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Rent Music Over the Net
NerveGas writes: "Financial Times is reporting that two competing services, both backed by major music labels, are about to offer legal music downloads. For $9.95 per month, you can download up to 100 songs per month. The catch? Cancel your service, and you lose the ability to hear *any* of the songs that you've downloaded. There are other caveats, as well - but at least it's a start." So what happens after you've got your hard drive filled with rented music and the monthly fee goes up to $199.95/month? Pay up, or lose it all...
It seems pretty obvious that it will take 1 week for someone to 'break the code' so to speak and allow you to keep your music.
My guess: When you buy a CD, you don't have to agree to any terms or conditions (at least explicitly). However, when you sign up for this service, they can put more restrictions in the contract than exist in a CD purchase.
Presumably, they can also watermark your files and know who it is that distributes the music online, and then come after you for breach of contract.
there are 2 kinds of people. those who divide people into 2 kinds, and those who don't.
Didn't you know that you can't use the word "legal" before the words "music downloads" in the United States? The RIAA doesn't believe in fair use, remember. The only legal way to listen to music is to buy a grossly overpriced CD that the actual artist MAYBE gets $0.10 from the sale of, and play it on your non-computer-based CD player.
ANYONE offering any type of music downloads will eventually get shut down, especially places like emusic that allow you to just download an MP3 (straight into the dirs you have shared on audiogalaxy and gnutella, of course).
Stop the RIAA before we all have to stop listening to music all together!
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
This really isn't any different from a stream-on-demand service. You pay x per month, and this gives you the right to listen to this music whenever you want, until you stop paying.
So... what's the point in downloading it? If the music isn't yours to keep, there's really no point in downloading it at all. Just stream, if you must.
However, I will not be subscribing. If I can't listen to my music while I travel (Which is a lot), then there's really no point. I'm not going to sit down at my PC whenever I want to listen to a certain track. And I'm willing to bet that this music format isn't compatible with the various MP3-on-your-hifi devices kicking around at the moment, let alone any of the portable music players.
I'll stick to buying the CDs, making MP3s, burning onto CD-R and playing them on my Diamond Rio, thanks.
...this me too, mentality that corporations have to glom onto someone elses good idea and try to make money, but at the same time make up their own rules for the whole thing, is totally out of control. They just keep taking cracks at this stuff, it never really works out because the real target consumer knows there is something better(Un-restricted MP3's, Ogg), cheaper(Free), and easier(name your P2P). Gnutella, and Napster et al, have good concepts, but the concept isn't to make money. Hell the distrubution medium(The Internet) was never ment to make money, just share information...things have always been free on the net, and always will be, I remember my best friend downloading Rush, Counterparts in college in Sun .au format in the early 90's it wasn't perfect, because at the time it had to be converted to .wav becuase we couldn't find a .au player for dos/windows, but it was out there.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Yes, in a rental agreement they can do just that, If you are no longer renting it you have no fair use rights associated with that item.
Its no different than renting a video, If you rental is expired you return the video, theres obvioulsy no way to make you return an MP3, so it is encrypted and only plays while a member of the service.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
The record companies don't get it. People want music that they can have... forever (or at least seemingly so). It has to be easy to deal with, portable, and saveable.
.mp3 is a reasonable standard until something better comes along.
I'll sign up when....
- They offer high quality files. 192Kbps MP3 is the MINIMUM. Lossless CD quality would be better.
- They use an open format. No ticking time bombs. No proprietary players. Ability to take those files and burn onto CD.
- They offer a LARGE and unrestricted catalog. I want obscure songs, b-sides, pretty much anything that's been commercially released.
- They offer cover and insert art in a high quality format. If I download a CD, I want to re-create the whole CD... including the artwork.
If they do that, yea, $10 or even $20 per month is more than reasonable. Anything short of that and I'm not buying.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Put all music online.
Let me access it on any PC, anywhere.
Let me download it to a portable player.
It doesn't matter if it's on a proprietary player in a propietary format, so long as I can get to it anywhere I have net access and a sound card and that it sounds good. At that point, I might consider it an essential service that I would pay monthly for, like phone and utilities. I already pay extra for having a phone I can carry around with me, and since I love music, the idea of paying $120 a year (which is far less than I spend on music right now) for unlimited access to any music sounds good to me.
Wonder if there'll be subsidization for low-income families like there is for phones and such?
The problem as I see it is that using p2p clients doesn't exactly give you a broad range of music to select from. Trying to find something slightly obscure is frustrating, and usually fruitless.
Then again - if record labels make all of their CDs available via a service like this, then it only takes one member of the service to re-encode them as MP3s and make them available via p2p. Then i'll finally get my "slightly obscure" mp3s ;)
This is why the record companies...
* don't want you to own CDs that can be played on computers, or anything smarter than a dumb CD player hooked up to your analog stereo,
* asked Congress to pass a bill that required all computers to provide copy prevention technology that would criminalize exactly what you describe, and
* passed the DMCA, which allows them to use any crappy access control measures they want, and not only will it be illegal for you to walk right around them, it will be illegal for you to tell someone else how to walk right around them.
In about ten years it sure as hell will be, unless Congress is repeatedly hit with the cluestick.
And maybe even if they are. The computer manufacturers, content providers, and production companies (who are merging and will all be the same eventually anyway) would much prefer you to lease a Playstation, rather than own a computer. Much more profitable in the long-term. Sure, some companies will lose out if the industry makes the transition from selling you a Turing Machine to selling you a souped-up Gameboy. But the industry as a whole will benefit.
I've been an Emusic subscriber for over a year, and I love it. Most of the content on the service is nominally "indie", including some truly great labels: Matador, Fax, SpinArt, etc. There are large quantities of back catalogue for musicians as diverse as Thelonious Monk, Pete Namlook, Ennio Morricone, They Might Be Giants, Napalm Death, Kool Keith, The Apples In Stereo and Yo La Tengo. You're supporting forward-thinking artists and labels, not the Big [Six, Five, Four? -- I lost track a few mergers ago.]
What's cool about it is that Emusic trusts subscribers to be adults -- there is no usability-sapping copy protection, so I can burn CD's for the car, load them on my living room mp3 jukebox, or whatever.
Right... so, either they start giving you money with the music, or you'll just download it for free. So they can't make any money from music. Yup, would be great if they realise this, because if they ever seriously beleive that's the case they'll stop making music! No, it isn't going to happen anytime too soon, but if people think about music like this, soon we won't have record companies, and while they may be generally rather evil, they have nice advantages like being able to fund the use of a professional recording studio.
Basically, yes you can keep downloading your music, yes you can get it free, but you can't get the quality of performance or recording you currently enjoy, unless you pay for it!
Just the other day there was a hilarious comic on dilbert about some guys in a swamp whose business model was to sell mud to people who live in mud.
I don't see how this is any different. First of all the services these companies are competing against are 0$. On top of that there are lots of restrictions on what you can do with the music you download and you lose the music once you stop paying.
There's simply no way this can be profitable. It has failure written all over it. Hosting the music costs money, licensing the music costs money, writing and maintaining the software needed for playback and license enforcing costs money. There's no way that cost can ever be recovered.
Jilles
Dixv (not to be confused with the codec) was this DVD based movie format. The Divx -DVD's and your player would phone in and charge you every time you played the movie..
I think there was a larger fee to "unlock" the movie permanently for 1 player as well. It was supposed to make rentals that you didn't have to return etc..
Judging from the complete lack of Divx/DVD players in stores, I'd say consumers didn't go for it. So being fast learners they try it with music now..
Of course with the headphone jack and a MiniDisc player the issure becomes moot..
I don't think that the record labels want or expect these services to succeed. They are designed to fail. When they fail, the record labels will have the cover of "plausible deniability" they need. They can say that honest people don't want online music, that they really want to purchase CDs, and that the role of the Internet is to accept orders for copy-protected CDs that can be mailed to them. Now nobody will believe this, but it will be all that Congress needs. That's where the game is played.
And because Congress is in their pockets, they're protected by the DMCA. If (well, "when" is more appropriate) anyone cracks the service, they'll be liable for prosecution. So will web sites that post the cracks, although of course there will be just as many of these as there are sites carrying DeCSS. Again, it'll be a way of separating the world into "thieves" and their good customers.
These services download proprietary encrypted formats, which is why there can be timebombs. They might be semi-useful for a Kid In A Dorm Room, for whom the computer (consumer grade Windows box with subwoofer, etc.) has become the music system. But if you can't move it to a real disk or portable MP3 player, then it's not going to be usable on your real hifi system or in the car. Big whoop. Again, designed to fail. Why pay $10/month for what is, in effect, the right to sample things?
Now personally, I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for the right to download some number of tracks a month, in an unrestricted format, and/or to sample (stream, whatever) from a catalog before buying. Then I'd burn my own CDs. The artists could make just as much as they do now. But the record labels are wedded to their high-overhead business models and don't care what the customers want.
I expect an impasse to last for some time, with online filesharing continuing one step ahead of the law, until some successful artists band together and join an alternative to the Big 5 record labels. That alternative would promote online distribution as well as sell CDs, and would have the clout to buy radio play. No, not MP3.com, which was basically unsigned acts.
This is the worst logic the music business has come up with since the price of CDs. The price of CDs, more than anything, IMHO, is the reason that P2P sharing is so overwhelmingly successful. If they's make CDs available for $3-$6 (and there's plenty of fat in that price), who'd spend $2M on equipment and $20 a month connection to download commercial tracks?
I love it. This is the first time the fans have run the music business since the sixties. This round, they're going to lose.
The record labels do not make music. All they have and have really ever had is broad distribution power and plenty of $$$. Artists signed up to a major label get what, 10% of the profit, if that? The importance of the distribution power is largely becoming irrelevant with the internet and the advent of p2p services.
Audio and video pro equipment is getting cheaper and cheaper. Another chip in the block of the necessity of record companies. Personally, I have experienced the massive price decreases and quality increases in the video market. Professional-quality non-linear editing is to be had for less than $2k. 10 years ago that would have been completely unthinkable. Similar advances have been made for pro audio equipment.
The record labels are facing a grim future where they are obsolete. They are dusty old giants whose time is quickly passing, and the inertia to change is immense with them. All they're good for now is to get a CD into a store and a song on the radio. Still rather important, but you don't absolutely NEED them to get your music out to the masses anymore. There are more connected internet computers out there than there are music stores...
It's a shame they're trying to secure their future through legislation, litigation, and strawman services like this worthless thing (of course, done to show how internet users are evil THIEVES.) They will get their comeuppance soon enough.
... but I'd like people to think about why it won't work. The most obvious point is the whole needing to maintain your subscription - even at $10 a month for 100 songs, most people aren't going to be into effectively committing to this service for life.
Step back though, consider why they're doing this. Do people really think that the record companies get a kick out of not letting people listen to music while on the move? If you do - fine, I'd like to know why, but its your opinion. I feel more though that the fear the copying of the files.
Can anyone here genuinely tell me that most of the efforts toward breaking the security on this will be so that someone can distribute music amongst their friends? I'm reasonably willing to bet it'll be broken because someone wants to copy files illegally, not because they're frustrated with the subscription model. Maybe I'm wrong - DVDss were a good example of where this theory has been wrong - but even there, the information was rapidly adapted to allow people to copy DVDs.
Perhaps people could think more about how illegal copying affects everyone. If you don't agree with the pricing of some music, sure don't buy it, but also don't copy it. Make a statement that you're willing to go without this, because it costs so much, not a statement that you're going to copy it because its cheaper.
Also, everyone that's saying "this model will never work, its not what I want" - are you going to do anything about this? Are you going to contact any of the companies involved, and tell them you're opinions in a calm and rational way, or are you just ignore the entire thing. These companies won't realise what people want, through magic, so tell them!
It'd never work. These "multiple free streams" are clearly in violation of the DMCA. I mean, where's the copyright protection? If I want to give out copies of music I've heard over these "streams," as you've suggested, who's going to stop me? Surely, these "streams" will destroy the music industry! If we go sharing these "streams" around, artists won't get compensated for their work. Take away Mammon, and where's the motivation for original work like Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilaria, and the thousands of other pop stars with breast implants going to come from? What about proportionality? If these "streams" are "broadcast," as you say, then any number of people will be able to tune in, and artists will never get compensated based on who gets listened to the most. This is a very terrible idea. I'm thankful that these "streams" violate the DMCA -- I mean, where else are twleve year olds going to find pop stars to jack off to except the RIAA.
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"It's a very immature business (where) most of the important mistakes haven't been made yet," said Aram Sinnreich, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix.
Oh, I don't know - they seem to be doing a damn fine job of trying to stuff all those mistakes in. For years now a few of us have been saying on Slashdot that what the publishing concerns are gunning for is a pay to play world where you never own an actual product and never get to control any aspect of your temporary rental of the products you pay for - except for deciding when you press "play" (provided your subscription is up to date, natch).
Basically, the existance of technologies that by nature should make the ownership of a copy of a particular piece of intellectual property much cheaper and much more useful than it has been is being exploited as an excuse to make the act of paying for the right to access intellectual property more expensive and much less useful.
Go to a record store and buy a regular CD - any artist or label you want, if they have it in stock. Rip it to your hard drive. The thing is basically immortal now, barring accident or theft. Rip it to MP3s, make your own mixes, use your personal server to stream your own web station you can listen to at work. Make compilation CDs for the drive or vacation. You never pay to access that content again. Sick of it? Sell it, recover a tenth of your purchase price.
Or: Buy a subscription to a service. Limited access to a limited catalog. You can bet there are all sorts of restrictions on reformatting, how many machines the thing can reside on, etc. Andpay to maintain it. And pay to maintain it. And pay to maintain it. The longer you ae a member the more diffuse it becomes - you are paying a smaller and smaller amount for the maintenance of each song. But you NEVER get to stop paying.
There is only one group of copnsumers these services could be appropriate for - people who spend more than $10.00 per month on CD singles. For the rest of us (I've never bought a single in my life) it isn't even relevant. But it is a warning shot. They're gonna try to use the DMCA to completely eliminate ownership of a registered copy of copyrighted material, an act which, given the results of the recent 2600 case, pretty much allows them to eviscerate the concept of fair use. Alternatives (like emusic.com) are the ONLY solution. People who care NEED to start supporting artists who choose not to join the publishing giant slave-parade. Information may not want to be free but it doesn't have to be expensive.
Cheer up - the publishing industries', particularly the music industries' time of maximum vulnerability is upon them. Keep your eyes peeled troops and get ready to support the good guys.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Actually, the goal isn't to maximise "profits" now and immediately, the goal is to maximise shareholder value and ensure *long-term* growth in shareholder value. So, from time to time, a company will actually experience a dip in earnings while they are re-tooling themselves for long term survivability. On income statements for public companies, you'll often see a line item for "restructuring charges" that reflect the company going through growing pains and adaptation.
Therefore, if the record companies hold on to their dying business models and do not adapt in light of newer, sustainable models (such as emusic) right in front of them, their boards of directors really do deserve what's coming to them.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The great advantage of the internet is that we can have a huge content available for a little (distribution) price. With napster, we typed the name of an artist and had a lot of content from that artist. Now, it's more and more difficult to hear the music we like. The street stores can't have everything. We can buy a CD online but we have to wait and of course, we have to buy the whole cd.
The music distributors are in fact putting restrictions on what we can hear. They select what we have to hear, and how to hear it (windows media player, not on a cd, not on a portable device, not if your rental expires) and then promote and distribute it. It is well known that independent distributors can't survive in front of the big ones. No wonder the EU commission is planning a lawsuit.
Smaller artists are getting screwed because they can't get to their public as easily as they could with the internet.
If you want to support them, go to their concerts.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
"file transfer" quality being crucial to how the music sounds ? I bet some kind of music is playing forever in the reporter's mind, impeding his thoughts.
And the labels' services also offer protection from viruses.
Viruses? What viruses? Any evidence of an MP3 virus? Not that I ever heard. Hits of FUD campaing, if you ask me.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
You really haven't been keeping up with what the bastards are up to. The days where people will be allowed to create drivers for Windows, are coming to an end. In the future, Windows is going to refuse to load drivers unless the driver is able to authenticate itself (e.g. with a crypto signature). And the only way to get your driver signed, will be to agree to certain legal contracts with a certain authorities.
You're thinking of Windows as an open system that anyone can develop for, which runs on general-purpose computers. That's 20th century thinking, you old geezer.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Even if I wanted to continue to pay $9.99 a month to listen to my music forever, what happens when the company goes under? My music would be as worthless as a Circuit City DIVX player.
Why does it suprise anyone that this has happened. Look where eveything is going: Microsoft wants to 'rent' you software (.NET). Cable companies rent you content (don't think they wouldn't make it impossible to tape/save/record if they could). The music industry will let you download music, but you can't play it if you stop your subscription.
The revenue stream for selling things once isn't as nice as one that comes in every month. M$ looks at AOL -- wow, you don't just sell 1 copy of windows (that maybe gets copied), you get your $25 (or whatever it is these days) every month!! Hence MSN (or whatever their ISP service is called). Look to the phone company (though, that model has changed quite a bit, but you still pay a flat fee per month, but it's for a service rather than 'content').
We will see more and more companies try to move to this revenue model; whether it succeeds is more up to the consumer than then company.