Slashdot Mirror
Stations Can't Play Crippled Music Disks
arb writes "The Age is reporting that some radio stations are unable to play copy-protected CDs. It seems at least one radio station is facing problems transferring CD tracks to their digital playout system. Is the lack of radio air-play a price the record labels are willing to pay in their efforts to stamp out piracy?"
I work in radio, and since WMP's little DRM fiasco, I've been on watch about this kind of thing. So far, afaik, we haven't had any problems with copy-protected CD's and ripping (or at least the FM people haven't come and whined to me yet....). But many stations have had problems with not being able to play "unblessed" mp3's. One of our content providers sent out a memo about a month ago telling stations how to fix their XP and 2k machines that'd been DRM'd. When the EULA change came about, I consulted with our operations manager, and the decision was that WMP would not be installed/upgraded on machines that have anything to do with audio production.
What's more disgusting, however, is the amount of hassle that's involved installing broadcast and/or production software these days. Hardware keys, bajillon digit serial numbers, activation. You think turbo tax is bad. I guess, however, my users never really have to struggle with that sort of thing like I do.
Steve Jobs, if you're listening, there's money to be made in the radio automation business using the Mac platform w/out DRM.
Well it seems that at least in some situations the record labels are in a very funny cycle of self-flagellation.
Agreed. To see just how far this can go, take a look at this article (yes, I edited it) illustrating the situation in Germany. The Germans are currently dealing with near 100% corrupt disc releases, and people really are not at all happy. Perhaps this is worth bearing in mind considering Arista's recent announcement re US corrupt disc releases. Does the record industry really want to create the same destructive downward spiral in the US as there is now in Germany? At least Sony appear to have seen the light and have given up with corrupt releases, but EMI still appear to be believing Midbar/Macrovision propaganda.
I used to! I ran several Internet radio stations and paid license fees to ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. I downloaded most of the music from Napster because either finding the CD was too difficult or expensive, or the record companies just hadn't sent it to me yet -- (I got about 50 discs per week anyway) .. Anyway, then the RIAA got all up in arms and decided to license Internet radio stations differently (read: way more expensively) than a traditional broadcast station, and that sort of killed those in the industry that couldn't afford to wait out the legal battles.
Although technically, "making a digital copy" of something you already own or license by downloading someone else's digital copy has not (afaik) been tested legally and may be outside the terms of "fair use" that everyone is always flaunting about, I believe that radio stations using this service was one of the very few legitimate use of Napster that there ever really was.
I firmly believe that someone could start a membership P2P service where people pay a fee necessary to license about anything they want to listen to for a year and then can download freely from anyone. The fees for small broadcast stations that don't make any money are very reasonable (like $200/yr).. This is the same kind of license that department stores and whatnot have to buy to play CD's in their store. It's very cheap and available to the public. It's kind of funny that my slashdot submissions on it all get rejected (with links directly to the damn fee schedules on the respective licensor sites!) and we have all this bottom of the barrel shit on here constantly.
~GoRK