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...

Comments

Bah

[jdc180]

One or two record lables offering this kind of service doesn't interest me one bit. Until it becomes possible to get ANY song on this type of service, no matter how cheap, I'll continue to use my free p2p client of choice.

Re:Bah

[reachinmark]

Until it becomes possible to get ANY song on this type of service, no matter how cheap, I'll continue to use my free p2p client of choice.

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 ;)

Why rent when you can buy?

[samael]

www.emusic.com will allow you to download perfectly ordinary MP3 files for $10 a month. you can then do what you like with them.

If you support them, they'll grow and grow...

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[fatwreckfan]

I agree. E-Music is great. You can get albums on that site that aren't even in print any more. Sign up for a free trial and you can download 100 mp3s that are yours regardless, and if you don't want to stay on with them just cancel. I've done it, and it was simple and easy.

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[CaseyB]

There must be a catch.

No Britney. <ducks> Whine all you want about how great their independent and/or progressive artists are; if you can't get whatever you want to hear, it's not as good as Morpheus.

Also, they carefully avoid mentioning bitrate anywhere on the site, which leads me to believe that it is likely less than 128Kb, which itself is barely acceptable.

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[marmoset]

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.

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[dgoodman]

Though a big fan of Astralwerks, I've given up buying their stuff...because they too are an RIAA member. check it: here.
sad, really. I'm having the hardest time finding good labels with no ties to the RIAA (at least they publish a member list, though).

have fun
dongoodman

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[Pig Hogger]

Don't worry, to force people to use their service, they'll make other ways illegal.

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[Rude Turnip]

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.

Re:Why rent when you can buy?

[ichimunki]

Thanks for the link.

emusic.com looks pretty f*cking cool. Who cares that they don't have Britney Spears or that the files are only 128kbps (that's good enough for casual listening)? Their minimum contract of three months at $15/month is the best bargain I've seen since I saw a whole operating system on the internet available as a free download.

$45 barely buys three CDs new, and maybe 6 CDs used. But looking throught the emusic.com catalog I could easily find 100 CDs that I would download in the first month. In fact, I expect I will have to write a Perl script that takes Artist/Album names and fetches the whole album to my mp3 server's file library pretty much as needed.

And frankly, I don't care if this helps the RIAA, because this hopefully will show them that offering unencumbered mp3s (or any other open format) encourages people to pay for the product when it is offered at a reasonable price. What none of these content providers have figured out yet is that they are only going to make $XYZ a year anyway-- and that they can either help all their consumers obtain the works legitimately or there will be a built-in incentive for someone to attempt to crack the system.

emusic.com could charge me $25-$50 a month or have some huge signup fee for unlimited access (and offer different service levels so that there were still some low-priced options) and it would still be worth it in my opinion. But if they followed the subscription model described in this article, there is no way I would sign up-- even if it were the *only* way to obtain music. I'd rather be stuck sifting through the used bins of all the stuff that's already out on unrestricted media and having to rip it myself.

Useless.

[sulli]

Okay, so I have an iPod filled with 4G or so of music, and they want me to rent music that I can play on my PC (or Mac) only, and not carry around with me woth the rest of the tunes? I can go to a fucking bar and use a fucking jukebox if I want that.

These will be total failures. Not that this is any surprise to anyone. Maybe they are being set up to fail?

Re:Useless.

[Rogerborg]

• These will be total failures. [...] Maybe they are being set up to fail?

When this sentiment was being touted a year and a half ago, it was viewed as cynical paranoia. Now I'm hearing it more and more, and I think a lot more people are getting it.

We enjoy chuckling at the apparently idiocy of the music industry, and their attemps to charge us for content in formats that we don't want, and we think we're oh so clever for cracking each attempt as it comes. It's funny right now, but he who laughs last laughs longest.

I think we need to wake up and realise that the music industry isn't run by idiots. It's run by ruthless bastards who will go to any lengths to protect their monopolies. They do see a genuine threat in file sharing, a situation that they've brought on themselves by selling overpriced albums full of filler. They could change their model to compensate (drop the million dollar videos, for example) but I think they reckon they don't have to.

Every time one of these schemes falls flat, it gives them a littel more ammunition to use to force an SSSCA through a Congress that's proved to be a real soft touch for business. They'll just make it illegal to own hardware and software that's capable of accessing raw data, and if you believe that's unthinkable, consider how you might vote on an issue that bored you (e.g. taxation or construction regulations) if you've just been treated to a limosine full of roofied cheerleaders, or a big paper bag full of unmarked non sequential small bills.

So while it's great that we'll no doubt crack this in a few days and show just how idiotic a scheme it is, let's not get distracted. The long term objective here is to keep letting our elected representatives know that we're watching them, and that we know exactly what's going on. We'll buy music when it's offered to us on our terms: high quality (content and encoding), with a price that reflects the production of the music - not the marketing or the videos - and without any content control. If you treat us like thieves, you'll just keep encouraging us to act like thieves. Although, as sulli says, maybe that's exactly the intention.

Re:Useless.

[FFFish]

In particular, the music industry is run by ruthless bastards who's backs are up against the wall. They're prepared to do anything to win.

Re:Useless.

[Gleef]

sulli writes:

Okay, so I have an iPod filled with 4G or so of music, and they want me to rent music that I can play on my PC (or Mac) only, and not carry around with me woth the rest of the tunes?

That brings up an important point. People want to be able to listen to the music they like as they travel. This is one of the big reasons that, despite predictions, radio hasn't died. They also don't want to fiddle with the music much, they want to point to it and have it go without any further intervention.

The only ways I can see of renting time-limited digital music that would meet this key consumer demand are insecure trusted client solutions or massive wireless authentication networks. One won't work as soon as someone cracks it, the other is prohibitively expensive, at least for the next five years, and limits the customer base to the cities and well-traveled areas.

Better License

[ers81239]

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.

Re:Better License

[liquidsin]

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.

Unless they work out a system where they have a server full of non-watermarked files, and each is then tagged with a unique serial as the download is requested, it's totally unfeasible. The server space required to have so many uniquely watermarked files would be enormous. If the server watermarks each as it's requested, they can have it keep a database of the serial assigned to the file and match it up to the user that downloaded it. Mind you, we all know how secure watermarking is...

Re:Better License

[Masem]

I don't remember where I read it (here or elsewhere), but one possible solution is that the users, when they rent the song, will download a significantly large fraction of it (99%), which will be unwatermarked and common for all users. However, this will be the 'bottom' part of the song; in order to play it, you'd have to download the 'top' other 1%, which can include watermarking information. Assuming that this is 1% of a 5meg file, and with 1,000,000 song out on rent, you'd only need 50gigs to store those small pieces.

No Way!

[zombieking]

Cancel your service, and you lose the ability to hear *any* of the songs that you've downloaded.

That sentence right there is enough for me to never to sign up for this. But then again, I predict a 3.5 second waiting time before there is some kind of hack for this. I would still rather buy the cd's of the illeagle mp3s that I really, really like in my collection.

Re:No Way!

[renehollan]

"Cancel your service, and you lose the ability to hear *any* of the songs that you've downloaded."

That sentence right there is enough for me to never to sign up for this.

And that gets to the crux of the matter regarding all these so-called protection (really control) schemes. They want to restrict you in ways that are unacceptable (have to listen from PC, can't copy to portable devices, continue to pay for the same content over and over, etc).

Of course, as a libertarian, I support their attempt to get people to sign up for this. I doubt many will, in a free market, with other alternatives.

There are several troubling problems with all such schemes:

1) Often the terms to which one agrees aren't clear. People generally assume fair use rights over copyright material. Furthermore, people assume that what used to work, i.e. playing CDs in a computer will continue to do so. Or, they accept things like forced viewing of ads on DVDs as technologically necessary. Content providers haven't exactly been clear about copy-protected CDs and other restrictions, only that they're "fighting piracy". Too many people don't know that there are no technical reasons for such restrictions, only political ones.

2)A free market would provide different kinds of restrictions from different content providers -- perhaps the most sucessful would permit standard fair use rights, with or without technological measures to ensure this. However, traditional content providers what to make such alternatives illegal, citing that the technology facilitates piracy, and restricting choice in a free market.

3) The choice to buy or rent is always a good one to have. But, in this case, one is renting a static thing (unchanging music), and not access to an on-going service, like continued habitation of a living space. The only thing reasonable to rent here is continued access to new content, not old.

4) It completely ignores, or suggests the illegality of, the value of caching content. Traditionally, content had to be on some physically visible media, that was difficult or costly to copy. But that physical media was valuable to consumers precisely because it held a cache of the content. All that has changed is that modern caches (computer hard disks) are all to willing to give up their content to any destination. The utility of the cache has not gone away. Removing it hurts consumers and renders them vulnerable to the failure of the content provider to remain in business, streaming the "one legal copy".

When chosing between buying or renting, the disadvantages of renting usually are reflected in low on-going costs, as opposed to large capital outlays. Of course, if one wants the use of something long-term, the continued rental costs add up, making buying the smart choice. Lenders know that ownership is desirable and provide financing to those who are low on capital, but have good credit.

A service like this, that provided instant access to a vast library of music, would be handy for a party, with a limitless choice of music (public performance issues aside). It has its place. But to suggest that it replace ownership of cached copies of content, or drive such ownership into the realm of illegality is absurd and misrepresentation of a course of action to get to such a point downright criminal.

We need to educate the public at large. Technical arguments aren't going to do it, or at least they haven't worked yet. However, explaining the possible horrific outcomes of a world where information was owned only by the few, and rented at a high price, should result in a cry, "No! We don't want that world!" From that point one can push back, showing how certain technologies bring us closer to and not further from, that undesirable future.

pfft...

[Ozan]

Pipe the songs through the virtual audio cable and you can do with them whatever you want.

yeah right

[alen]

Somehow I don't see myself buying into this service. This music thing is like the next .com thing. Except this time they are selling real products. In 2 years time 95% of these businesses won't be around thanks to their wacky business models. Who in their mind would pay for something that you have to keep paying for to use?

The successful music over the internet companies will sell you songs that you keep for life, or at least until the next time your PC crashes.

Re:yeah right

[the_2nd_coming]

the next succesful Music Label/publisher will be one that bases all their publishing on MP3s.

If a company would step up and take this to where it can go, I bet they will become the bigest thing that the music industry has seen for a while...........MP3.com perhaps?

Re:yeah right

[the_2nd_coming]

ok forget them I guess...............emusic then.

"...offer legal music downloads."

[skrowl]

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!

Re:"...offer legal music downloads."

[Jucius Maximus]

"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."

I'm with you all the way in stopping the RIAA. But I don't think it will get to the point where we'll have to stop listening to music altogether. At some point, the RIAA will make it so unpleasant to buy music that the artists will realise this is hurting their sales and therefore move to a different distribution method. It'll be good for the artists and good for us, but bad for the RIAA (but they shot themselves in the foot.)

Re:"...offer legal music downloads."

[redgren]

I think you make the mistake of assuming that most signed artists are selling the same amount as Ms. Spears.

The truth is most artists signed by major labels sell in the 10's of thousands of records.

For an interesting read on the whole record label scene, check out this article .

Re:"...offer legal music downloads."

[Znork]

Well, first they get an advance, which, after paying for the RIAA owned recordings, marketing, etc usually pays a whole lot less over the production time than I make on my computer job. Then they get to repay the whole thing out of their CD profits. Break even is (IIRC) something like several 100K CD's. A few percent of the artists make it to break even. The rest end up in debt.

For anyone feeling like becoming a RIAA owned artist, dont. Do a career spending welfare checks on national lottery, because it's sure to make you more money, and it Might Make You Rich!

Re:10 is my average anyway

[radja]

and you're allowed to tape it too..

//rdj

Many restrictions

[ancarett]

Wired news has also run this story with some more details about some of the services (and restrictions):

RealOne Music consumers will be prevented from moving their music from a PC to a portable MP3 player because of digital rights management technology attached to the files.

There is a limit of 100 downloads and 100 streams per month from the Warner Music, EMI, and BMG catalogs as well.

Re:Many restrictions

[the_2nd_coming]

didn't anyone tell them that a product that has a complicated terms of use like "you can use this only if...but not before....and with out that....and if you do this then....oh don't forget that thing" but is precived to be usable in a certain way, will not sell.

Music listeners have come to know that you are able to take music that you listen to and tape it and place it on other media for personal use. when they look at this they will get confused and say "ummmmI don't understand.....I will not get it"

Price is certainly not worth it.

[BMonger]

Let's assume that most CD's are 10 tracks long and $15 a piece. This gives you 10 CD's you can download a month. 10 CD's which you can't play on your CD player. 10 CD's which you do not own. 10 CD's which if your hard drive crashes you may or may not be able to get back because you can't make backups.

Now I feel that I buy a decent amount of CD's. I have about 300 which is a lot for some and a speck of dust to others. But most of the time there isn't even a new CD that comes out each month that I would want to buy. So why not just hold onto my $10 a month and buy my $15 CD's when they come out. The quality of that is guaranteed to be even better than whatever this service is offering and I get to keep it and do what I want with it indefinitely.

On the topic of quality, MP3's as they currently are are pretty dang good to most people's ears. The amount of people that hear a difference between the two formats is questionable.

When downloading becomes streaming

[Mwongozi]

I'm presuming the downloaded music is in an encrypted format and requires a special player or codec, so that they can deny you access if you unsubscribe.

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.

....Me Too...Please

[haplo21112]

...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.

Re:Is that legal

[CDWert]

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.

Nope, this will be a failure too...

[sdo1]

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.

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. .mp3 is a reasonable standard until something better comes along.

- 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

Re:Nope, this will be a failure too...

[sdo1]

What quality of speakers are you playing these out of? If you've got reasonable speakers attached to mine, but have a flatmate who likes her MP3s at 192Kbps and then plays them though a pair of $20 speakers.

I have a computer attached to my stereo system, so that's what what I'm using for a source. The stereo is Klipsch KG4 main speakers, Klipsch KSW-10 Subwoofer, all controlled by a high performance Marantz receiver. Yea, I can tell the difference between MP3 and uncompressed. At 128Kbs, mp3 is pretty ugly. 160Kbps, it's pretty good, but not perfect, and sometimes I can't tell the difference. Anything above that and I generally can't tell. It's more obvious on very subtle music like classical violin. When it's at decent volume, you'll hear a sort of bubbling/gurgling sound that comes with the compression.

You may not like 128Kbps, but I'm wondering how many people would want files at 192Kbps.

I don't care what other people want. I'm talking about what I want. When I poke around on places like AudioGalaxy, it's obvious that most people are happy enough with 128Kbps. And most are probably listening through $20 computer speakers, so it's probably fine. I'm not. If that makes me an audiophile snob, then so be it.

You've suggested lossless. That's basically .wav - have you seen the size of those files? 40mb a track, typically.

There are lossless compressors. One such is FLAC. There are others. Compression rates are generally about 50%. I'd like to be able to download the song lossless and then do what I want to do with it (such as compressing using lame in VBR mode). You can be that the record companies won't be aiming for the the best quality sound they can get.

-S

This stuff here

[lblack]

These services aren't going to work for several reasons, or at least not in the foreseeable future:

1) They are being created to counteract the spread of P2P filesharing services, IRC mp3 channels, and even websites that provide mp3s for downloads, not to mention your standard ripping / copying from friends. They are also well behind the pack -- the P2P sharing services provide more than these people will provide (huge selection of rarities & standards both), and they do it without a subscription fee (for the most part), and they do it without the red tape required in the recording industry.

2)My first reaction was "So I spend $250, cancel my internet access after awhile, and then I have no tunes?" The straight retail CD business has a better model than this.

3)They are providing content of the traditional sort (Studio releases, megahits), over a new distribution channel. They have failed to grasp that it is the non-traditional content as much as the non-traditional distribution that has led to the soaring popularity of first Napster and now Morpheus. If I want to track down a live version of Michael Stipe and Vic Chesnutt singing a duet of 'Wounded Bird', it won't take me more than an hour on existing (and illegal) distribution models. Would that song even be available on a corporate-run service? Probably not.

I don't download that many songs -- I prefer to buy albums so that I get the additional content (sleeves, cover art, lyric sheets that weren't typed up by a half-deaf 12 year old dyslexic) and I also like to have a physical representation of what I own. I like to be able to pile my records/CDs. It makes me feel good to walk into my room and see the rows of brightly coloured cases and sleeves. It makes me feel dumb to walk into my room and see stacks of CD-Rs. People like me won't sign up for this service, will continue using P2P to sample new artists and then will subsequently purchase the album if it is enjoyable (my last 40 or so CD purchases happened like this). It'd be pointless to me -- I listen to maybe 20 songs a month over P2P. It'd be pointless to people who do a lot over P2P and obviously don't care about legal / artistic ramifications, as well.

So who is this service for?

I reckon if the business is run as a tight ship, they could keep a slim enough margin to stay profitable. But they're not going to be making cash hand over fist, and they won't be detracting from the appeal of P2P.

-l

Re:This stuff here

[lblack]

Well.

I bought into what they were selling hook, line, and sinker when I...er... bought what they were selling, did I not? I can look at a pile of 100 CDs in my room, and based on the slim edge of each CD, can tell you which band, what songs I like on that album, and whether or not it has any scratches that detract from playing it. At a glance towards my collection, I recall songs I haven't listened to in months that I really ought to. And then I pull the CD out, put it into my player, and listen to it. While listening, I can admire the artwork and browse the lyrics. This all takes place in the physical world, which for me is infinitely more comfortable than the digital world of MP3 playlists, doubleclicks and directory structure.

Consumerism isn't about buying, it's about consumption. Your MP3 collection is less an ode to the music you love, and more a trophy of your consumerism. Because you are consuming other peoples works. Does having those MP3s make you feel good? It's consumerism. Consuming makes you feel good, just like it makes me feel good. You're just consuming a different sort of good.

When you purchase CDs, you *are* supporting the band. Just not very much. $0.10-$0.90 per CD, I believe, depending on songwriting / production credits.

And, actually, money from both Tool and the Backstreet boys (who are BOTH big ticket items -- if you're under the impression that Tool is somehow "indie", you're mistaken) goes to marketing the smaller bands on the label, not towards marketing the bigger ones. When you sign on, the record company says "Okay, we'll do $100k worth of promotion for you and you can recoup it in sales." That $100k comes from Tool / Backstreet Boys to the smaller players. Unfortunately, the contracts that they make you sign are awful, awful things, and basically force you into an indentured servitude scenario. Those contracts are the big problem. I don't really have much to do with them, though. I've written letters about it to CEOs of RIAA affiliated companies, expressing my belief that the contracts are prohibitive and harm both the longevity and quality of bands/artists they are attached to. Have you?

I inhabit the physical world. It gives me comfort to control some of my environs and be intimately familiar with them. Hence, physical objects. Why would I choose abstract objects like MP3s above physical ones like CDs? I do not live or think within my computer, nor do I want to.

You seem to be missing the connection between a collector and a music listener. For as long as there has been a physical format for personal storage of music (phonorecordings, vinyl, 8 track, cassette, CD), there have been collectors. Collectors collect the *album*, including sleeve, liner notes, artwork, lyric sheets. Listeners only care about the music. I would say that most people are hybrid collector/listeners, with a minority at either end being pure collectors (shrinkwrapped White Albums), or listeners (Music all on MP3/Burn CDs/Mixed Tapes). Downloading music caters to one slim minority. I want my artwork. I want my textured sleeve (those plastic CD cases were the worst, I'm glad people are starting to use sleeves instead). I want my lyric sheet. I want it all to be well laid out and legible. I want it to be intimately connected to the music itself by virtue of being stored with it. I do not want it to involve XML, CDDB or anything else.

I support my favourite bands by attending their shows, by the way, and that is where an indie band really needs your help. That's where most bands get their money to make their first album, or do their first tour.

-l

I wonder what this does...

[tjwhaynes]

Hmmm. Lets see...


cat /proc/asound/card1/pcmloopD0S0p > ! /tmp/output.raw

Now play that funky music and...

oggenc --raw /tmp/output.raw > song.ogg

Wow. Making a copy of this music is gonna be reaaaaallly difficult.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:I wonder what this does...

[jamie]

cat /proc/asound/card1/pcmloopD0S0p > ! /tmp/output.raw

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.

"Wow. Making a copy of this music is gonna be reaaaaallly difficult."

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.

Re:I wonder what this does...

[sulli]

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.

I don't think that Dell, for example, wants to be in that business. Or Apple. Even if Sony et al. would rather be in that business, they don't have market power - and probably won't be, if users continue to vote with their dollars and make "services" like this the total failures they deserve to be.

Re:I wonder what this does...

[tjwhaynes]

This only runs on Windows. Slight problem with those commands then.

Only if it can't be run on WINE. Or coaxed into running in a winelib application (in much the same way as Mplayer uses the Windows Media Player DLLs). If that works, then the ALSA sound system will still gives you a file to work with. On ANY Unix system, the everything-is-a-file design makes it pretty trivial to hook up an extra file redirection and store the resulting pcm data.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:I wonder what this does...

[Sloppy]

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.

Not so bad crap for me

[CDWert]

I have very eclectic musical tastes, from Beethoven to Sisters of Mercy, Tenesee Ford, Warren Zevon, Bob Segar yada yada ya...

I had a cd collection once it got stolen, I havent replaced it since, I have a few favorite songs Ive rebought CDs for but in general to build a 100 song collection of stuf I like would cost me a freaking fortune. Id buy into this, its a RENTAL agreement, you rent movies you like enough to see once or twice but dont buy them, same thing here... Songs youre NEVER going to hear on the radio, might like to listen for a fw times then ..gone...

Then again Im told I have ADD so I get bored quickly , maybe this idea just fits my midset.

For $10 a month...

[alexjohns]

In order for me to pay 10 bucks a month they would have to do the following:
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?

screw that

[Ender Ryan]

Why would I sign up for a service where they can take away everything I've paid for whenever they want?

Pretty silly, but that's the nature of the music industry, isn't it?

Will anyone pay for this ?

[ferratus]

I'm kinda confused by this. I mean, I always said that I would pay to get music from the net (as in per-song fee) but I would never pay to rent a music on the net. This is not like a movie-rental business because when you rent a movie, you usually don't care to see it more than once or twice, but when you like a song, you're going to listen to it quite a lot.

They are probably going to fail with this plan and then come up with the usual excuse that the web is "not a good business place and blablabla".

Maybe one day someone will realise that with good ideas and a somewhat logic price-tag, the web CAN be a good place to sell stuff. It just isn't the "promised land" dot-coms seemed to think 3 years ago.

We know this. The question is, why don't THEY. I mean, you'd figure that with so many people working for these giants, at least a few of those executives or managers would have guessed it by now.

If only there were a way to hear music for free...

[mttlg]

Imagine if you could get multiple free streams of music broadcast to you wherever you are, for free. Something where you just turn on some receiving device and select a stream. Something wireless, with receivers that could be placed in cars or worn on the body. The audio content could even be recorded if someone just wanted a copy of a song and didn't care too much about quality. If someone could come up with something like this, nobody would even think of paying for something as silly and worthless as this rental scam...

Rent?? I want to *test* or *buy*, but not rent

[Masem]

While we all agree that RIAA is being very slow to catch up to the net, I think they're also slow to catch up to the way people buy music. I would love a service that offered *crappy* encoded MP3s (say, 64kbit/s encoding, mono channel even) of every song on every album, so that I can at least judge the quality of the album before I purchase it. If I don't like the entire album but only one or two songs, I'd rather pay a reasonably small (no more than $0.50/track) price for those tracks as high quality MP3s.

Nearly every major music store, as well as Best Buy and friends, have music listening stations in which most stores will be happy to let you listen to any CD they have in stock for a test run. If RIAA would simply extend this concept to the net, and again, use rather poor MP3 encodings to do it, they'd be finding a lot more friends among audiophiles.

Um? What?

[autopr0n]

What the hell crack you smokin' boy? When you buy a CD you own it, the disk anyway.

Its actualy the same with software in most states, 'click-wrap' licenses have never been enforcable in court.

This is it?

[imrdkl]

I dont think so. Until music becomes available in electronic format that can be used on portable players, people will resist. But this is a step in the profitable direction.

E-Music doesn't stand a chance. The only way it could work is iff you agree to buy at least 100 more songs, after you get your first 100 for free, at "Regular Club Prices". Even then, it probably will be regulated further to purchasing at least 5-10 songs per artist, like a static compilation. (Even some of my fave albums have songs I'd rather skip over)

Once they get you into a membership, it doesn't matter if the songs can be passed around freely anymore, because it'll be so easy and simple to just pay the club.

Let me get this straight....

[truesaer]

1) There will be no overlap between the services, so I either need both or I only get half the songs.

2) If they expire when the service is cancelled, I take it that I can't burn a CD for my stereo, my portable CD player, or my car.

What a shitty service. I will not be subscribing until it improves substantially. And if they want a LOT of people to subscribe, they had better move to a value ADDED business plan. If it just equals free sharing services, there wont be a lot of interest. They need to have some kinds of features that set it apart, as well as making it just as good as the free sharing services.

But, I don't think that the music labels want to do this. Intead, this service will be used in court as a weapon against better sharing services. (ie "see, there's no reason to steal music, we have this crappy legal service that can be used instead!")

But will they be quality?

[Apreche]

This is obviously a step in the right direction. It obviously isn't perfect, but nothing ever works right the first time through. My question is how quality will the music files be? Will they be 128, 256, 320? Whether they're mp3s, ogg, or some other format, will they be cd quality? I mean if I'm paying for music I'm going to expect to get the highest quality version there is. If I'm going to pay for low quality ones here I might as well go out an buy the cd.

Bitrate

[samael]

If you check the FAQ, they encode at 128Kb.

And yes, they don't have everything. But it's a step in the right direction, and it's the kind of service I'll happily pay for because it's the right way to do things.

Subscription How... What about the new MP3 Players

[linuxrunner]

What about all the new technology companies are producing to prevent all of the current MP3 sharing? I mean, they now are producing mp3 players where music can not be shared.... the only mp3's you can play on them are the ones you personally rip and encode.

So, lets say I go out and just bought one of these "new" mp3 players because I only listen to my cd's anyways.... And these "new" mp3 players are being made because the RIAA is making such a big stink...

Now lets say I sign up for the RIAA's new subscription service at $10.00 a month and find out these songs don't work on my "new" mp3 player!

So who's going to refund my money?

Set up to fail ???

[WilyHacker]

This is a very interesting point that you raise and it seems in line with the record company mindset.

Could they possibly be so clueless to think that this is an attractive option?

Are they doing this with some malice to see how many suckers they can get? Testing the waters?

Do they want to see just how dumb people can be?

Unfortunatly, I see two ways that this could go:

1. A moderate number of people use this service and they claim it to be a huge success.
2. Nobody uses this service and they declare that commercializing music on the Web is impossible, therefore all mp3's are illegal and evil. They will use this "evidence" to run more music trading circles into the ground.

ATTN: Slashdot management

[Jucius Maximus]

When browsing the site today, I noticed a small, probably typographical error.

I would appreciate it if you could fix this by reposting this article into the 'It's Funny. Laugh.' section.

Secure Audio Path

[yerricde]

Sound blaster live cards (and probably many others) have the ability to record anything that plays through the soundcard to a wav file.

In order for Windows to consider a sound card when an application opens a Secure Audio Path, it has to have a driver signed by Microsoft, and that driver must turn off all cleartext digital outputs (waveout->wavein, ->file, ->spdif, etc.) while the Secure Audio Path is open. (Read More...)

Re:Secure Audio Path

[Fnkmaster]

LOL. That's absurd. Do they not realize that many of us have digital connections to our speakers and therefore we won't hear anything? Oh well, the obvious conclusion is that this format is broken and that I will not install an operating system that restricts my freedom in this way.

Re:Secure Audio Path

[Tiroth]

There is always someone that insists on saying something like this, completely disregarding the enormous drop in quality when going from a 90dB dynamic range recording through a 70dB dynamic range soundcard out through a 60dB dynamic range ADC. Not to mention THD+N increases from the noisy recording atmosphere of a computer case and the cheap electronics used. (and if you trust the quoted analog specs on most consumer sound cards, I have a bridge to sell you)

Yes, it can be done. It can even be done decently with an extra $1000 or so in recording hardware. But at best it represents a significant degradation in sound quality + a lot of work to get what should be freely available in the first place.

Re:Secure Audio Path

[satch89450]

Yes, it can be done. It can even be done decently with an extra $1000 or so in recording hardware. But at best it represents a significant degradation in sound quality + a lot of work to get what should be freely available in the first place.

BZZZZZT! $1000 is the wrong answer. (No complaint, though about the second sentence in your answer.)

The Echo Gina24 is a sound card I used that cost me only $500, and the audio quality is professional quality. Echo Digital Audio has other products that may be less expensive but sport similar performance specifications. (Do you really need 8 outputs at the same time? I didn't think so.) At $249 MSRP for the Mia (which means you can prolly find it for a bit less if you look) you can get A/D that surpasses most sound cards that come with PCs today.

When I measured the performance of the Echo Gina24, I was impressed with its 127 dBFS noise floor and 73 dB total harmonic distortion when excited with a 23-tone test signal. (The THD measurement may well have been measuring the performance of the UTC/TRW A1 transformer I was using to balance the signal for injection into the Echo Gina24, which uses balanced inputs.) The real test, though, was with live recording. The Echo Gina24 did as good a job, to my ears, as my Technics 1500US tape deck running at 15 ips recording a classical string quartet from my board and a pair of ATM-31 microphones mounted in a shock-absorbing stereo brace. Better if you consider the tape deck has a 60 dB noise floor.

(BONUS: Linux drivers -- in source -- are supposed to be available in January.)

ground control to major tom

[tsieling]

So what happens after you've got your hard drive filled with rented music and the monthly fee goes up to $199.95/month?

Yes, because they want to make it completely unafordable. Why price yourself out of the market of recurring revenue, which is the goal. Stop being so fucking shrill about this. Does rent-a-song suck? Yes. Are they going to get everyone hooked and then jack up the price to 200/month. Surely the most asinine thing I've read here in a year.

Actually

[CaptainZapp]

They can offer all the services they want. I really don't care, but:

that those swines started to intentionally cripple CDs in order to copy protect (cough) them, now that's a real disgrace and an insult to the artists.

Doesn't work with the Secure Audio Path

[yerricde]

Pipe the songs through the virtual audio cable

Windows ME and Windows XP have a Secure Audio Path that disables all of a sound card's digital outputs or the driver doesn't get signed. No pipe for you, sorry.

Re:Doesn't work with the Secure Audio Path

[Alsee]

i'll use wine with it. They can't really stop me

No, but they can make it really really difficult. The system is built around strong crypographic signatures.

that case someone'll just write a patch; problem solved

Yep, definitly possible, but it will require reverse enginering some deliberately evil object code. And it will probably require first violating the Windows licence, then violating the application licence, and then violating the contract to connect to the service. Not to mention that each step violates the DMCA. I'm sure they can dream up a few more things you'd violate.

For what it's worth - I can't wait to see the stupid system ripped to shreds as fast as possible. (The music service system or the digital legal system? Yes.) My SIG is particualarly on-topic here :)

-

According to the Article

[Rackemup]

The RealOne music service will let subscribers download 100 songs onto their computers every month for $9.95. It also offers 100 "streams", a radio-like feature where the songs are not stored on a computer's hard drive.

I dont want "radio-like streams", I want digital high-quality music to go with my digital high-quality stereo system. Strike 1.

If a subscriber to RealOne Music lets his membership lapse, he loses access to music that was already downloaded. In effect, this means subscribers are renting the music more than actually buying it.

That ain't gonna cut it... People wont pay rediculous fees and then lose everything they collected when times are tough and they have to make some sacrifices on "extra expenses". Strike 2.

Analysts say the label-backed services have some advantages over the free-song sites. The quality of the file transfer - which is crucial to how the music sounds - is guaranteed to be high, which is not so on free sites. And the labels' services also offer protection from viruses.

guaranteed high-quality? streams are plagued by Internet slowdowns, and the MP3s I download now are 160+kbps. and "protection from viruses"?? how many viruses do you know that are sent in MP3 files?? the marketing spin-jockeys are hard at work.

But there are other obstacles, too. Neither service will allow users to transfer songs to portable devices or to CDs -- both considered essential features by many online music fans.

so.. you're forced to sit at your computer and listen to the songs that you dont own. what a great deal! lemme get my visa!

While both services are expected to offer about 100,000 songs when they launch, subscribers to one service will not be able to hear songs on the rival.

limited catalog and competing formats... strike 4, 5, 6, and 7.

you're out. stop wasting everyone's time with your stupid ideas on "how to help people not break the laws that we wrote in the first place".

The catch

[richieb]

The catch is that the music they have there is not the top fourty really popular stuff, but more off-beat, less well know things.

However, they do have lots of really good stuff. For example most of the recordings of Bill Evans, lost of albums by Elvis Costello, all records of my favorite guitaris Emily Remler, lost of good blues (i.e. all recordings of Lightin' Hopkings, latest album by Sue Foley, Albert King, Hot Tuna).

Also all files are encoded at 128 bits. Finally, to get the $10/month rate you've got to sign up for a year.

I've used the service for few months now and I must have downloaded about 30 CDs of stuff.

Pay or lose... ?

[Noryungi]

Another alternative: just crack the fscking file format and keep the files forever.

It's been done before. It'll be done again. When will these clueless marketdroids and PHBs will understand that it is basically impossible to protect a file that you can download to an independent machine?

Think I can summarise above posts ...

[King Of Chat]

The line about "cancel your service and you lose the ability to listen to any of the songs" well, to do that, they must have to connect to the internet in order to work this one out. To enforce this, they must have their own player/codec/format/thingy which needs this to work. No net connection, no play (am I the only one having this trouble on MS Media Player?).

How many people will actually pay for this shit? If you've only got one phone line and someone's using it, you can't listen. If you want to drag the laptop out in the garden for a barbeque and connect your amp & speakers, you need to run the phone cable out as well. Want to listen on the train? Well, you'll need a compatable cell phone and a lot of patience.

As someone said earlier, the normal CD business has a better business model.

I can see a few dumb people signing up for a few months, but after they realise that to listen to their purchases (legally - of course it's easy to rip anything one way or another), they need to huddle round the PC in the corner.

viri?

[leuk_he]

The quality of the file transfer - which is crucial to how the music sounds - is guaranteed to be high, which is not so on free sites. And the labels' services also offer protection from viruses.

Ok, i know p2p has it's problems with speed, especially if the RIAA does a DOS attack. But virus on music (mp3/wma/realone) files: is this even possible?

And the quality of the transfer: this is only important for streaming audio, and it is always less then non-streaming (on my 56K6 modem).

They will have a VERY hard time convincing users.

Music Industry has decayed and rotted...

[SerpentMage]

Last week here in Switzerland I decided to go to the shop and buy some video games. Well on my way I saw some CD's, VHS tapes and DVD's for sale.

So I look at the price and they are as follows:
CD: CHF 19.90
VHS: CHF 19.90
DVD: CHF 29.90

Notice something interesting here. The VHS tape is the same price as the CD. Two things to note here.

First when CD's and cassettes co-existed the price difference was not that big.

Second a movie basically costs the same price as a movie. I hear the music industry whining on how much it costs to produce a CD, but EXCUSE' me how much does it cost to produce a film?

The point is that the music industry is lost. While the music industry worries about illegal P2P the movie industry already has made their content easily available.

Here is what I mean. Notice how easy it is to get movie content? Either through Pay Per View, Movie Theathers, Movie Channels, Hotel viewing, DVD's, Rental's, etc. The point is that the music industry has flooded the channels and as such their income is assured in one form or another.

The music industry on the other hand has decided combat anything that is not based on sales of media... And the worst part is that the music industry keeps pumping out CRAP in terms of boy and girl bands.

Maybe the music industry should take a lesson from the movie industry...

Compulsory license

[yerricde]

grossly overpriced CD that the actual artist MAYBE gets $0.10 from the sale of

The songwriter, on the other hand, makes a full 75 cents from each record sold, which she splits evenly with the music publisher. Moral: to get rich in the record industry, write your own songs.

ANYONE offering any type of music downloads will eventually get shut down, especially places like emusic that allow you to just download an MP3

The United States has a "compulsory license" scheme (see 17 USC 115) for sound recordings such that the copying party pays the label a set royalty for each phonorecord (i.e. copy) or digital delivery made, and the label can't veto it.

and they give you higher SNR to boot!

[abde]

thats an excellent approach, especially since they guarantee "highest quality" downloads - so you have extra SNR in the data to spend while doing your D-A-D conversion! :)

I suspect that "remastered" versions from a few brave sould willing to pay will end up out on Gnutella.

Re:I've got a better idea...

[Xugumad]

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!

.com bubble bursted?

[jilles]

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.

Its Been done and failed... Remember DivX?

[acomj]

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..

Designed to fail

[isdnip]

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.

Re:Designed to fail

[i1984]

"Why pay $10/month for what is, in effect, the right to sample things?"

The music industry isn't selling you the right to sample things, they're renting you the privilege of sampling things.

Important difference. If I had any rights, could actually buy anything, or wasn't as a customer regarded by companies as their enemy, I would feel a lot better about things.

It's hard not to be cynical when the corporate motto is: the customer is always wrong!

Re:Designed to fail

[Rob Parkhill]

Actually, I see things going in a different direction. Note how easy it is to break the protection on so-called "secured" CDs that are now hitting the market. The industry knows full well that these CDs will be cracked and copied. Showing that it is impossible to secure a CD that can still be played by a CD player will give them the "evidence" they need to stop selling CDs.

Bam! In comes the next audio format they want to shove down your throat. SCDs? Maybe. DVD for everything? Not likely, that's already been broken. But expect them to phase out CDs and bring in their "new" system, using the insecurity of the CD as their excuse.

When there are no more CDs to buy, they can force these online "rental" agreements down your throat if you want to listen to their music. If the copyright owner decides that they only way to get their music is through an online rental, then that's what they can do. A little support from the OS vendor, and you can be sure that the songs will only play on approved devices (with drivers cryptographically signed by the OS maker to ensure that no annoying "third party" drivers pop up to allow undesireable uses of that audio stream...)

The sad part about this is that these folks have put SO much work into sellling/renting songs at $.10 each. Really, $10 a month, 100 downloads allowed, that's only $.10 a song. You really think anyone would bother with Morpheus if they could be guaranteed a fast, complete download of their favorite tunes for ten cents each? Hell, double the price and I'm still only paying three bucks for an entire album. They just don't get it.

No Brainer

[databirds]

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.

Re:iPod -- I don't think so:

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, the execs are not as stupid as they sound. They are, however, as evil. See, the idea here is to make you (where you == Joe Twelvepack) think they are giving you essentially a legal Napster without giving up their legal hammerlock on music distribution.

Face it, the record execs will never admit that in order to allow free use of their product as guaranteed by the Constitution, piracy will always be easy. That will _never_ change, but the Constitution might (or as is usually the case, it's just ignored).

What's the point?

[mblase]

Neither service will allow users to transfer songs to portable devices or to CDs -- both considered essential features by many online music fans.

This is the problem in a nutshell -- not the fact that I lose the songs if I end my subscription, but the fact that I can't back them up, take them with me, or burn them to CDs. Sure I listen to music on my computer, but I'm never bound to it. I can carry it away on CD or upload it to another machine at any time.

If this service allowed me to download music to my home entertainment system and archive the songs on it, then this might be marketable. At least that way the music is located someplace where I or others will listen to it most. But this is a failure waiting to happen. If it was free, I'd accept the restrictions on portability. For $10 a month, nobody will.

Re:I've got a better idea...

[mjwise]

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.

Okay, so this might not work...

[Xugumad]

... 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!

Re:Okay, so this might not work...

[kindbud]

It seems pretty clear what people want, but it is diametrically opposed to what the music cartel wants. The people want control. They want to choose where, when and how they listen to the music they purchase. Problem is, the music cartel also wants control, but they have different ideas about where, when and how they want you to listen to their music. I don't think it has anything to do with the music cartel "not getting the message" from its customers. It got the message, and decided that what the customers wanted was not in its best interest.

People didn't have to write to Ford, Daimler-Chrysler and GM to tell them they wanted a large sport utility vehicle. The car manufacturers picked up on it without anyone having to organize a letter writing campaign. Same with the musci cartel. They know what people want. Don't kid yourself.

Re:more crap

[Flower]

When you buy a CD you do own the physical medium which gives you your fair use rights. In the latest report from the copyright office re: the DMCA they harp on this point over and over again. Fair use is dependant upon owning the physical medium.

The way things are going currently, you are never going to own a purely digital work. Ever. Bits over a wire are considered distributing the work and those rights belong to the copyright owner. And with the latest decision from the 2600 case, giving permission to decrypt a digital work is also a right that belongs to the owner of the copyright.

So even if you have a fair use right to back up the bits contained on your harddrive, it doesn't mean you have the right to access the work.

I don't have an easy answer for how to change this situation or how to debate this line of reasoning that I'm seeing in the reports and decisions currently from the government. After reading the latest decisions in the 2600 and Felton cases, I'm convinced that the courtroom is an unwinnable arena. It's obvious that the courts are creating sharp distinctions between the digital and "real" world and currently there are no pressing needs to assert fair use. That leaves changing the law which is also an untenable position. Most politicians believe the DMCA is working and, for the more cynical among us, Big Media pays them off.

IMO, for fair use proponents to "win" any concessions Big Media would have to totally screw up and so far they haven't. I'm not pleased with the situation but I'm stumped on where to go from here.

Re:If only there were a way to hear music for free

[Velex]

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.

more music more music more music....

[nanojath]

My favorite line from this article:

"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.

If it isn't ME or XP, it could degrade the audio

[yerricde]

Do you know each other in real life? If not, how do you know he uses Windows ME and Windows XP?

How do you know that the proprietary player doesn't degrade the output quality significantly if it detects Windows 95, 98, or NT 4?

This isn't a bad deal if...

[drzhivago]

...there wasn't that looming threat of "Cancel your subscription, lose your music"

IMO, 10 cents per song is a great idea. Except that it must be a permanent purchase, not a "rental." If it is a fair deal, which 10 cents per song is (permanent), then people will flock to it. Make them MP3s (I saw a discussion earlier in the thread about a service just like that) and it will be even better.

I believe the whole reason that Napster and free clients were widely used was that the record industry was charging way too much for CDs. Keep in mind that the cost of the more expensive to make cassettes has hovers around $10, even while CDs at the mall shops has risen to almost $20.

People do not want to pay $20 for a CD. And that is really the crux of the record industry's problem.

Greg

Re:more crap

[M_Talon]

Fair use is dependant upon owning the physical medium...The way things are going currently, you are never going to own a purely digital work

That's the way the record companies would like to see things go. They would eliminate CDs altogether and have the media under their control completely. They WILL turn the music industry into their form of Divx (not the good format, but the bad business model). They'll make you pay for every listen, and if your player gets wiped, tough you'll pay for it again.

It's all about the control, pure and simple. What the record industry hasn't figured out yet is this is a battle they've lost. Tech companies support MP3 and copying files to disc or memory sticks. Customers expect the ability to make compilation disks and send their music to an iPod. Take that away, and the customers will simply find another way to do it. The RIAA is going to find, very quickly, that no one wants to play their reindeer games anymore.

top forty is POPULAR?????

[leereyno]

Personally I would pay ten dollars a month just to see to it that Britney Spears, and her clones all disappeared along with the "boy bands" and any other "musicians" that are put together by producers into a money making machine rather than coming together to make music for its own sake.

That is the kind of garbage that dominates top 40. I for one want nothing to do with it.

Lee

Re:top forty is POPULAR?????

[jgerman]

Hey... I like listening to Britney... of course I put it in the same category I put porn but still.

Re:more crap

[squiggleslash]

True. Likewise when you own a car, you're not really owning the car, you're just licencing it - the body shape, the design of the engine, the logo on the front, are all protected by copyrights, patents, and trademark law respectively.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Of course you bloody own your own CDs. You don't have the legal right to copy them (like you don't have the right to make a car with a Ford logo on it shaped like a Taurus and sell it) except under limited circumstances, but you do OWN the CDs themselves.

This "you don't own anything, it's all licenced these days" crap has got to end, otherwise nobody will realise that they still have this battle to fight.

Re:more crap

[GemFire]

Please stop spreading Entertainment Industry propaganda. You DO own the music you purchase - but you don't own the right to copy it. Check out Judge Birch's decision on the Wind Done Gone case where he brings up the fact that the Mitchell estate doesn't own "Gone With the Wind" - they own the copyright to "Gone With the Wind."

This is an important difference and makes all of this Pay-per-View/Listen very clearly something that belongs at BlockBuster. You aren't buying anything with these services and I, for one, am not going to use them.

http://www.amfcc.org

I'll sign up fo this

[brunes69]

Why? Well, essentially, it means for 10 bucks / month (1/3 of what I spend on morning coffee), I get reliable, high quality music downloads, and I don't have to put up with GNutella's crap. Sure, AFter I d/l the songs, I'll use my line in jack to convery them to MP3/OGG so I can do what I want with them, and won't be at risk of losing my music (Shh, don't tell the RIAA!). But I sure won't be sharing my songs over gnutella. Pirating IS wrong, the only reason I used to do it was it was convienient. Seriously, if you look at what you're getting fr measly 10 bucks (the equivalent of 9 CD's of music, plus, only th songs you want on each), it's quite a bargain.

Total Recorder

[Chelloveck]

Rent it, rip it through Total Recorder to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis or whatever, cancel. There's always a way to pirate.

Not that I'm advocating such a thing, of course, just pointing out that if someone can hear it, they can copy it just as easily. Copy protection schemes are just a waste of effort.

What have you been smoking?

[cowtamer]

The _only_ reason I use p2p clients is to find obscure music. If you're stuck with something like GnuTella (decent idea, but slow searches), try an OpenNap client (like winMX) ....

It gets more and more difficult to get music.

[clarkie.mg]

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.

just where am I supposed to listen to this music?

[night_flyer]

on my home computer? that sure as hell aint worth no 10 cents a song, I want to listen to the music on my 500 watt surround sound system with its 15" woofers, not on my 4" computer speakers and sub woofer. I want to listen to them in my car, while I jog, where I work, I cant bring my desktop with me to listen to the songs...

this is, as has been pointed out, designed to fail...

Thank God for alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.bootlegs, Used CD shops and pawn shops...

Partly agree

[King Of Chat]

Except that by saying that "Honest people don't want online music", they seem to be saying that pretty much everyone I know is dishonest (yes, I know that anecdotal evidence is not real evidence, but ..) as they do want online music. They don't want online music which can only be played on their PC, and they don't want a wide selection, consisting of Britney and NSYNC (however you write it).

Revenues are falling in the record industry and costs are higher. They have to put sooo much money into getting a record to chart now, that

it's not economical to promote anything which wont sell loads

they have to sell as much of that crap as possible

I, for one, would be buying more music (on CD) if Napster was still there (and I could get to it from work - damned firewalls) 'cos I could listen first. I've got more chance of shagging the pope than hearing anything to my taste on the radio these days. If I can't check it out first, then I'm not going to risk the money.

BTW I came across this site last week. I can just pay, print out the music, and then I can be sure that it'll play on any compatible piano ... well it could if I could play it properly.

Virus? What virus?

[OpenSourced]

The quality of the file transfer - which is crucial to how the music sounds - is guaranteed to be high, which is not so on free sites.

"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.

The Record Industry

[virg_mattes]

You're not a recording artist, are you? Virtually nobody makes money on records. For example, Glen Campbell, who has had more than twenty gold records, has publicly stated that because of the recording contracts he was forced to sign, he would never have made a living at music if he had to live on royalties. Most artists lose money on recording, in fact. The real money is to be made in live performances. This is in no small part a factor in the draconian nature of recording contracts. To get enough exposure to make a living playing concerts, artists are required to sign contracts that generally give the artist less than 25 cents per CD sold, and those quarters must be used to pay back the record company for the costs involved in making the CD (studio fees, distribution costs, advertising, etc.) before the artist sees a penny of it. For this reason, the vast majority of artists never see any money from a record, and some of them actually take such a huge loss that they quit the professional music scene entirely (which is one of the main reasons behind the "one-hit wonder" phenomenon).

More to the point, however, is that many of the artists that are presented with a recording contract are young and inexperienced, and most are not given the chance to refer to legal assistance before signing. I personally know several artists who were presented with contracts on a "this night only" basis. When one of them asked to have a copy before signing so that his attorney could look it over, the exec told him, "No way. If you don't sign it now, you won't sign it ever." He refused, and the exec made good on the threat. With the fear of oblivion hanging over them, many artists fold under pressure and sign, hoping to hit the big time and make it back. Others will sign anything that's put in front of them by someone claiming to be a record company. For the most part, it's a screw-time by the record companies, designed to get money for the record company execs, with little concern for the artist, because, as was said to me by a contracted musician, "if you don't sign up, there's always someone behind you waiting."

So, in response, yes, most artists under record contract are mistreated. Some accept it more readily than others, but it's still mistreatment.

Virg

Re:If only there were a way to hear music for free

[Sloppy]

It will never happen. The server side would require expensive infrastructure, probably big metal towers and electricity and stuff like that. The only way they would be able to afford to send out the music for free, would be if they were to completely commercialize it.

I'm just speculating, of course ;-) but there would probably be ads in between the songs, and the songs themselves would be extremely pre-filtered and not an accurate representation what the musician population actually creates.

So I don't think your pipe dream is ever going to happen, except perhaps in a perverted form. Keep dreaming, you foolish idealist.

Re:How...

[ncc74656]

Ouch... you'll need to do some level-matching first. I don't recommend the ol' RadioShack patch cable approach.

"Speaker out" on most computers is really line-out. Ancient soundcards had onboard amplifiers that would drive 8-ohm loads directly, but next to nothing made in the past three or four years has been like that.

Another consideration, though, is that some soundcards will loop line-out to line-in on the card...no patch cable required. My work machine's equipped with a Conexant Riptide-based soundcard; two of the channels available under the recording level controls are "mono mixer" and "stereo mixer." If one of these two are selected, I can begin playing in Windows Media Player (or whatever) and start recording in Acoustica (or whatever) and capture whatever comes in.

I don't know if this connection is in the analog section of the soundcard or the digital section. I suspect it's in the analog part...but even if it is, looping the audio back in the mixer has to be at least a little bit better than having to loop it through a patch cable.

Some examples of online music services.

[clarkie.mg]

There are already some working sites for downloading music with a monthly fee. I will here analyze two of them :

1 e-compil (universal)

- prices : 8 for 10 downloads or 15.5 for 20 downloads (per month, min. 6 month)

- audio format : windows media ! quality unknown

- choice : ridiculously small, few artists, only one or two song per artist. (Example : only 45 titles in the techno/dance category !)

- ability to transfer songs to a portable device : limited, you have to use microsoft active sync.

- interface : minimum

- artists retribution : unknown

- no search engine

- url : http://www.e-compil.fr/

2 emusic

- prices : 14.99$ a month (3month) or 9.99$ (12 month min.), unlimited download

- audio format : mp3

- choice : large number of artists but many of them obscure; many full albums.

- ability to transfer files : maximum, they trust the customer.

- interface : good

- Artists are paid per download.

- url : http://www.emusic.com/

Conclusion

Unfortunately, those two services are not what a music enthusiast expects : e-compil is pure crap (at this time), windows only, very limited choice. emusic is better. The only problem is that they only have the music that the big bussiness has left them and that is sure not enough for a music fan : we choose music we like, not music produced by X or Y.

We'll see what pressplay and musicnet will offer but I praise you to never, never commit to a service that use windows media. Microsoft has already a insane grip on the computing world, don't let it come to the music world.

Copy protection = perpetual motion machine

[e_lehman]

Copy protection schemes are like perpetual motion machines: there is always some crank claiming to have one, despite sound arguments that no such thing can exist.

This plan was clearly produced by some savvy businessmen. They charge a modest fee, but lock you into the service FOREVER-- the longer you subscribe, the larger your collection, and the greater the penalty for terminating the service. What an incredible business model!

Of course, it relies entirely on the integrity of the copy protection scheme. OOPS!

Amazing that such "savvy businessmen" are completely taken in by the copy protection cranks. Not just once, but again and again and again and again and...

Umm have you tried it really ???

[Archfeld]

I buy lots of music, I even pay for CD for the SHITTY MAJOR LABELS. When I can't find somthing for sale I search Morpheus and ALMOST ALWAYS find things that the so-called record companies cannot provide me but would like to SUE me for trying to listen to. The record companies are doomed, and rightfully so. When your industry is RUN BY INBRED MORONS things tend to go south.

Reminds me of Divx...

[rebelcool]

(No, not the video format).. the thing that players sold at Circuit City a year and a half ago had in it. The same idea - you 'bought' dvd's for cheap but if you stopped paying, you couldnt watch anymore.

I saw ads for about 4 months, then that thing went out of business.

The RIAA should've listened to their motion picture brethren MPAA about that idea...

I love this quote...

[kindbud]

Now, as the label-backed services are set to launch, the companies are careful to position them as works in progress. "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. "They're focusing on the early adopter audience at this point." (emphasis added)

Seems to me that all the biggest mistakes have been made and repeated several times already, by all the major players. They've managed to alienate the customer base and chase them away to the competition, even to the point where few have any qualms about bootlegging and to hell with whatever the music cartel offers. I'd say Mr. Sinnreich hasn't got a clue.

But he's right, it's a very immature business .

Losing access to your music would be inevitable

[og_sh0x]

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 this, too, will fail (long)

[theoriginalturtle]

When the whole shitstorm over Napster was playing out in court and the mainstream media over the last 12 months or so, I thought a lot about why people want music over the net, what they want, and why they don't want to pay for it.

Quit laughing, the answer to "why they don't want to pay" isn't as obvious as you think.

I don't want to pay because the money's not going to the right place.

For better or worse, the Napster/P2P phenomenon is an American contrivance, and a lot of it is built, though not necessarily by Americans or in America, with American sensibilities. The Great American Idea is, "I want what I want, where I want it, and when I want it." And the complement of that is, "I don't like to be conscious of being told what I want."

The major labels are trying to play this like they have, or soon will have, total control, same as the old pre-cassette LP days of the 1960s. If you want to hear this music, you go to a store we designate, and you pay some money for a physical flat, black circular object and take it home to play it.

A lot of the labels (just like a lot of the book publishers until a few years ago) still think that they're in the business of selling physical containers for media, when really, most listeners don't give a shit how the content is packaged, they want what's IN it.

But it's that "control" thing that will nuke the labels in the end, because it runs counter to the Promise Of World Interconnection: anything you want, you can find, right now. Anything. The ethic of the labels is, "you can only have what we choose to sell you, when we choose to sell it, nyah."

This offends people. It sure offends ME. I could not possibly give a rat's ass about Britney or Garth or Blink or N'Sync. But the things I am interested in finding are uneconomic for the labels to choose to sell to me on physical media. If I'm interested in finding a particular track by a particular obscure 1950s Detroit blues band, and they recorded only one album that was released locally and there's maybe only ten copies left in the entire world, in a solid-media world, I am completely forked. That is, unless some major label chose to buy the rights to the album, then chose release it on CD, then chose to distribute it AND the stores around me chose to carry it AND they're not out of stock that day AND the counter staff has some idea of what bin it was chucked into.

All I wanted was to hear "Winin' Boy Blues," and I've gotta go through all that? Scruit.

Look at it now from a net perspective: all it takes is for one of those ten people to sample their rare LP, convert it and stick up a Gnutella host. I can then find it, and hear the music right now, and by extension, pass it along to other people who might hit my Gnutella node. No flat, black, rare expensive scratchy things involved.

I want what *I* want, not the shit the label wants me to buy this month. Nothing about any of these online distribution schemes is built to account for that paradigm. And nothing about their paradigm interests me. So yes, I will continue "stealing" the older, less-mainstream music I want, because I don't want any of the stuff they're trying to sell, or if I do, I don't want it on their terms, because their terms don't suit my intended use and strip me of fair-use rights under law.

The one big flaw in my approach is that the creators of the music don't get paid, and I want them to be paid. However, there's nothing in the major label structure that assures that they will be if I hand over my money to them, either!

One way out: rather than try to take on the labels at their game, invent a new one. Bypass the existing rights-management mechanisms and set up a net-based rights cooperative to handle micropayments directly to the artists, a la Amazon's Honor System. Not just for new or unsigned artists, but all artists, including the estates of dead ones. If I want to use an early Fugs track in a film I'm doing, or want to burn some Wes Montgomery to CDR for a friend, I go to the clearinghouse, find the track, find the item, list my use and contact info, and arrange for payment in real time. For artists and material not yet tracked, put it in interest-bearing escrow until such time as they can be.

They get paid, I get my stuff, and the control of labels over what I hear is reduced. The trick is going to be, get the rights to material to revert to the artists rather than continuing to let labels hoard masters they'll never, ever rerelease. Copyright was never intended to be a way for people to bury intellectual property.

I did an earlier essay on this that probably puts it better: The Death Of Napster

Turtle

Re:Why this, too, will fail (long)

[FFFish]

"I want the artists to be paid!"

Me, too! I want to reward those people who are pleasing me. It's fair play, and it encourages them to please me more.

What's really needed, then, is for one of the pissed-off, but wealthy, artists to get his/her shit together and fund the development of the Internet media distribution centre. Elton John, with his $218 million bucks, and who just made a strong public statement about the recording industry, is my candidate investor angel #1.

The system is dead frigging simple: all that is required is a massive server farm, and an easy-to-use front-end interface.

Backend: the highest-quality audio files that can be had. 24-bit, 96kHz would be ideal.

Middle: encoders for MP3, Ogg, Minidisc, etc.

Front: registration, account balance, download, search, make payment.

Account must contain a minimum $50, no interest paid. We'll fund the operation of this business mainly through interest income. Starting balance is $100.

Registration allows you to download music in the format you desire. It will be encoded on-the-fly. This will allow us to upgrade the storage format as technology allows, and allows us to provide the format you need. Most popular formats/files will, naturally, be cached.

Each download automatically xfers money from your account to the artists' accounts. Artists are paid starting when their account value is $1000 or more. An average 10% of the weekly take (averaged over six weeks) will be held in reserve, to provide us with interest income. (ie. if an artist sells an average $10000 in a week, $1000 is kept in the reserve; they get the remaining $9000.)

You can also pay artists directly, without downloading; this lets you "make up" for all the pirate music you own. :-)

The database will contain only artist-owned material. Artists will need to obtain ownership of their recordings. We're going to cut RIAA completely out of the loop.

Distribution of artists' income to their band members, songwriters, managers, etc., is entirely the burden of the artists. However, it wouldn't be difficult to extend our business manager to allow these folk to register themselves, and to automatically distribute the monies appropriately. For this, we would charge a minimal fee: it's a value-added service that would help fund the overall operations.

Our executives and employees would make REASONABLE salaries, perhaps on a PROFIT-SHARING basis! No one is going to get $500K per year just because they're a CEO. We'll keep the money going to the people who deserve it: the artists! Damn, let's do it right for once.

This isn't going to cost more than a few million to set up completely. For Elton, it'd be frigging pocket change.

The only real challenge in all this is that artists currently don't own the music that's already out there. We won't have any songs available for download!

Overcoming this challenge shouldn't be too difficult, though: Elton can open a dozen recording studios and help artists get out of the RIAA deathtrap. He can charge reasonably for studio use and production, but the artists must retain ownership of their work.

I should think that within a year, enough well-known artists will have recorded new material that we'd be able to actually launch this.

Come to think of it, this would probably make the ultimate open-source project. If enough people kicked in code, hardware, ideas, business management, etc., it'd probably be launchable without Elton's money!

Re:They don't get it.

[ErikZ]

Wasn't the same thing said of dead tree publications?

Re:more crap (Wrong)

[GemFire]

OOOps! You're exactly right, and I guess I didn't really say what I meant. You don't own the copyright - i.e. the right to make and distribute copies. The AHRA does forgive personal copies as non-infringing.

well the superficial answer

[poemofatic]

to your superficial comment is that:

If keeping hardware unencumbered, open and patent-free formats/drivers, not living in a police state, and maintaining free speech rights need to be sacrificed to assure the steady flow of "'n sync" hits, then I will gladly do away with the latter. I just don't want to live in a world where I have to have a license to enjoy a song. sorry.

But the deeper answer is that several of your assumptions are wrong:

#1. the present system supports artists.

At best a toss up. Yes, some mega stars drive around in cadillacs. Also, expensive music videos and add campaigns are launched. On the other hand, the labels make it difficult for me to get good music by:

An overbearing distribution network (control of shelf space, payola, verticle integration with media monoliths). This network makes it difficult for independent bands to get heard on the radio, or get their stuff in the stores. As soon as a new sound appears, the rip off bands get into high gear and -- with this distribution network behind them -- eat up the consumer dollars which could have gone to the band that was responsible for the innovation. Funny how people don't talk about that kind of piracy.

contracts which make middling bands inevitably fall into debt. The label then pressures them to be more mainstream in order to break even on the next album. Basically, this is an economic model which only works for mega hits. Like television, music is punished if it does not aim at the most mainstream tastes. Actually, thie demographic is skewed towards those with more disposable income (for obvious reasons) so the target market is not really "democratic" in the traditional sense. The major avenues that most people have to experience new music : airwaves, record stores, concerts -- are all dominated by monopolies, punitive and exclusive contracts which limit consumer choice and hurt the little guy.

price-fixing

#2. Musicians will stop making music if the current property rights regime is changed.

Well, this is just silly. Beautiful music was made in feudal, pre-capitalist, capitalist and socialist systems. It will go on. Perhaps those who dissappear will be the armies of boy bands, rip off artists, and the music professionals which surround them. These parasites have been squeezing out the real innovators since the thirties. I'll pay money to see them go.

#3. We soon wont have record companies.

That's just silly. The biggest asset which these monstrosities have is not IP rights, but a distribution/promotional network. They will still have that. Hopefully, it will be weakened enough so that good music can be heard above their marketing blitz. People will still buy records, because records are cool. Because of ownership fetish, for the artwork, and as a symbol of group membership. None of this will change, except possibly in scale. Even the rip-off artists, whise bottom line you are so eager to trade your rights for, will still make money.

seems like potential antitrust problem . . .

[raresilk]

This allows a company to sell products to a customer, then if the customer decides to obtain that product from a competitor instead (switch to a competing download service), the company can destroy all the products the customer ever bought. That's like Microsoft putting a clause in its license that says it can render all my Microsoft software inoperable if I decide to buy a Mac.

I would think that this scheme merits an antitrust challenge, not only by companies that want to offer competing download services, but from record stores of both the online and brick/mortar variety. Suppose a customer does this for a year, decides the downloading is too much hassle and decides to buy their future music at Tower Records because it's a great store. The penalty hanging over their head for switching (destruction of what they've already downloaded) makes it far more costly to switch to Tower, even if Tower's service, product selection, etc. is more appealing to the consumer. That's a classic anticompetitive practice.

Re:iPod -- I don't think so:

[ConceptJunkie]

By free use, I mean fair use by a paying customer. Sorry if I was unclear about that, I typed "free" for "fair".

Recompression sounds like crap

[ansible]

A friend of mine tried downloading MP3s from the Internet, and then recording them onto his Sony minidisc player. The result? It sounded like crap.

The problem here is that you're re-compressing something that's already been compressed once. That's going to introduce more noise, and amplify the compression artifacts.

And then there's the whole signed DRM drivers for Windoze, and the unavailability under Unix/Linux that others have mentioned.

The inevitable hacks...

[Omerna]

Does anyone really believe that there won't be hacks out within about six hours for this? Anyway, my radio already does this, and it's free.

Re:Very Valid Point.... .

[raresilk]

Great minds run parallel . . . ;-)

Seriously, though, I have felt for a long time that the real way to combat the prevailing industry practices is through antitrust rather than copyright. The antitrust argument is stronger, more easily understood by non-technically-literate judges, and some successes in the antitrust milieu could pull the copyright jurisprudence along in its wake. But no one, or few laypersons, really get antitrust law, so it's not a highly popular argument.