fast connections. I can live with that.
Anyway, the advertising will probably be very short, 10 secs max i'd guess. More would scare everyone away.
-N
Now, what the modification does is put a little "buy me" button on the player. When you are listening to a song, you are offered a chance to send a little money to the artist who made it. You don't HAVE to send the money, but basically you make it such a small amount that people won't mind sending it. Then you just have the system bill your credit card.
I've noticed that PayPal allows increments as small as 1 cent to be charged, so I had the thought of using Paypal somehow as the charging system. Basically it would allow a small band to start distributing, getting some money back, and would require no significant infrastructure to process.
If you wanted to take it a step further, you could provide a way for the people to buy a related CD, T-Shirt, etc. Or maybe have a contest where if you chipped in your money your name would be entered to win something cool. A personal performance of the band maybe, or autographed band items.
The trick to all this is to insure that the system is neither intrusive nor restricting. Requiring a plugin is no big deal as long as the effort to install a plugin is more effort than it is to reverse engineer it away. Asking for payment, but not being intrusive about it, insures that nobody has an incentive to break your system.
Sure, with such a system nobody is guaranteed to get a dime, but I think most people would honestly be happy to send 50 cents to an artist if they liked the song. If you get your music distributed broadly enough, the 50 cents can add up quickly.
By the way, if you want to make such a system, go right ahead. My idea is now out there in the public pool of ideas for you to use as you see fit. In fact, I beg of you to make such a system because I think artists should get money, but I want it to be easy for them to get it direct from consumers without a bunch of money glutton corporations in the middle.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Perhaps this is obvious to everybody, but I wanted to make sure it was mentioned publicly. Any attempts to alter MP3s, including imbedding advertising, is bound to fail as long as services like Napster and Scour exist. Why? Napster users are usually not downloading MP3s that were posted by the record companies or even by the artists. As long as Joe Winamp can rip all of the tracks on his Smashing Pumpkins CD and post them to Napster, nobody will want to download these newfangled Ad-ridden tracks. In order to get internet users to download an MP3 with advertising, the label must offer something that makes the tracks more appealing to users than a ripped track. Since people hate advertising, it would have to be a really spectacular improvement in sound quality or some other area that no free service offers. The music industry constantly underestimates the number of options open to people determined to download free music. Napster doesn't just keep a big database of songs and make everyone download from that. As long as there is free exchange of music between internet users, nobody is going to go searching for the "official" MP3 of a song, especially if it has an ad in it.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
They can keep track of all your downloads, and bill you at the end of the month.
Napster can then pay the record label, the publishers, the managers, the producers, the laywers, the street promotion team, the direct radio promotion staff, and, in some rare cases, the artists.
They could turn themselves into something similar to the Harry Fox Agency.
- daniel
- daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
I see some parallels with the television and VCRs.
Well, we had programs and then we had ads. Networks thought people will watch programs and they will make money from ads. Then VCRs came. With VCRs you could fast forward the Ads, but they were still a pain. So you got features like Ad skip - maybe with help from Networks who might have received a cut of the money.
I am sure the same company "Digital Payloads" can make money from advertizers and then come up with a player which will filter out the Ads and make money from that.
So they have their cake and eat it too.
Did I just miss out on a business plan by making it public.... I could have built the decoder...
My MP3's already are kosher dammit! They're mostly rips of my own purchased CDs. I know that RIAA are trying to say that "oh - when we said you could have a backup, we didn't mean you could have a good backup", but AFAIK, that is merely their position, and besides, I'm not American - your earth weapons cannot harm me. I don't play the CD and MP3 at the same time. I don't then sell the original CDs or lend them out (much). I don't trade the MP3s I've made.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
and call it advertising. At least you can't and still expect to be in business the next day. This just doesn't seem to make any sense anymore. It seems that more and more of the economy is being turned over to 'supported by advertising' revenue models. Eventually, somebody has to sell something sometime.
I know, almost everything solid still requires an exchange of cash, but what percentage of the cyberworld will be turned over to advertising support before there is no more money flowing? Or will the Internet go the way of TV, where all the content was supported by advertisements (and sucked)?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
At least when I listen to the radio I get ten, Ten, TEN songs in a ROW on NONSTOP-ROCK WSUX!!!.
Now I'm supposed to hear an ad in between every song? Right, that's a good one.
Yet another company trying to apply a 20th century revenue model to mp3 music distribution.
Few artists are truly capitalizing on MP3, by using it to generate revenue through merchandise and concert tie-ins and building targeted consumer databases (you may hate the idea, but mp3 would be a great generator for this). Unfortunately, as many have said, these revenue models cut out the music label dinosaurs, so now we have this company trying to make money off of MP3 for RIAA. It makes as much sense as trying to sell software to generate revenue for oil companies.
MP3 is one of the best promotional tools a band could wish for. Here's a few ideas as to how to use it.
Place all your songs on your own website for people to download for free.
In the comment tags of each MP3 place your website address so that those who get it from other sources (eg napster etc) get the address.
On the same website announce tour dates, ticket prices, and where to get tickets.
Sell merchandise from the website.
Sell CDs from the website (the quality is better than MP3 and if the price is right and ordering is easy then those of us stuck in 56kbps land will snatch them up). Without a blood sucking record company you'll find you can sell CDs really cheap, and yet make more money per copy than any of the well known artists.
Other things you may like to try include:-
bombarding local and national radio stations with demo tapes and include the website address with the tape
including MP3s on your site that contain say 20 seconds of music from each track. That way we get a taster before either downloading the whole thing, or ordering the CD, or deciding that you're the greatest band ever and I'll be at that gig when you play near my town.
I honestly think that we'll find that the new music business will contain many artists who make a good living, rather than the current few who make a fantastic living.
Phil.
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock n roll! - Bonn Scott 1976
User Info for Signal 11 (7608)
This guy is obviously a fake
SiQnal 11
-=God Hates Me=-
This is so old-media it's pathetic. First of all, who would buy these ads. They'll annoy users. Users already are bombarded with ads everywhere. Ads are fine, but in an ad-ubiquitous environment, I don't see how you can make money by slapping on another layer of ads. Especially when the ads are obtrusive and annoying, which it sounds like these will be.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
If this idea convinces some guitar playing boob thinks "Napster bad!" that Im not ripping him off too bad... it'll will save me the trouble of having to find another napster screename every so often!
The problem with adding advertisements to .MP3 files is that they're going to dramatically increase the size of the .MP3 file anyways. That's something that is a big no-no even if you have a "fat pipe" broadband ADSL or cable modem connection.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Okay, granted, this won't work for all the openNap clients out there, but maybe Napster should introduce a "feature" to their windows client that automatically concatenates your newest download to an ad for a "napster-friendly" artist.
Next time Joe College student d/ls Enter Sandman, he gets an ad for "Bobs Techo Garage Band." Maybe then Napster can argue it actually promotes independant artists.
Heck, maybe then the big record companies would buy into Napster so labels could advertise on competing material.... That'd be a fun monkey-wrench.
I have a solution: product placement! E.g.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try.
Air-sole Nikes below us
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
holidaying in LA.
Woohooo
You may think I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope one day you'll try out
An Acme matress and have some fun.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
i have a few tunes from the last few years that had similar advertising embedded in the song. a waste of bandwidth imo...as spam + mp3 = crap.
mx
I think the past twenty years of North American culture should answer that question for you. Of course, just be glad that things haven't progressed as far as they have in David Foster Wallace's infinite jest , where the government sells the names of years, and the people have "the year of the depends adult undergarment"...
yet
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
That was what is called a lunker.
They flip around so vigorously in the bottom of the boat. Sometimes you have to club them with a little club that real fishermen keep handy for such purposes.
Unfortunately, that was a rough fish. Not allowed to throw them back, not even allowed to throw 'em up on the bank. They make nice fertiliser, though.
I think a lot of people are missing the obvoius solution for this potential problem. First off nobody would even download the add ridden mp3s when they can get addless from a CD somebody ripped, and second the solution wouldn't be some kind of automated add stripper. Odds are that it would be too unreliable and companies would find ways around it. You don't need a whole mp3 file for it to play so the software solution would just be a small program that would remove the data from seconds 0-30 or wherever the add happened to be.
is nothing sacred? are we going to soon see art galleries sprinkled with ads too?
*this painting was painted by beat jackson pollock, known for dancing around his canvas while listening to music... oh, yea, drink coke *
-thinkpol
It was a joke, man...
Eh...
I used to program ID3 tag editors..and yeah, it would take about an hour to make an app to strip that bad boy out.
try again record comps, this wont work.
,
faeryman
It's not the fact that his name looks almost exactly like Signal 11's, but he's copied the userinfo verbatim on him. Same website, same email, same style of sig.
-=God Hates Me=-
[ RANT MODE = ON ]
E-Mail...the WWW...Usenet...software...and now MP3s??? Is there anything out there the advertisers won't try to slap an annoying ad on? Enough is enough already! I get bombarded with enough ads on the web as is, I don't need to have any more ads being forced my way!
[ RANT MODE = OFF ]
But keeping on the topic here, just throwing out the ad-infected MP3s on Napster and related services isn't going to help them spread. Once someone catches on that there's an ad in their MP3, *poof*, away it goes with one simple touch of the delete key. And if everyone deletes their ad-infected MP3s, then you've just lost the propagation (sp?) that is needed for a particular MP3 to spread around Napster.
*sigh* Yet another stupid marketer...
--
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Check Steinberg.com or any one of the Audio DSP places. They've got plugins for a variety of different recording progarm which strip out "noise"
Personally I still think Corporate Rock Sucks (including SST)
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
There was a band devolved from Billy Idol's Gen-X called Sigue Sigue Sputnik, had a few dance hit songs in about 1984.
:-)
Their tapes and albums had short ~10 second advertising blurbs between each track. The only ones I remember was for l'Oreal hair treatment, and there was one about a mens magazine which was out of business after about issue 3. If you know the band, you'll understand why they have hair care ads
I've heard some other bands do this too, as a way to suck more money out of their short lived careers. Some of the european teen pop one hit wonder bands recently have product placement all through their music and cover artwork. But I don't buy those albums.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
hehe just kidding.
But really the music industry should either embrace it and napster, or create thier own superirour technology (codec) or heck they could make a extremeley high quality distribution model that would have "high quaility" mp3s and other record companies could sell thier songs to a "third party" that would distributed thier songs for them "ala napster like device"
is it possible that I could have used more quotations?
Darn it, we almost got away with it until you had to tell them that it wouldn't work CmdrTaco. Come on man, who's side are you on?
Eh...