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Rent Music Over the Net
NerveGas writes: "Financial Times is reporting that two competing services, both backed by major music labels, are about to offer legal music downloads. For $9.95 per month, you can download up to 100 songs per month. The catch? Cancel your service, and you lose the ability to hear *any* of the songs that you've downloaded. There are other caveats, as well - but at least it's a start." So what happens after you've got your hard drive filled with rented music and the monthly fee goes up to $199.95/month? Pay up, or lose it all...
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...
My Journal
These will be total failures. Not that this is any surprise to anyone. Maybe they are being set up to fail?
sulli
RTFJ.
It seems pretty obvious that it will take 1 week for someone to 'break the code' so to speak and allow you to keep your music.
My guess: When you buy a CD, you don't have to agree to any terms or conditions (at least explicitly). However, when you sign up for this service, they can put more restrictions in the contract than exist in a CD purchase.
Presumably, they can also watermark your files and know who it is that distributes the music online, and then come after you for breach of contract.
there are 2 kinds of people. those who divide people into 2 kinds, and those who don't.
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.
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Pipe the songs through the virtual audio cable and you can do with them whatever you want.
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.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
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
cat
Now play that funky music and...
oggenc --raw
Wow. Making a copy of this music is gonna be reaaaaallly difficult.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
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...
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.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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...)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Dixv (not to be confused with the codec) was this DVD based movie format. The Divx -DVD's and your player would phone in and charge you every time you played the movie..
I think there was a larger fee to "unlock" the movie permanently for 1 player as well. It was supposed to make rentals that you didn't have to return etc..
Judging from the complete lack of Divx/DVD players in stores, I'd say consumers didn't go for it. So being fast learners they try it with music now..
Of course with the headphone jack and a MiniDisc player the issure becomes moot..
I don't think that the record labels want or expect these services to succeed. They are designed to fail. When they fail, the record labels will have the cover of "plausible deniability" they need. They can say that honest people don't want online music, that they really want to purchase CDs, and that the role of the Internet is to accept orders for copy-protected CDs that can be mailed to them. Now nobody will believe this, but it will be all that Congress needs. That's where the game is played.
And because Congress is in their pockets, they're protected by the DMCA. If (well, "when" is more appropriate) anyone cracks the service, they'll be liable for prosecution. So will web sites that post the cracks, although of course there will be just as many of these as there are sites carrying DeCSS. Again, it'll be a way of separating the world into "thieves" and their good customers.
These services download proprietary encrypted formats, which is why there can be timebombs. They might be semi-useful for a Kid In A Dorm Room, for whom the computer (consumer grade Windows box with subwoofer, etc.) has become the music system. But if you can't move it to a real disk or portable MP3 player, then it's not going to be usable on your real hifi system or in the car. Big whoop. Again, designed to fail. Why pay $10/month for what is, in effect, the right to sample things?
Now personally, I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for the right to download some number of tracks a month, in an unrestricted format, and/or to sample (stream, whatever) from a catalog before buying. Then I'd burn my own CDs. The artists could make just as much as they do now. But the record labels are wedded to their high-overhead business models and don't care what the customers want.
I expect an impasse to last for some time, with online filesharing continuing one step ahead of the law, until some successful artists band together and join an alternative to the Big 5 record labels. That alternative would promote online distribution as well as sell CDs, and would have the clout to buy radio play. No, not MP3.com, which was basically unsigned acts.
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.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
"It's a very immature business (where) most of the important mistakes haven't been made yet," said Aram Sinnreich, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix.
Oh, I don't know - they seem to be doing a damn fine job of trying to stuff all those mistakes in. For years now a few of us have been saying on Slashdot that what the publishing concerns are gunning for is a pay to play world where you never own an actual product and never get to control any aspect of your temporary rental of the products you pay for - except for deciding when you press "play" (provided your subscription is up to date, natch).
Basically, the existance of technologies that by nature should make the ownership of a copy of a particular piece of intellectual property much cheaper and much more useful than it has been is being exploited as an excuse to make the act of paying for the right to access intellectual property more expensive and much less useful.
Go to a record store and buy a regular CD - any artist or label you want, if they have it in stock. Rip it to your hard drive. The thing is basically immortal now, barring accident or theft. Rip it to MP3s, make your own mixes, use your personal server to stream your own web station you can listen to at work. Make compilation CDs for the drive or vacation. You never pay to access that content again. Sick of it? Sell it, recover a tenth of your purchase price.
Or: Buy a subscription to a service. Limited access to a limited catalog. You can bet there are all sorts of restrictions on reformatting, how many machines the thing can reside on, etc. Andpay to maintain it. And pay to maintain it. And pay to maintain it. The longer you ae a member the more diffuse it becomes - you are paying a smaller and smaller amount for the maintenance of each song. But you NEVER get to stop paying.
There is only one group of copnsumers these services could be appropriate for - people who spend more than $10.00 per month on CD singles. For the rest of us (I've never bought a single in my life) it isn't even relevant. But it is a warning shot. They're gonna try to use the DMCA to completely eliminate ownership of a registered copy of copyrighted material, an act which, given the results of the recent 2600 case, pretty much allows them to eviscerate the concept of fair use. Alternatives (like emusic.com) are the ONLY solution. People who care NEED to start supporting artists who choose not to join the publishing giant slave-parade. Information may not want to be free but it doesn't have to be expensive.
Cheer up - the publishing industries', particularly the music industries' time of maximum vulnerability is upon them. Keep your eyes peeled troops and get ready to support the good guys.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
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
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
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....