Slashdot Mirror
EMI Promises Downloadable Music
SataiCam writes "The Economist has an article up referring to EMI's plans to implement digital music downloading starting on December 1 through a whole host of 'distributors'. They claim it will allow users to get music in 'the formats they are demanding' (ogg?), to burn copies of songs, and download them to other devices. Here's the press release from EMI."
Just don't expect to *listen* to it anywhere - the files won't play on any computer, portable device, or cd player. It's their new business plan!
Now all of us complaining about our rights to songs have an opportunity to put our $$ where our mouth is... Will you guys pay for downloadable music? If this doesn't work it will be a good sign that we are all just a bunch of pirates, or will it?
not!
Keep music free, fight the power!
As in, we did a user survey, and they all are in favor of WMA? I'll be surprised if they sell Oggs.
At one point in the story they mention that this is downloadable SECURE DIGITAL music. When will the music industry catch on? People want their MP3 (and ogg around here of course). Guessing this is destined to be another failure.
Stubbornness can only last so long, it seems. It was inevitable that the Music industry would eventually realize that the old axiom "If you can't beat them, join them", is an old axiom for a reason.
If they had thought about all of this five years ago, of course, they could have realized a lot more profit. But, I'm sure that they will throw money at it until they are competitive.
The real question is, will they be able to guilt everybody into not pirating their music...
Wasn't Napster going to do this afterthey settled with the Music Industry?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
...the music industry's long-standing tradition of royally screwing things up is set to continue...
SIGFEH
They claim it will allow users to get music in 'the formats they are demanding' (ogg?)
Unfortunantly, ogg isn't going to be the choice. The companies that ELI has signed this agreement with (Alliance, Ecast, FullAudio, Liquid Audio, Listen.com, Musicnet, Pressplay, Roxio, and Streamwaves) are all based around mp3s.
-Kaos
Uh it says "in demand", not "in a rogue format that is not mainstream".
They plan to release new software called "KaZaA"
Ogg would be nice, but wouldn't you rather have something lossless, like FLAC?
I am 100% confident that EMI is going to do what the public has been demanding for for ages and release their music in ogg format. Anyone who says that the inclusion of the ogg comment by the poster was ridiculous and just tossed in so the story would be accepted by the slashdot editors is insane and I do not believe them at all. It makes perfect sense to assume that EMI is going to release music in the widely-used ogg format. I know a lot of you nerds who just read slashdot all day might not realize, but everywhere in america,OGG is the hottest buzzword anywhere. Teens are spending their weekend having "ogging parties" where they download and trage ogg vorbis files, and even thousands of grandmas are enjoying "sharing" (WINK) their favourite old classics in ogg format.
In summary, of course EMI is release the music in OGG format, why does the poster even need to ask! DUH.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
A nice announcement, score one for the team, but I do not plan on supporting that company any time soon. The content of their now infamous email correspondance is still fresh in my mind.
"Dear EMusic Subscriber,
I'd like to offer a personal apology for some of our recent communication with you and other EMusic customers. Over the past several weeks, we have implemented some new tools in an effort to identify subscribers that are using EMusic in ways it was not intended. It's important for us to do this to ensure the long-term viability of EMusic -- so we can continue to offer our service to you and the rest of our 70,000 loyal subscribers.
Many EMusic subscribers recently received a letter outlining unusual activity in their accounts. After personally reading through every email sent to us in response, it's clear to me that we need to rethink our approach. While we need to identify customers who are not using the service as intended, we do not want to do this at the expense of passionate EMusic users.
I want to be as clear as possible about what we consider abusive activity and how we will manage this going forward. Although EMusic is an "unlimited" service, there have to be some restrictions on this policy.
EMusic is similar to a buffet advertised as "all you can eat." For the restaurant to be successful, it has to have reasonable limitations that apply to people that stay too long, eat more than their fair share -- or waste food. The service is indeed unlimited for the vast majority of the restaurant's customers whose actions never draw attention. The restaurant reserves the right to deny service to any customer.
EMusic was designed to be an interactive service for personal use and enjoyment. Our intent is to allow our subscribers unlimited access to an amount of music that they can reasonably use. We did not design the service for people who want to download music simply to collect it or to fill up their hard drives. This would be not be responsible for us as a business or provide incentive for our label partners to make their music available.
Obviously, the definition of "reasonable" varies by user and many of the responses I have read are simply requesting some definition. Based on our current analysis of typical subscriber behavior, we believe that downloading more than 2,000 tracks in a 30-day period is not reasonable for personal use. Using a 12-track album as the average, this represents more than 165 albums and over 10,000 minutes of music. Less than 1% our subscribers ever approach these levels.
If, for any reason, you do not find this explanation satisfactory, please use the following link: http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi to cancel your
account. We'll immediately end your subscription - even if you are still in your commitment period - and provide you a refund for the current month.
Again, I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration we may have caused. I can assure you that our team is extremely passionate about continuing to provide you with the best MP3 subscription service possible.
Best regards,
Steve Grady
General Manager, EMusic.com"
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/23396
I know just too many non-tech people who have gotten addicted to downloading music illegally. It will be quite difficult to get them to change their habits. But at least it's a start. Perhaps if Kylie asks very nicely, things will change....no one can refuse Kylie!
You break all the laws of physics and you seriously think there wouldn't be a price?
Ever time I hear this, I wonder why the record labels are bothering. It's not that tough of a decision for consumers. You can have digitally-rights managed, proprietary format songs that you pay for, or songs that you can burn to a CD or put on a portable player for free. And before I get flamed, yes, I am in favor of the artists getting compensation. But the record industry has a rather bad track record when it comes to giving artists a fair share of the profits. What's to assure me they won't just do the same with this new form of media? Give me a system that doesn't restrict my fair use, isn't overpriced and gives more than a 2% share to the artist, then I'll look at it.
live(free) || die;
Here's another article also about EMI's plans for digital music online. The quote that I like is:
/.
The product and the category we're delivering is the one they're looking for.
I swear these guys must read
-N
I've nothing to say here...
By the time one FLAC encoded song comes down on dialup, you could have worked the equivalent time at minimum wage and gotten the whole CD quicker.
2) If the selection is limited to only MP3s, I would want to have the option of downloading files at bitrates higher than simply 128kbs like Emusic currently only offers. Ideally I would have the option of getting any bitrate I want between 128kbs and 320kbs.
3) Clearly defined download limits. Recently an Emusic user was banned for downloading 200 albums in 3 days as an "unlimited" subscriber. No hard cap was set in the TOS agreement, and if I were hypothetically using a service like this, I would want to be very clear on just how "unlimited" my downloading abilities were.
4) Most importantly, I want to be able to formatshift, burn, mix, freely trade, and put the music files on any device I wish. I will never use a service that imposed DRM restrictions on my fair use rights, due to both principle and practicality.
Music industry? You know what that is right? It's a middle man which we don't need. A lot of people missed the point about artists being paid just pennies per CD. But ever wonder why they drive a $100k car or have 5 houses each running $5+ million? Concerts obviously. I'm not a big fan of alternative music and would rather listen to Oakenofold, Tiesto, etc. When those guys came to america did I see them? Heck yea. I went to every club in my area they were playing at. So, what does the music industry really need?
;)
It needs music to be free. Bold statement for such a short rant, but yes that's exactly what needs to happen. One or two HUGE sites like MP3.com that host in the range of 50% of the album for free and the remainder could cost a buck to offset bandwith fees. It would have charts with top 100 in each genre of music.
Well what about small bands that would need a fanbase before people would attend their events? How about every band selling DVDs of their concerts? If you like a band and can't find it in your area you just purchase the DVD of the 4hour concert on that huge music site. And thus there is your solution.
No record companies. Bands get CDs printed which you can order if you would like a product that will last a heck of a long time. The bands all of their revenue through concerts, events, advertisements and the sale of DVDs. And... all their music is freely tradeable over the net.
So, back to the point of this post. Will p2p work? No. Not unless MS has its way and imbeds a method to watch our every move and control ALL content on your PC will p2p ever work. Most people are good natured but when they have an opportunity to steal something and a 99.999% probably that they will not get caught, they will steal it in most instances.
Long story short. This wont work. The record industry has to realize just like the oil companies that their domination and even existance in the world is limited from hereonout.
Mr. Coward
Tina Turner
Are they fscking serious? How about Ms. R0$3n comes over my house, makes me a sandwich, _______ me and then I give her $19.99? Sound good?
?-|||-----x<*))))><
The chance that ogg will ever be seriously adapted is about zero.
- The argument for OGG is that some MP3 patent/process is owned by somebody.
- In this way, the ogg campaign is similar to the days of 'burn all
.gifs.'
- Anti-gif campaigning went, essentially nowhere. Basically, Compuserve didn't go after anybody of import and PNG continues to be a marginally used format.
- PNG is marginally used, despite being superior to
.GIF, technically. The thing is, OGG is INFERIOR to even MP3, and certainly to WMA, etc, at least according to the OGG FAQ.
- a path away from GIF entrenchment was relatively easy to do--just give everybody a new browser that supports both. The problem is that it's much harder to consider this for audio files considering how many mp3 (hardware) players are already in the field--it may not be technically ideal, but Mp3 is here to stay unless there is a compelling reason to switch.
- Compelling reasons include:
- technical superiority (WMA has this, but even it can barely make a dent in mp3's market hold)
- mandates from hardware companies / ip holders - ie something that better considers DRM.
I can see no compelling reason why OGG will ever gain any significant market share.Is this related? Musicmatch.com offers subscription services for BMG, EMI, Universal, and Warner Brothers. This was noted on BMG's site in their news section yesterday.
in 'the formats they are demanding'
"After 1 year of research we found out that users love DRM and want nothing but DRM, so that's what we'll offer"
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
EMI Recorded Music - the world's largest independent record company - today announced its enhanced digital download distribution program for the U.S. in which the company will give consumers - through leading distributors - the ability to download tracks permanently, the technical capability to burn a limited number of personal copies and the flexibility to import recordings to portable devices.
"This is the next step in our plan to give consumers our music in the formats they are demanding today, and to give our distributors maximum flexibility to offer a wider range of options and a deep selection of music," said David Munns, Chairman and CEO of EMI Recorded Music North America.
MP3 is the format that is in most demand (actually used) today... keeping this in mind, the top quote doesn't rhyme with the bottom one. Of what I know, MP3 doesn't have a limit for how many copies you can make. We can assume this being yet another blow the whistle to get some attention by EMI. It seems EMI is going to use Microsoft's format.
No one wants buy god damn mp3s online. They want something they can hold in their hands! And also, how many freakin' people have credit cards? I'm talking about the whole lot of kids and teenagers who are the main target market for a lot of music these days.
Stop with these horseshit schemes and drop the prices of fucking CDs already. They should slice the price of CDs in half, and then I'd start buying them again. Those greedy bastard musicians can then realize what it means to work for their money.
So worried are the record labels that some, including EMI and Warner, have even talked about suing individual file-sharers for illegally downloading songs. This would be a last resort, for it would alienate potential customers of legitimate services.
Hmmm... not sure I understand this point. How would it alienate potential customers?
I suspect the real reason why the record labels haven't gone after individuals is because it would be prohibitively expensive.
I wonder why, though, they just don't go after a few random individuals to set a precedent... or have they?
If it does... well, it's hard to consider EMI a charity, and there are a lot more worthwhile causes to give away cash to than trying to convince the recording industry we're not criminals by supporting a half-assed service of one of their members. Such services have up until now left something to be desired, but if this actually offers customers a better deal than buying the CD, a fair selection, ease of use, and a format that is as versatile as can be ripped from CDs (MP3/OGG) I'd expect it to do pretty well -- if it's a pile, however, one can hardly expect a lack of customers to be a sign of anything besides a failure to deliver.
I'll be ready to sign up for this. Despite their underhanded and definitely unethical practices in trying to stick a wrench in the cogs of peer to peer networks(a laughably foolish concept at best, corporate cyber-terrorism at worst(Ooh! The hippy learned how to use kneejerk phrases in his posts! Washington beware!)), I'd be willing to support the recording industry's first real foray into the digital medium. Naturally(as this is slashdot), I didn't bother reading the article, but I'm sure most people(read:people with money, not whiners without money) would be happy to pay a $50/month charge(about the cost of cable where I live) to use this service at unlimited downloads per month.
:) ), or it can be used as a cheap platform for shareware developers to launch their product. It's just a matter of putting the technology to good use.
It's really nice to see that the recording industry might finally be realizing that there are reasons beyond economic ones for consumers to want an internet based service, such as the convenience of simply typing in a long-forgotten song which wouldn't be available in stores. The only things which might make this even better would be if A)all labels were doing this, creating a library for the rental, and B)enough people stopped using P2P to convince the RIAA to stop their war against it. P2P has applications beyond sharing music -- it can also be used to get a copy of something like Mandrake 9, which was impossible to download through conventional means for weeks after it came out (and with good reason -- it rocks!
It's been a long time.
I think that you mean snogging parties.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Downloadable music EMIs you!
over 90% of CDs sold in China is pirated
well NO SHIT considering the average chinese citizen has a YEARLY purchasing power of 3,000 US dollars. that's 250 dollars per month, and you think people will shell out 15 dollars for a CD?
Of course, similar to the US (90% of the money is controled by 10% of people), chinese economic ladder is skewed too -- so actually the average family subsides on 100-150 dollars per month usually.
hence, all the "oh my god 4.6 billion dollars lost sale" is so bullshit that you can't even begin.
interesting side note: since there are so many people there, even though the average purchasing power is only 3000 (actually comparable to many nations (for example, in africa) that's starving), it still makes china the second largest economic power in the world.
but don't ever, EVER think people there can afford "legit" music, software, and all the crap we buy while taking the disposible income for granted.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The market often takes wild shifts, all due to a lawsuit, or some other lawyer induced money exchanging frenzy. If enough people are scared into using "truly" free software, and not the "stolen free" kind, then OS formats will catch on with more than just the geek crowd.
Don't be a nerd and steal, when you can be a geek and use Open Source.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
If the historical model of the consumer paying for art once and being able to enjoy it for the rest of his life, then it will work. This is the way books, paintings, and music have been sold to consumers for centuries, and in the last few decades movies have joined the list as well.
But if they decide to try to limit the usage term after purchase, which I believe is the real goal of DRM and other copy protection systems, then it will fail because consumers will feel cheated by the industry.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
My point is that each person wants to control how they listen and what they hear. It's about expressing yourself through the music you play, even if it's just playing a CD track or listening to an mp3 (or ogg). You don't get more anti-freedom (totalitarian) than telling me what I must or cannot read/hear/watch/say or when I do so. Call me a "liberal" (gasp) "anti-capitalist" (the horror) consumer but when I buy books/movies/music/cableTV/satTV then I think that I have a right to read/watch/listen/touch it when, where, and how I want to.
Making it more difficult for me to enjoy new movies/music/books/whatever how and where I want to won't entice me to buy more. If a music CD/movie won't play on my computer - where I spend 80% of my waking time - or in my car (where I spend 15+ hours a week) or on my mp3 player at the gym (where I spend <.00000001% of my time) then I just won't bother with it. And neither will a zillion other people. It's not worth the trouble.
And that's the problem.
I'm going back to coding and watching V: The Original Miniseries on DVD.
no, that should read 'the formats they are demanding' (wma-drm?)
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
From the article:
"Counterfeiting is also growing in size and sophistication. Another report published this week by Informa Media reckons pirated music sales rose in value by 2.4% in 2001 to a worldwide total of $4.3 billion. Taiwan remains the biggest culprit: it has the capacity to press 8 billion CDs a year but has a legitimate demand for only 200m, says the report. Around 90% of CDs sold in China each year are pirated. But the problem is growing in western countries too. The heads of European record companies, meeting recently in Rome, estimated that 27% of music sold in Italy is now pirated; in southern Italy, the proportion is nearer half."
This is something I don't understand. If the problem really is music sharing in the Internet, then how come counterfeiters are gaining more market? I would understand this if there was a recession and people didn't have money to buy CDs, but.. hey wait a minute, there is a recession. Now I'm on to something. Since people don't have the money and they still need their favorite music, do they have any other choice?
Atleast where I live the counterfeited CD costs about 5-8 euros. Blank CD-R costs 40 cents. If people just could download those albums for 5euros maybe they didn't buy pirated versions?
(Maybe this is my childish logic. We all know that everyone using the Internet is an evil pirate who steals from the poor artists and wants to destroy the world economics.)
My last name is OGG you insensative clod!
http://ogg.2y.net !
I believe that, if the artists were smart at all, that they would bypass the record company conglomerate altogether, if there was a p2p service that offered music and had contracts with the artists directly, that would be the ultimate record label, imagine how good music would become and how obselete going to the record store would become if you were supporting the artists you liked by downloading thier music. It wouldnt need to be a big fee, just 2 or 3 cents a song, and if a song is popular, that offers up a sizable check to the artist. I wish i had the know-how and the time to set up a p2p network liek that someday, but alas, even though its a good idea... you still have to deal with those record company a-holes, but its a good idea for the future-- new artists that want an alternative to someone else owning thier music.
sig is broken try again tomorrow
I am really excited to have the opportunity to once again pay for the same songs from such wonderful people as
Billy Idol, Blondie, David Bowie, Coldplay, Joe Cocker, DC Talk, Duran Duran, Everclear, Fatboy Slim, Pink Floyd, Norah Jones, Kottonmouth Kings, Dave Koz, Lenny Kravitz, Megadeth, Kylie Minogue, Anne Murray, Tina Turner, Thalia, Keith Urban, The Vines, Cassandra Wilson and The Beach Boys
many for the third or fourth time. It is clear that the what the record labels consider piracy is the consumer not paying full price for a song on each new media. It is not enough the we pay for the CD, we have to pay for the MP3 as well, probably on each device with which we wish to play.
It is also clear from the list that EMI believes none of us have any interest in artists such as Shaggy, AALIYAH, Janet Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Meridith Brooks, Garth Brooks, or any other artists that has had a major new album in the last two years. I certainly don't want to be one of those people that damn them if they do or if they don't, but the press release gives me little hope that this is any more than a way to push old material.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Use the resources we already have. We've got a book section, why not a music section? Besides, there's only four /.ers that know how to read, anyhow.
What planet are YOU living on? What's your source? Where is the link to you source for that little statistic?
Instead of making shit up, load up Kazaa and look at how many files are being shared. It's not all Chicken Pot Pie recipes. There is a big problem that needs a big fix. But whatever the fix is, it better involve letting people put their music where they want, when they want, or my wallet shall remain closed.
If they do... 5.1 format choice (Realaudio please), Lyrics/Stuff (Liquid) etc...
NO, I won't pay for stereo, it exists on CD already.
I've said this before a couple of times, but it's particularly relevent. Thsese services need to make their content accessible. I recently *bought* a subscription to Rhapsody, which is currently the biggest online music site (aside from maybe eMusic, but Rhapsody carries big-5 stuff). I was perfectly happy to shell out $10 or $20 bucks a month (note, I buy about 1 CD a year, so this is 12x the amount they usually get for me). I considered it a pretty fair deal. Then, I found out that you could only use it with Internet Explorer, and only on Windows. Windows is my dedicated CounterStrike OS. I've got like 100MB free once XP and HalfLife is installed. Screw them if they think I'd boot back into Windows just to use their service. For a streaming media website, this makes no sense at all. So in the end, I decided that Shoutcast was good enough for me, and cancled my subscription. While the number of Linux users out there is comparatively small, the number of MacOS users isn't. And I'd tend to bet that the MacOS-types are significantly more likely than the average Windows user to subscribe to something like this. Also, a lot of desktop Linux users are on the younger side, and they'd also be more likely to buy into this. All told, there is probably a pretty nice chunk of change that they're losing from being uni-platform. Especially since it takes *less* development effort to just use the browser and native media systems thatn to roll your own!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
From the article: After a 5% decline in the sales of recorded music in 2001, the first fall in living memory,.
That statement would be correct if nobody could remember way back to 1997. In those heady days of the Clinton presidency and the dot com boom, the folks at the RIAA reported a 6.5% decrease in annual sales. Back then they didn't have the p2p bogeyman to blame so they laid the blame on retailers streamlining their inventories.
On the whole 'who to blame' angle, I'm amazed that nobody is talking about the role of Clearchannel's radio monopoly on decreased music sales. Before one company dictated that there would be only a handful of radio formats across most major cities, stations were more likely to expand their playlists to include local acts, independent musicians, and songs that local programming personnel liked. Now, playlists are sent down from the home office, and there is more homogeneity among playlists. What does that mean? Fewer new songs get any real airplay, thus giving the listeners of Big Radio fewer unique albums to consider buying...
Back to EMI: The description of their system has so many vague statements that I seriously doubt that this will take off (and we know that EMI never tries to mislead listeners). What listeners want is ease and freedom.
Here's what needs to happen for online music to be profitable for the labels:
1. Record companies have to realize that consumers really don't care who produces or distributes an album. When I go to a record store to by an album, I don't have to know whether it's a BMG or Sony album, I just go to the store and buy it. With these disperate online music services, each with their own catalogs, consumers are supposed to care about these things.
2. Give me the freedom to listen to my music how I want and when I want. Too many of these services offer limited ability to burn CDs or copy to mp3 players. Stop that. I bought the damn music, let me listen to it the way I want. Stop treating your customers like crooks.
It's not that hard. Record executives have a hard time realizing that the music industry is about the artists. Yes, Mr. Exec I'm sure you're a really neat guy, and I know you spend a lot of time doing important things like Bribing radio stations to play your music and engaging in $480,000,000 in price fixing, and I can only imagine how difficult it is to threaten academic researchers. But seriously, you may be getting just a teansy bit greedy and irrational.
Man, I need some sleep...
Alternative my ass. When music becomes a product, you know something is not right.
I hope this does work out for the best, but EMI has to be extremely competetive in order to get people to pay for something that they can already get for free. There better be fast, effecient downloads, lyrics, album covers, videos, band history, download history, chat, reasonable pricing, the whole nine hundred yards.
What everyone on the planet needs is a nice fat bitch of a pipe so that we can download uncompressed, high quality audio to burn to our cds.
Oh, and it better work on linux.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
Users of less-than-optimal quality compressed formats such as MP3 & Ogg use them because they are convenient to download (& share), and because they are manageable in terms of storage needs -- especially for those who like to keep them online. Such formats have taken over from the C90 audio cassette of my school days in that they provide the best medium for music-swapping. However they still do not provide the best possible digital listening experience, and I prefer to own my favourite music on CD.
So here's a radical idea that no-one seems to have taken seriously to date, and it's one which would suit all parties: Artists, Recording industry, Publishers/Distributors and Consumers.
The advantages of owning music on CD are: Quality, Variety, and Packaging. The music is in uncompressed format, the track collection may include numbers previously unheard (leading to new discoveries), and the packaging hopefully provides reading and pictorial material on the artist(s).
Now if publishers produced a package as a downloadable CD-quality image, incorporating uncompressed music and a multimedia "sleeve" (background, photos, soundbytes, interviews, videos, printable CD cover, etc.), such that I could burn this to CD, I for one could be persuaded to part with $$ for this. OK, it might take me 6 days to d/l until I get DSL, but the time has come to consider this.
I understand CD fabs are expensive, so the industry could pass on some of the savings they make [howls of ironic laughter from the crowd], with the standard CD price redefined at around say $5. Who would balk at that? The "single" or EP format will continue to appeal, and should also be offered, at lower cost. Recordable DVD offers possibilities for larger collections, movies and so forth (though how the network may creak under the load is for another discussion).
No-one is pretending that the swapping will not continue, but collectors are prepared to pay a small premium for extra quality if the price is right.
Formatting problems aside, this will fail for 2 reasons, both are money. The first is obvious, if you do a search of the press release, the word 'price' is never mentioned. You would think they would have something like 'each track can be downloaded for a reasonable price'. Nope. Wanna bet it will be $2.49 a song, restricted also, because people 'demand' secure formats because they don't want to be 'ripped off'. Sure, this will fly. That is the short term deathblow.
The longer one is more insidious. Say you have the songs you purchased on your hard drive, and one day, you turn your machine on and hear a grinding noise followed by clicks. Disk failure. You then call up the nice people who sold you the music and ask for new copies, because your legally purchased music is gone, and you are well within your rights to request another copy. Remember, they give you the honor of using a license, not owning the track. If your HD dies, you still have the rights to the license. So, you ask the nice person on the phone if you can have free downloads of the entire 98Sync degrees to men collection that you just spent $800 on. Then you wait. You can just barely hear the riotous laughter through the phone that has dropeed to the floor on the other end. Then they tell you to fuck off. Luckily, in the fine print that they changed since you agreed to it, legally of course, they want the money they spent on senators put to good use, says 'we can tell you to fuck off at any time for any reason'. So you fuck off. And then you never patronise them, or any other similar service again. This will really end the industry, and they are way way to greedy to do anything else.
Lastly, a personal note. The music industry, chiefly in the guise of the RIAA has done more in the last year or two to erode our civil rights than anything else that I can think of. They killed several good, legal services, and they are not stopping. They are forcing changes to the technology that I use and love to make them more money. They have no qualms about buying power and abusing it on a whim. If you doubt it, read the legislation that they are trying to get passed (there is to much of it to link here, start at www.theregister.co.uk with a search for RIAA). By using services like this, you are only enriching the very people who are targeting you and the things you love. Don't give them more money, it will only hurt you in the long run. When they went after napster, I said that I would not buy a CD until it played out, and if napster won, I would go back to buying CDs. If they lost, I would never buy a CD again. I have not bought a CD since. My 300+ collection collects dust. I have stopped consuming music. NPR is better radio anyway. Don't buy the 'new, friendlier' record company BS, they are sharks, and you are bleeding.
-Charlie
...because the above poster has been pirating Village People music all these years. Next month he can down load "YMCA" legally!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Dear Valued Customers,
We are pleased to announce our new tiered service plans, specially designed to suit your specific needs. Now there is a plan for everyone! You may choose from:
$9.99 Unlimited - The basic unlimited. There are limits and they're pretty damned low. No one will ever want this ( we just put it here so that our ads can scream "$9.99 UNLIMITED ! ")
$19.99 More Unlimited Plan - still limited. Just not as limited as the Unlimited Plan.
$29.99 Super Unlimited Plan - more unlimited than the More Unlimited Plan but less unlimited than the Ultra Unlimited Plan.
$49.99 Ultra Unlimited Plan - this one is really, well, unlimited. OK, not really.
$99.99 Mega Unlimited - Awesome! Really, really unlimited (on Tuesday nights only from 8:00 p.m. to midnight).
$299.99 Ultra Supermega Supreme Unlimited. - Totally unlimited. Some restrictions apply. See contract for details. Offer void where people eat toast and in the state of Tennessee. Available only to new customers. Who live in Pittsburgh. On 4th Avenue. In a red house. With blue trim.
$122,999,999.99 The Totally Ultra Supermega Supreme Buy the Damned Company Unlimited Plan. The most unlimited of all the unlimited plans. You can truly use all you want! Almost.
Note: All plans are subject to cancellation if we feel like it.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Dear record company CEOs!
I am proposing the following business model for your company:
I pay you the price that I am paying you now (1-3 CDs a year): about 5 bucks a month. For that price (a monthly flatrate), I want all the records that you have in your archives.
Please provide for easy download via FTP. I prefer to use wget --mirror. Bandwith doesn't matter. Your business will then depend on new, interesting releases. I would also be willing to make an agreement with you in which access to earlier records will increase over time. For example: After 1 year of membership, I will be able to retrieve all the stuff in the last two years, after 2 years four years and so on.
As long as you deliver content that is
- e.g. not accessible for me (e.g. some proprietary player as Liquid audio in the EMI example)
- e.g. not reusable (DRM shit) or
- not playable on any device that I own (CD with copy protection)
- overpriced
SCREW YOU!There's unlimited supply
and there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
they onl1y did it 'cos of fame -
Who? EMI
Too many people had the suss
Too many people support us
An unlimited amount
too many outlets in and out -
Who? EMI
And sir and friends are crucified
a day they wished that we had died
We are an addition
we are ruled by-none
Never ever never
And you thought that we were faking
that we were all just money making
you do not believe we're for real
or you would lose your cheap appeal?
Don't judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
And blind acceptance is a sign
of stupid fools who stand in line like EMI
Unlimited edition
with an unlimited supply
That was fhe only reason
we alt had to say goodbye
Unlimited supply
EMI there is no reason why
EMI I tell you if was all a frame
EMI they only did it 'cos of fame
EMI I do not need the pressure
EMI I can't stand the useless fools
EMI unlimited supply
EMI Hallo EMl goodbye A & M
I think it's great that they listen to us customers, but I'm not convinced yet.
I play Hattrick
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
i've actually met with some guys from emi in the course of my work regarding secure music. they seemed to be pretty much know what's going on. not that i like these guys very much, nor the concept of drm. but they were very reasonable. they understood that any drm they put out will be immediately broken. they told me they know sdmi is crap. they understood that they can't shaft the consumer with too many restrictions or difficulties to use or transfer, or excessive charges. they understood that people want music on their portables. these guys are not engineers, but music people.
they also understood that convincing their management to give up any restrictions is not going to be easy. i would say though, that emi is the most forward looking label out there. they're probably gonna take quite a few missteps on their way, and us slashdotters are gonna beat them over the head for it. but they're actually working on it, and not trying just to fuck us over (well, not all of them). maybe one day, they'll actually find the right balance (wow, late night optimism. who woulda thunk it?)
my favorite quote: "sometimes i think 'fuck it, why don't we just give it all for free, download all you want'".
two things.
Piracy is an apropriate term, we can get into arguments but flagrant copyright violation sure as hell aint' sharing.
If it is true that so many people pirate music, then the RIAA needs to start advertising more, because that is a social problem. I honestly only know one person who would pirate a CD he thought was decent, and everyone else does without music they don't own.
The only way you could justify "file sharing" would be to quote an economist or politician who has said that copyright is in fact an outdated model. Until that time, sharing files is breaking more than the law, it is breaking one of the most fundimental motivators in our capitalist system.
$5 CDs get you!
No... wait... that didn't work at all...
Anyways... Since it seems now all writeable CDs are going to start costing $4 apiece (to alleviate piracy) it should be perfectly legal for me to download whatever the fuck I want and burn it to CD. Seriously! If parliament soon realizes the double standard of illegalising piracy and taxing it all the same as if it were legal, then Canada will pretty much have the answer to the whole piracy debate. Download all you want, but tax the CDs and that way the RIAA gets their coveted money and can focus on giving us more quality music, which is the one thing they've been failing to do.
Karma: Non-Heinous
The press release calls them RADIO singles.
(first I'd say it makes more sense to give away singles to get people to buy the album rather than making them PAY for the singles in order to whet their appetite... because a lot of people only want the singles... so if they feel that have already paid for them, they might not bother to buy the complete CD. This may actually take away from sales.)
But my main point is about the RADIO sinles, as they call them. Well, what is a radio single? My guess is that they mean a single in RADIO QUALITY audio.
64k MP3s, anyone?
This space available.
I won't support the easement of the RIAA regime into our century. The dinosaurs had their day and now it's over.. move along, nothing more to see here.
--you have been trolled--
Why are people in general unwilling to pay for MP3 quality music?
People are used to getting access FREE OF CHARGE to any of dozens of available unrestricted mid-fi audio streams which are completely unrestricted, can be recorded with anything, can be uploaded to MP3 players or anything else. People have been using this to make compilation tapes, make tapes for friends, and "try before buying" since long before many of you were born.
Yes, this is for real, and is everyday reality not only for propellor-heads, but for the average American.
It's called FM radio. Is the quality really all that different from 128Kbps MP3 quality?
MP3 distribution is no more a threat to industry profits than FM radio is. Is there any reason why FM radio is so important a promotional tool for music that the industry will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a single song played on the radio where EVIL pirates could record it and try to get people who put the same song at a similar quality level on Internet Radio shut down or jailed?
The difference is that the record industry can control FM radio via payola and no obvious way to do the same thing via the Internet except through sites controlled by the industry. Joe Average can submit a song to an Internet Radio station for free, and if the owner likes it, he'll play it. Universal can do the same thing for the same price. The record labels are unhappy about the Joe Average part. They would have no problems with it if the Internet Radio stations played only the content they were told to play.
What the industry likes least is a mix of familiar label tunes with Joe Average's music, because the familiar label tunes tell the listener what genre of music can really be expected at a particular station... and what kinds of unfamiliar songs might be found.
The only new music the RIAA labels want us to hear is their own.
So through their legal sockpuppets in Congress and the CARP panel, they did their best to shut down the potential competition.
Why should there be legal harassment just because people choose to listen to it via Internet instead of via Clear Channel or companies choose to deliver it?
Does anybody actually believe that a 128K MP3 is the "perfect digital copy" that Hilary Rosen and her apologists have been whining about for years? If you do, don't waste our time by responding. First, get your hearing checked by an audiologist. If there's no problem, go to your wall, take that precious MCSE you just got after a month of hard work, burn it, go back to school for a few years and don't post about technology and public policy until you've learned something about both.
I don't find the idea of buying the real product, uncompressed CD audio tracks a-la carte or as albums for 50 cents to $1 per track online intrinsically objectionable in the least. The ability to get the single or two decent songs on a typical album without the filler would be worth it to me. Too bad they can't deliver it, and the fact that they can't really isn't their fault.
50 megabytes of download per track are a bit much for a dialup to handle, and the average Internet user is going to be using dialup for quite some time into the future as I do.
So why do I think they're hoping for failure? Because the spectacular failure of Yet Another Venue For Selling Music Industry Promotional Items in place of music to the public gives them another excuse to whine to Congress about how EVIL INTERNET USERS are determined to STEAL music from them WITHOUT PAYING.
The RIAA labels just want to get a legal strangehold on the development of any technology which has the remotest possibility of opening up avenues of competition to outsiders.
Tech Public Policy stuff
" This has always seemed rather shady to me. If you advertise "unlimited" anything, that means no restrictions. What this letter says is that "we say unlimited, but we don't really mean it."
They are correct that they need to have limitations -- but rather than acknowledging their misleading advertising, they're blaming the users who took them at their word. "
Damn, but doesn't that sound like another industry we know and love?
and shove there stupid download crap who wants to download inferor lossy formats of music. I buy music for it a listen experience and that includes quality. There is no reason why I should pay to listen to music on a portable player or my computer. I am only in one place at one time. Stupid arrogant pricks
Anybody whose business model depends on people not being able to copy a file across the internet doesn't deserve to be making millions. Anybody whose business model depends on making it impossible and/or illegal to copy a file over the internet should have their corporate charter revoked. I mean, seriously, come on. Sucks for them and all, their empire will come crumbling down, or will at least change so they can't make the millions they've been making for decades, but isn't it time for them to stop their whining and learn how to live on salaries more consistent with the amount of labor that they do, like the rest of us? I have no problem with people making millions, but when their business model no longer makes them millions, why should the rest of us agree to suffer for it?
An MP3 file is not encrypted and hasn't got any kind of copy control mechanism built-in, nor is it possible to add something like that to the format since it's just an MPEG audio stream with no header or stream descriptors or anything.
That means that there's no way EMI could prevent you from burning, uploading to any portable player or copying the tracks you download from them.
Ergo, the format is probaly going to be WMA, which does have that kind of controls built-in. But that means that it's going to be more of the same:
In other words, the same old fair-use restricting crap that we're used to from the industry. There's nothing revolutionary or new about this...
This actually is the way EMI and other companies whining about p2p should be going. Not charging for the service - let them charge 20 bucks for the client, or for a one-time fee for access or something, and give people access to everything, with advertising linking mp3s to websites where they can buy records, stickers, shirts, panties, whatever, plus read bios, interviews, etc. Let people take the music freely; the music is already out there, and any network they build, there will be no way for them to keep the music on that network. The problem is they won't take the step of understanding that they aren't losing anything by doing this -- the music is and will be out there. Once they accept that they can think intelligently about ways to make more money. Until then they're pouring more and more time and money into stopping piracy which is a business model that is bound to fail. But their freakin egos are too big; they really believe they deserve 16 dollars every time some kid downloads a song. They can't see past that; or at least they've refused to so far.
They only did it 'cause of fame. Who? EMI.
Eh, anyway I haven't bought a major label album in months and there's still a shitload of good to great music out there in indies that I haven't heard. No, the collusive conglomos aren't about to see my money until a laundry list of different abuses of both artists and customers stop, such as no longer forcing artists to give up control over their own works and making the accounting for royalties, sales and the various costs perfectly clear and auditable. As an artist and a consumer I think small concessions like this are commendable but not anywhere near enough. Luckily there are choices out there and indies have the advantage of not costing as much.
Instead of spending so much energy focusing on DRM, which everyone realizes is useless, they should instead focus on a service and ease of use.
DRM wont work unless each piece of hardware used to play music is tagged and then submitted to their service so that the music you download can be authorized to play on those hardware. Not to mention, that all DRM will eventually, if not the day of its release, be cracked anyway. Instead of limiting consumers (temporarily) the music industry should focus on making music downloads quick and easy. Give us our choice of bit rates, easy menus for selection, the ability to mix and match songs from various albums and artists, allow quick and easy payment, and by god not only will you turn a profit, but people will purchase more music. In addition they should be able to sell more music, since personally I buy a very varied range, and some rare and difficult to find CDs can be just as easily offered online for download as the latest Pop Top 40.
I never goto the store to buy a music CD anymore, its just much easier online, but offer me a service online to download mp3s from and I would purchase much more, there is no charge for shipping, I can mix, and I can get them already in mp3 at high bit rates, which saves me the hassle. (98% of my listening to music is solely on PC). Thats just my take on it.
We should be buying new music from small labels and encouraging them to experiment with Open Media/Open Source releases. That way we'll have it both ways, good new music, and we can copy and re-use it however we want without worrying about cracking and hacking some god-awful crappy protection scheme.
We do we have to buy such safe multinational anodyne music??? Come on slashotters EXPERIMENT! There are so many interesting labels out there.
static
LOCA
Bearos
Tigerbeat
Anticon
To name just a few....
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
it will allow users to get music in 'the formats they are demanding'
Funny, I didnt think everyone was demanding WMA
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://cryptome.org/you-bad.htm
I'm pretty sure this whole idea is going to suck based on EMI's "me too" attitude regarding copy protected CDs.
.02
1. The digital media files will most likely have SDMI or some other Digital Rights Management enforced to the hilt. I wuldn't be surprised if the masses were clamoring for WMA files, according to EMI.
2. Burning to a CD. I can't imagine any company so enthralled with releasing their catalog with copy protection is going to allow you as a consumer to record youur own CDs without first contacting them to see if it's OK. I'm thinking what Audible has (program contacts Audible to ensure you can copy this audio book to CD) is what they'd use. I can't imagine them letting consumers just burn digital audio without some catch.
Just my
Next month he can down load "YMCA" legally!
Either that or some parody that goes "It's fun to violate the D-M-C-A".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Unfortunantly, ogg isn't going to be the choice ... all based around mp3s.
Unfortunately your score 5 post gives the misleading impression that they will be using MP3. If you read the press release you'll see: "capability to burn a limited number of personal copies". That means it's your standard DRM with the oh-so generous capability to put a couple of them on disk, and to import them into DRM-compliant portable devices a limited number of times.
It seems the "the formats they are demanding" means Windows media format DRM, though I can't say for sure.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So, what are the factors that made DVDs widely accepted and adopted? Yes, better picture and sound. Yes, a smaller, more convenient format. But to me, above all, it was better contents that made people switch to DVDs. You don't just buy or rent the movie, you have extra scenes, alternate endings, bloopers, interviews, etc. Hollywood could have put all of that on VHS as well but they didn't. They wanted us to switch to DVD and we have, based on contents. You just have to listen to any DVD movie advertisement to be convinced. The emphasis is on contents, not technical merits.
Now, why can't it be the same for music? Technical merits of digital music are well known by now. When I start seeing music companies think outside the box and provide me with an enhanced listening experience, such as 5.1 surround, lyrics, clips, mind dazzling visual effects, special editions to name just a few that quickly jump to mind, and which is only available from their service, then I'll think it's worthwhile to subscribe to it and pay to download. Until then, I want nothing of the lazy, uncreative, retarded way of thinking displayed by dinosaur companies who are trying to sell me the same old crap.
Face it guys, you dropped the ball. No amount of trying to sell me what is now free will ever change that. Sell me something else that I'll want to buy.
For several years yet, there are going to be those that still want to buy their music on a CD, for the same reason that I still have to stand in line at the supermarket every now and again whilst some old dear pays by cheque.
If a significant proportion of the record companies customer base moves to an online distribution model then surely the economies of scale in the mass manufacture of music CDs would be affected. Wouldn't it?
(but we all know how massively marked up CDs are!)
Just goto besonic
tracks cost between $0 and $1.2 but typically $0.25
A CD of music would probably cose $3 on adverage, but you could pay $0 or upto $12 I suppose.
Loads of good new musicians, you can stream other peoples playlists to help find new music, high bandwidth (never got less than 60k download) basicly a great site.
Just drop EMI,BMG, the RIAA &co is the hole where they belong.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
MP3's at 128K are about FM quality. And because most of the codec out there are absolute shit, the stuff you download at 128K is absolutely wretched. I can't imagine enjoying it.
MP3's at 192K are OK (but not great) to listen to in the car.
You really need to go 256K to 320K to get to something worth listening to.
WMA at 192K? No thanks. I finw WMA's sound to be flat at and lifeless.
But maybe that's how Microsoft sees the world, so they have an excuse.
But really, if you think 128K is marginally okay, you probably do have a bit of a tin ear and in a way you're lucky. Any crap will sound good to you. Its a curse to have a good ear sometimes.
"Give me the freedom to listen to my music how I want and when I want."
And give that freedom to the radio stations too! I live in the UK and the content of most radio stations is abysmal. Despite there being many bands in the country trying to gig, setup website and gain fans the radio stations have very selective playlists. Mostly crap IMNSHO. It is not uncommon for a "POPular" song to be played every hour.
For anyone in London... listen the resonancefm (http://www.resonancefm.com) - excellent stuff - sometimes just to wierd for its own good but. Radio as art - that's if it doesn't get drowned out by those D&B pirates just 0.2Mhz down the scale.... duh!
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
128K *marginal*.
No, 128K SUCKS. Its bad quality. Maybe its okay for the enimem stuff that you seem interested in, but for anybody who loves music and sonic quality, any MP3 is a compromise.
But at least compromise that 256K is the minimum quality MP3 to accept.
Otherwise, they're selling you FM radio quality.
Don't be a sucker!
Regarding ogg files, I use them and plan to continue. Regarding EMI and other large crooked devil dinosaurs w/ decaying distribution monopolies - screw 'em, just like they've done to artists and consumers for decades. Go to your local pub or music hall and pay to see the artists, and buy their offerings directly from them. Until the industry shows good faith, compensates the artists properly and offers a good variety of music (as opposed to a hand full of sex laden no talent superstar trash), and repeals their copyright extensions, then I wont reward them with one thin dime.. and there's an excellent chance most of us wont have a spare thin dime if the bankers keep melting these economies down. In which case, get a second hand guitar, chances are you'll go far :-)
EMI is unceremoniously kicked out of the RIAA.
Your credit card information wants to be free.
I would like to be able to download the actual CD audio .wav files. The time it takes me to download one of these with DSL is about how long it would take a standard modem to download a MP3. This way I can convert it later into any format I choose. Or just burn the CD, print out the liner notes and skip going to the store.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Everyone says they want downloadable music.
I say I would too, but I'm not going to pay more than $.50 CAD/song on average (My host charges about $.015 for that much bandwidth, no issue there). They could easily manage this price, and still make ridiculous profits. The only problem is assuaging the fear that the file will be shared recklessly. Ogg and MP3 both support some kind of track identification, correct? How about the RIAA makes a deal with Kazaa, Limewire, etc. to not add files with a certain identification to the list of files to be shared.
The average user has no idea what files he is sharing, and in 99% of cases, probably wouldn't go through the hassle of removing that identification.
It wouldn't hurt file usability in the least, it would simply discourage the more clueless sharers.
>Most people don't pirate music. Only a very small percent (perhaps 1% of the population) pirate enough music to fill an entire CD.
Thats like saying that most male's haven't surfed for more than 1 meg worth of pr0n.
If they can do it a little, there is almost no reason why they wouldn't do it for alot. In fact, they have a very good reason why they would.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Microsoft has promised that they will now open their source to all who wish to see it /sarcasm
Hello, I recently read EMI's November 13th press release outlining the planned online Musicnet distribution system for downloadable music.
I am very excited about this service and will be examining it in detail when it becomes available.
But I have one question for you: Will the music be offered in Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) format? This would be highly desirable (as opposed to MP3, windows media, etc) for both me and you because there are no royalties at all for the format (it would save EMI money) and the sound quality is clearly superior per file size to that of the other format I mentioned, so it would save EMI more money on internet bandwidth while providing a higher quality product to the customer.
Will this be available in the Musicnet service?
Lastly, I must congratulate EMI for these ambitious plans. It is refreshing to see that a music distribution company is actually giving customers what they want instead of producing crippled CDs, a la BMG, Universal, etc. I have stopped buying their products because they treat their customers like theives.
Thank you for your time,
- (my name)
Ontario, Canada
You're so right I feel like I just got kicked in the gut. In fact, so many people have been so right for so long in the face of such bloody-minded money-grubbing stupidity that I'm typing this from a prone position with one hand clutching my wounds. Please excuse any typos.
Everyone on slashdot has a journal.
s/sandwich/triple scotch/g
s/I give her/She pays me/g
s/19.99/1,999/g
And even then, I'm not sure I'd go for it unless I were blindfolded and we were talking about a download limit of terabyte of LAME-encoded MP3s at 320.
'Nuff said. I might take ogg if it builds enoughs critical mass (look how long it took DivX to get hardware support), but iTunes has an MP3 encoder, and that's fine with me. Screw Digital Restrictions Malarkey!
Has anything changed? What percentage of tapes owned by high school teenagers in the late 80s and early 90s where copies or mix tapes?
You could say the quality is better now, but even that probably isn't true. Most of those CD's were probably burned from 128 [poorly] encoded MP3 files!
They should invent a device that allows you to listen to music, perhaps by grabbing it out of thin air. It would be really neat if the device was small enough to be mounted in the dash of your car, for example, or rack mounted in your living room. If only there was a way to put the music into the air to begin with, perhaps by using Frequency Modulation.
That would solve most of these problems, but then everybody would be listening to the music without paying for it, in effect stealing. Dang. Good thing no such devices exist.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Um...A study at Vorbis.com notes Ogg sounds better than MP3?
I imagine the Fraunhofer website says MP3/AAC is better than Ogg; Microsoft's website says WMA is the best; and Apple stands up for the quailty of MP4 as well. Sorry dude, but take a grain of salt, OK?
I download one to three albums a day from EMusic, and it is way too much. It's a great service! But it mirrors a good civil societyit can only exist if everybody acts appropriately.
Emusic lets me stay honest. And I encourage it to punish people who violate its ToS and undermine it. Emusic is the only real download site that is giving me what I want, and people that abuse it and threaten its livelihood deserve to be cut off.
I think he means that customers are demanding a digital, downloadable format, rather than a physical object.
three years ago i would have subscribed to such a service, given guarantees of quality and high bandwidth downloads. but that was before the RIAA decided to declare war on its customers and our very freedoms, before they made a mockery of our judicial system and congress, before they and their Enron/WorldCom cousins exposed our system for the giant confidence swindle it is.
now i just want to see them go down, down, down. they're never gonna see another dime from me or mine, and i will persuade, cajole, and reason with everyone i know until they stop giving them money too. it's high time for the music industry to go out of business and get outta my country.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
It looks like the music industry is finally coming to its senses and is acknowleging that people want their music as files. I believe that EMI can succeed with this as they have the opportunity to provide quality files that can be downloaded reliably and quickly. As long as the consumer perceives these files to be reasonably priced this should work. Right now downloading music is a crap shoot and a lot of times all you end up with is crap. Instead of wasting my time downloading files where half never make it to completion and those that do are not labeled very well which wastes my time even further to clean them up, I am guaranteed to wind up with what I was expecting. They could make things even more attractive by providing a program to download, re-download, and organize the music files which would save a lot of people from having to buy shareware versions of these programs in the first place. Even better they could pay commisions to those that write their own superior programs and give them away. To further make themselves more attractive to people that are wary of paying for music, they could partner with other companies and redeem music for points obtained by buying other goods such as books, airline tickets, gas(petrol) etc.
This system would work as long as everyone stays creative and does not try to get too greedy or autocratic.
Well, not sure about this...I don't mind MP3, or OGG for portable listening, but, I just recently got an SACD player...and can definitely tell the difference on it vs. even regular CD, which the MP3's can't even come close to IMHO.
I wouldn't want to have to pay twice for the same song... since I have high end equipment in my home listening environment...but, yet want to listen to my own mixes on my portable equipment...then, I'd either need to pay twice...or, maybe have them make the high quality 'master' available for download, and not have DRM on it so I could rip it to my portable devices....if this could be done on a per song basis....I'd be all for it!
This is a step in the right direction, but, I hope this model lends itself to not downgrading the quality that becomes the standard. I'm afraid if this becomes the new distribution model, that it will become the norm, and higher quality formats will not only be left behind, but, eventually impossible to get....
My $0.02...and first post...
cayenne
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
$1 a song = $10 an album (remember this in just the music, the consumer pays for the download/CDR aswell).
Better to sell the albums as a collection at $5 and pass the wholesale and retail margins onto the consumer.
Or add the videos, Interviews, live version etc. and take the price back up to $9.95, but sell it as an enhancement over the straight music.
Lets face it if you're competing with Internet, Video games etc., you need to reassess the price of your product. Here they have the retail, wholesale, printing and shipping costs to play with. If they hand the bulk of those margins back to the consumer, they can undercut the incentive to pirate without affecting their own margins.
they are selling digital audio disks with copy protection on them all and we are to assume that they will allow unrestricted MP3s for download?
yeah right
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
With that collection of songs?
Even if I liked that collection, I wouldn't admit it in public.
Might as well say you blow the queen's horse for dinner.
If we're truly interested in providing artists with compensation for the music we "share," we should pay them directly.
If every time we download a song, we throw a check in the mail, addressed to the artist directly (or one of the members in the case of groups), how would it be possible for the record companies to interfere? Put some bogus comment in the "For" line of your check and the record company would have no recourse...right (IANAL)?
The only thing that would be needed is for someone to create a list of where to mail the checks for different artists. Maybe a fan club or something.
Has this been thought of before?
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
"NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 13, 2002 - EMI Recorded Music - the world's largest independent record company - today announced its enhanced digital download distribution program for the U.S. in which the company will give consumers - through leading distributors - the ability to download tracks permanently, the technical capability to burn a limited number of personal copies and the flexibility to import recordings to portable devices."
Note the "capability to burn a _limited_ number of personal copies" part. You still won't be able to make as many copies as you may need. This is still infringing on our fair use rights.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Business would be so much simpler without pesky profits :)
Bored?
Supervisor: Do you think you understand the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisee: Ah! Well, what do we mean by "to understand" in the context of
Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisor: You mean "No", don't you?
Supervisee: Yes.
-- Overheard at a supervision.
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