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Universal Music Group's New Music Sharing Service
First I had to decide which reseller of UMG music to use and decided on Liquid Audio's On-Line store. One reason I picked this service is because they are the technology backers of this venture, so who better? I'm really glad I picked them, and you will see why after you read about the issues I faced.
Of course, there were plenty of music choices to pick from and it was pretty easy to find artists I was looking for. I first noticed that not every track is 99 cents. Some are higher -- it seems that the less popular stuff cost a little more. Some singles cost $1.49, but I found one free track on this CD.
After finding a CD I wanted, I purchased and downloaded the tracks individually and as one large download, since they provide both options. After downloading the files I could not get any of them to play. For some time this confused me, then I tried clicking on a link provided in an e-mail that was sent to me to confirm my order. Well, they did not tell me this on the website, but clicking that link authenticated me to listen to the tracks. This was a bit frustrating, but survivable. Also, I found you can only go through the process of purchasing and downloading with IE. I use Mozilla by default and was not able to purchase with that browser. You also need to use IE to open the URL in the e-mail that authenticate your tracks.
Once done with that I attempted to burn tracks to a CD. I was using a machine with Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows Media Player 9 (current release candidate for Win2K). Whenever I'd try to burn a track, the Roxio software would die. So I gave up on Media Player 9 and downloaded Liquid Audio's Player (v 6.1). When trying to burn with this player it could not initialize my HP DVD writer (model dvd200i) and for some reason was calling it a 200j instead. I also tried downgrading to Windows Media Player 7.1, but that did not work either. The burning software did not even know my DVD Burner was there. I also tried Real's RealOne player, but it can not burn WMA files.
So I gave up and contacted Liquid Audio's Customer Service. They informed me (via e-mail exchanges) that their software could not recognize my DVD Burner and I would only be able to burn using a CD Burner, not a DVD/CD Burner. I was offered a refund, but I did not want that. I've got a CD Burner, but on another PC. So I thought I'd be able to move the files and burn there. I came to find out find out that I can move files to listen to them on another PC, but they can't be burned on a PC other than the one to which they were first downloaded. So Liquid Audio sent me another link to download tracks with after hearing I had to go to another PC. Then I was able to download and burn tracks with no problem.
You can play the tracks as much as you like on your PC, burn to CD as many tracks as you want, copy the burned CDs, and use the CD to make MP3s. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some form of digital watermarking on the tracks though. So if you give the music to anyone else, they (UMG) are supposed to be able to know it was you who violated their copyright.
So overall it was pretty frustrating making my first CD with this service, but I'll probably be using it again in the future. Like Tuesday, when some new music comes out. I have been boycotting UMG for almost a year, since when I heard they would copy-protect CDs. With this service I have officially ended my boycott.
Pros:
- Easy to download and burn a CD if you have Windows, IE and a CD Burner (not a DVD Burner).
- Easy to find tracks from UMG artists that are well known.
- Good customer service. They really helped as much as they could given the software limitations and offered a refund even though I would have been able to keep playing the tracks on my PC.
- No need to go to the store in the Winter!
Cons:
- No player seems to be able to burn using a DVD burner.
- Tracks are not authenticated till you click a link in an e-mail sent to you.
- Unable to use the service to purchase tracks using Mozilla.
- No small intro type tracks available, even when you buy a full CD of tracks.
Slashdot welcomes reader-submitted features and reviews -- thanks to darnellmc for this review.
Doesn't sound too bad, but I think I will stick with IUMA. I would rather support independents than coorporate whor....errr, I mean popular artists.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
You can play the tracks as much as you like on your PC, burn to CD as many tracks as you want, copy the burned CDs, and use the CD to make MP3s. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some form of digital watermarking on the tracks though. So if you give the music to anyone else, they (UMG) are supposed to be able to know it was you who violated their copyright.
I'd be interested to know how anybody could tell if you've shared the music and what this 'digital watermarking' is all about. If you made MP3s from the CD you make, how would UMG know you violated the copyright? Is my iTunes gonna email them when I play the pirated MP3?
This sounds dubious but will no doubt be tested by tons of people to see if it's true.
It also begs the question of what consititutes illegal sharing and fair use. Shouldn't I be able to listen to this stuff on my iPod? Would UMG know?
It's been said before, and it should be said again. If you wantw true value for money, emusic are a better deal. Pure MP3s, no corrupt watermarks, and no DRM. And cheaper, too - one monthly fee equals full unlimited downloads.
If I was going to go for any of these services (I'm not, yet) that would be my choice.
Wouldn't ripping the tracks from the CD into Ogg Vorbis defeat the track watermarking. I'm guessing that their watermarking technique is based on the properties of the MP3 algorithm, which would be diffrent in Ogg.
Sounds to me like they still need to work out issues before making it a service that the average Joe and Jane can use.
:) Maybe for a certain quality, and raise the price up from there for better quality encoding and/or more flexibility. (i.e. pay 99 cents and you can choose your format of choice to download...etc, pay $1.49 and get dvd quality audio...you get the picture :)
What kills it for me (but then again I'm probably not in the majority they are targetting) is the requirement of Windows 2k/XP and Windows media player...
Well its not like I'm downloading MP3s left and right anyways. Most of my music is bought at a store or via one of them music clubs...(Where you can get like 11 CD for 1 cent, so long as you buy 4 more at regular price in 2 years time...which if you play smart you can gets tons of CDs cheap, assuming you dont need the latest release)
Maybe by the time I get a broadband connection, these services will use a more open standard format, and the service will be a lot more flexible.
A price reduction would be nice, would encourage people to buy the songs the like from a website instead of leeching off gnutella or [insert favorite file sharing client/server here].
50 cents a song sounds good to me
Maybe they can come up with better pricing though.
Hey I can get 4x6 photo prints of my digital photos for 50 cents from Kodak online services!
(Well yeah shipping is like $2.99 though hehe)
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some good sites to find cheap prices :
Liquid's technology is just an envelope that can securely transfer any kind of file. There are even a few non-music files in the system for various specific purposes.
The audio compression types that I was aware of while I was there were mostly Dolby AAC with a handful of MP3s. They were working on WMA when I left the company, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the current library is in that format.
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
I always hear about music lovers wanting to pay for music without all the hustles. They will continue to use P2P until purchasing music is hastleless (and reasonably priced). In fact...I bet some people would even pay for music which has already been downloaded by P2P to make amends. Why do these music industries try so hard to put DRM into everything? Let people pay for the music and do with it as they wish. Listeners are not stupid, they know they need to support the artists which they enjoy. Does there have to be so many restrictions? Is the music industry afraid that the music industry would die and we would have no more music? I doubt that would happen!
why not just pay for certain tunes on their web site and then download the mp3s with your favorite file sharing client? wouldn't that be legal? no watermarks that way.
Why go through all that BS to pay the same amount for a CD that you can go to your local RecordStore and pick up.
Why go through all that BS by going all the way to your local RecordStore where you'll pay a stupendously large amount of money for something as simple&cheap as a CD when it's so much easier to just download it from the Net for free?
OK I know....you're screwing the artists too...they should have public bank account numbers so people could donate some money to them...Their share is at most $2 per CD anyway (the standard CD price in Europe being more like $22)
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
All it takes to produce good music is talent. And both of those are actually optional.
It costs a lot of money to build a Ferrari, and only a couple cents to press a CD. With this service, that cost actually goes up. (Contrary to popular opinion, large chunks of bandwidth ain't cheap.)
The biggest cost should be paying the salaries of the music company (Which only needs to be a few executives and a good team of technicians, not the bloated beuracracy you normally saw in the 90s and, to some extent, today.), and then maybe fifteen or twenty cents (per track) for the artist.
Even if the artist only sells a mere 1,00,000 tracks, (more likely, considering unwanted tracks will no longer be a deterrant from buying an album), that's still $150,000. For more popular artists, or artists who'd rather release better stuff, but less often, you could raise that by ten cents and they'd have $250,000 to hold them over while they produce their next batch.
At this point, even niche artists make a good living, while consumers pay only a fraction of the cost they pay now.
What's this Submit thingy do?
There are plenty of caveats with the Liquid Audio system. The one great thing about it though is "CDs" never have to go out of print again.
For some time I was looking for an obscure CD called "The Great Game" by Brother Sun Sister Moon (now called Luminous for their second release). Impossible to find on CD, and impossible to find on peer to peer networks (except one track as noted below, which helped get me hooked) I looked on. But it was on Liquid Audio, and despite my reservations about a proprietary file format, I plunked down the $10 for the entire digital album.
Download: There were problems downloading. As in the Liquid player crashed during download didn't recognize that the album had been partially downloaded (files were not there), and didn't let me re-download the missing files. Cleared up by customer service.
Audio quality: decent. I think I've read that the Liquid Audio is really mp3 @ 192kbps inside their "secure" wrapper.
Compatiblity: Bad. I use WinAmp, and hardly ever listened to the Liquid tracks because I couldn't listen to them in WinAmp.
Portability: Disappointing. Only playable on the machine you download them to without a MS Passport, or something like that.
Burnability: Good, once I got a CD-R drive in the computer I downloaded them to.
Security: Puzzling. What good is distributing music in "secure" files when the Liquid Audio software lets you burn them to an unprotected CD format? I ripped then of course into mp3 format (using a very high bitrate to avoid as much as possible problems with recompressing already compressed audio) and the results are not bad. Now I can listen to them in WinAmp! (nearly every day)
(btw, in case anyone out there is an Information Society fanatic, Paul Robb is one half of BSSM/Luminous. Definately worth checking out. The one song that I found on p2p was Bangkok, off some movie soundtrack if you want to have a listen first.)
Commercial downloading will continue to fail until the industry offers:
1) Breadth and depth of available music - some progress here
2) Cheap tracks ($0.10 US to $2.99 US is a reasonable range) - almost there
3) The purchase of a track entitles the customer to:
A. Unlimited downloads on ANY machine by authenticating the customer (customer ID/password perhaps)
B. A wide variety of track file formats, including: MP3 at several different bit rates, WMA, OGG Vorbis, and a lossless format (FLAC, Monkey's Audio, and/or Shorten)
C. If the customer chooses MP3 VBR, the customer can later download the FLAC version (see A)
4) If two separate customers buy track X, download track X and both download it in format Y, then do a bit-for-bit comparison of the files, they should be identical. This should apply for any separate users.
By offering standard file formats, there isn't the lame "digital rights management" issue where DRM interferes with the customer's legitimate use (i.e. the author's attempts to burn using a DVD burner, and the author's being forced to redownload to burn on a separate computer).
What will stop people from sharing usernames/passwords or downloading then sharing the music?
Nothing. But because the service is CONVENIENT, EASY TO USE, and DOESN'T INTERFERE with what the user tries to do, the vast majority of people will not need to bother pirating the music.
And here's a clue for the clueless in the industry: your music is already available online for free right now, today, so all the DRM and/or watermarking (which means ruining the music by adding noise) you add accomplishes NOTHING. Sorry, that's not true. It accomplishes this: it encourages otherwise honest users to avoid your service and seek their music elsewhere because your DRM interferes with fair use.
So...
When you offer all these features, I'll sign up in a heartbeat. Until then, my CD collection is sufficiently large to keep me happy. I don't need to add to it until the music industry offers me something that meets my needs.
Having recently seen this on /., I wonder if it is going to result in a conflict of interests. Are you still going to want to download all those CD's if you're worried Comcast may charge you for using too much bandwidth? Not to stray off topic, but it seems like the point of broadband is so you have quick access to media (among other things). The end result could stifle this potential industry.
:-)
Of course, I, personally, would rather spend more on the internet than on gas (pollution, etc.), but I wonder how Joe Public will act in the future.
However, if these cap doesn't go into effect, I suppose this means nothing
You can play the tracks as much as you like on your PC, burn to CD as many tracks as you want, copy the burned CDs, and use the CD to make MP3s. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some form of digital watermarking on the tracks though. So if you give the music to anyone else, they (UMG) are supposed to be able to know it was you who violated their copyright.
From my understanding, a "watermarked" audio stream is one where identifying information is included in an imperceivable portion of the audio stream.
Given that lossy encoders (MP3, OGG) use psychoacoustic-models to reduce data in the audio stream that it considers outside of the human audible range, wouldn't encoding to MP3 or OGG damage or destroy the watermarking?