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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?
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
They plan to release new software called "KaZaA"
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
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;
The real question is, will they be able to guilt everybody into not pirating their music...
Yes. Most people don't pirate music. Only a very small percent (perhaps 1% of the population) pirate enough music to fill an entire CD. Most people have a few mp3's that they got when trying napster and thats it.
A perfect example of how much people care less about piratibility than portability (or convenience) is the apple iPod, it's trivial to pirate using it, yet I have never seen a single person who bothered to do so. Setting reasonable (copyright+fair use) restrictions on what you can do with the music you own pisses no one off. Making it so you pay the same amount for a "digital" file that plays on a single device as you do for a CD pisses lots of people off.
I would be less impressed by their arguments if they didn't use them every other time a new media distribution method came avoidable. They are in the business of hurting the consumer, in exchange for the consumer letting themselves be hurt they enrich the public domain. It's a pretty simple model and I only worry about it when arbitrary people get called pirates.
I live in a giant bucket.
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.
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<*))))><
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
Perhaps allowing you to buy more than 1 license so you can put it on your computer AND your mp3 player.
"Allowing," my ass. I can do that right now, with a CD I've purchased once - and it's perfectly legal. What you're talking about is requiring me to buy multiple licenses in order to retain the same functionality that I already have - and it's bullshit.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
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.
Not entirely flamebait, but Ogg is inferior to MP3? What FAQ are you reading? According to this FAQ Ogg is "better" than MP3, and several blind tests would seem to confirm it.
Unless you're not talking about quality-by-bitrate, in which case the only argument for MP3s superiority is that it is widespread (devices, decoders, etc). If that's all it takes to qualify for superiority then let's just support Microsoft, McDonalds and Dodge Neons (those things suck ass) all the way!
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
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.
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.
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
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...
Most people don't buy music. Most people think napster was a web site called "napster.com" where you could just download whatever new-fangled mp3 music files you wanted. They heard about it on NPR.
The 1% of the public that is pirating music used to be part of the 5% of the public that buys much new music at all (12-24 year olds). It's the music industry's own fault for marketing an overpriced product to a group with little spending money and a low value of their own time.
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...
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
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Sigs are bad for your health.
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
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.