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?"
Call me crazy but I think the RIAA will find a way to get their tunes on the radio. It's a catch-22 though because most early release mp3s come from radio station advance copies anyways. Boo hoo whats the RIAA to do?
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
What I could see happening is the record companys sueing the radio stations and forcing them to upgrade their (radio stations) equiptment.
They will still come out ahead.
Wait, their all owned by Clear Channel. Who ownes them again?
I deleted my sig years ago.
Well it seems that at least in some situations the record labels are in a very funny cycle of self-flagellation. Pissing off consumers AND reducing air play of the crap. Maybe it will teach them a lesson. It might be possible a lot of stations are just dealing with the cds directly though, so I can't comment on that end of things.
;)
Then again most of the crap that has the copy protection on it I won't be listening to in the first place. I try to make a point of supporting labels like Projekt Records who are vocal advocates of music sharing. Of course Projekt is only useful if you are into goth type music.
I think the answer is simple for dealing with crap like this as a consumer, stop supporting major record labels period. There is a plethora of music out there on small labels, or even DIY labels. Even better, use that $18 you were going to spend on the latest bit of top 40 crap and go see some live music. Stop being a consumer and think
-AS
The stations should just fire up WinMX, download the new songs, then transfer them to CDDA. I mean, they already have the right to play them...
Seriously. Actually, I wonder how many radio stations use MP3 as a native format for songs they play now.
Yeah... and read someone elses 'proganda' instead? Never trust anything you read in the media - there's always someone's spin.
Anyways, what's this got to do with CD's?
Not that it matters, after the RIAA's heavyhanded gorilla tactics, I'd already decided to not buy another audio CD - ever. I refuse to give my money to a bunch of government-sanctioned thugs and terrorists.
So the record industry's managed to neuter itself and make removable media obsolete. Boo hoo. My heart bleeds for them. Bunch of idiots.
As long as I've got a normal CD player then I've got a way to "rip" cd tracks. All I'll have to do is plug the tape out from my receiver into the line-level input of my sound card and "rip" the CD track to a wav file. The people at these radio stations should be able to do something equivalent. When CD's first started being used in radio 15+ years ago, the people at the station generally copied them over to the high-fidelity analog tapes they used for broadcast at the time. I don't know what they're using nowadays, but I'd tend to believe that the engineers there could transfer the CD tracks into the needed format in their sleep regardless of anything the RIAA does to the CD.
I do hope that the RIAA understands that the games they are playing aren't going to get them anything. Anyone who WANTS to pirate music is going to do so. This business with mucking with the format of the CD only irritates their customers. I sincerely believe that the whole idea was thought up by some suits who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Anyone with a clue wouldn't even bother with such an approach.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Sorry, but I can't see this as anything but a purely temporary issue. The fact of the matter is, yes, some of the current equipment used by radio stations might not be able to handle copyright protection, but as is almost universally the case with digital technologies, this is by no means written in stone.
Sooner rather than later, the simbiosis between radio station and record industry will repair itself and things will return to a state where there will be no need for this news item.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
As long as their ASCAP fees are paid up I imagine the music industry doesn't care where a radio station gets their music from. The problem is other people stealing the music via P2P sharing without paying any royalties.
before someone realizes that no matter what form of copy protection they use on the disc there is an easy way around it. unless there is a ban on analog inputs that is.
music will always be pirated, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. we (as consumers) have been copying music for decades and sharing it with our friends. we're good at it. are they going to kill radio just to *try* to stop piracy?
i agree with a previous post ^^^^^^ up there somewhere....support the DIY's and save your 15+ bucks to go see a live show. this will support the artist more directly than passing your cash through the industry.
The kind of DRM software companies like Macrovision have created changes boot blocks, media player software, audio and video I/O, and CD/DVD drivers, and it is designed to limit the ability of PC users to distribute music. That is, it is designed to interfere with exactly what the business model of the station is and with what the station pays royalties for. After installing it, they may end up not being able to play, say, unsigned advertising clips they get as MP3's from customers, or rip other CDs to disk, or do any of a dozen things that they depend on.
Any radio station would be foolish to let that kind of software be installed on their PCs. These people depend on their PC hardware for their livelihood. If they refuse to install this software, it's because they really don't have much of a choice, not because they "just don't want to".
Quit raining on our parade! You can only come to sensible conclusions on this complicated issue using a fact set derived from joke posts such as this:
Except he did NOT come to a sensible conclusion. See this post.
Did you actually read the article or do you just want to bash on slashdot because you don't like slashdot bashing on DRM?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
OK. But what happens when there are no more downloads available because they've all be made illegal, and nobody can play any of the disks? :)
The situation in the article seems a little like buying a car with no keys, but since you have a coathanger and can hotwire the car, and thus are able to get the full use out of it, the dealership won't do anything about it.
The RIAA only has friends it can buy or force to be friends with right now anyway, so they need to resolve this problem. It's not up to the radio stations to update billions of dollars worth of equipment because a simple specification can't be followed, and make no mistake about it, these disks with the copy protection on them aren't CDs. It's joyful to see this sort of thing happen because I don't like the RIAA for treating me like a theif, and I don't like radio stations because they mostly all play the same crap. Hopefully at the end of this, both the RIAA and the big radio companies will be poorer for their mess. This doesn't affect me in any way other than to provide something to laugh at, because I've already burned the only ogg of the only song I ever listen to anyway, "Feel Like Makin' Love"!
The obvious message the recording industry is trying to get across to us is: If you want a CD that you can actually use and enjoy rather than one you have to fight with and that might destroy your equipment, you are expected to download the files and burn it yourself. I don't know what could be more clear than that.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In the interestss of accuracy, according to the article, it's just one station (not "stations") that is having this problem.
Music companies which use copy protection may be denying the artists under contract to them legitimate play time on radio stations, if the happenings at one outfit are any indication.
Furthermore, the problem is easily remedied with the purchase of a $59 standalone CD player. I bet they could get a listener to donate one.
The station in question has no standalone CD players, just desktop PCs (all running Windows 2000) and a couple of old Denon CD Cart players.
Is this a cutting-edge use of technology, or a cutting-costs use of technology?
Edith Keeler Must Die
I'm quite heavily involved in student ("college") radio activities in the UK. Our station has started to receive several corrupt data disks, disguised as CDs. I've written back to the promo companies, informing them that we won't be able to play anything off their broken disks. Our professional broadcast-standard CD players are quite fussy about playing disks that conform to the CD specifications.
The reply I got was along the lines of, "So what? The record companies need to do this to stop illegal piracy of music." I sent a rather condescending e-mail back detailing the problems that our station, and many other stations, will face.
Fortunately, most of the stuff we play (and receive) comes from small independent labels who still largely distribute their material on CD or CD-R -- so it hasn't hit us too heavily.
There's a student radio conference in a few days which I'm going to -- it'll be interesting to ask people from other stations if they're having problems with being sent these corrupt disks. If this thread is still thriving, I'll post back with a comment.
-
As an aside:
Anything based on CD Paranoia code seems to happily rip copy protected CDs. On my home machine, I've happily ripped Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne's CDs, as well as numerous others that are standard-deficient. This was using ExactAudioCopy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) under Windows 2000.
A radio station in the San Francisco area did the same thing(d/l the radiohead album off the internet and play it)
I thought it was a scam when I first heard them mention it. I mean, this wasn't Joe's College Radio Station, it was a station owned by Clear Channel Communications. Your post only confirms my suspicions.
I believe the scenario goes something like this:
Radiohead's label "leaked" their album onto the P2P networks for promotional purposes and then paid radio stations to tell everyone how they d/l'ed it off P2P and are gonna play it now.
This is all speculation but I mean, a Clear Channel station actually coming out and going we committed a federal crime by downloading this album and now were goind to play it on the air w/o permission? C'mon, see past the "we're so cool" facade to the lame, "we're gonna play what we're paid to play" heart of this business. Clear Channel = deep pockets. They would never risk a lawsuit for "lost revenue" on a new album. You know they got the go ahead from Radiohead's label to do this.
P.S. I'm not knocking Radiohead. I'm glad they are trying P2P as a new promotional vector. Just please realize what it is: A promo campaign and not your local radio station being so cool and thumbing their noses at record labels. Their businesses are too intertwined for them to do that.
In practice, as long as you use decent quality equipment, this does sound like a practical way to run a radio station. If the DJs are in control or the music, it lets them find and queue up material quickly, and arrange it so they can easily go from one tune to the next or cut in to talk or patch in commercials, and makes it easier for things to run on autopilot if they need it to. And with the changes in disk drive cost over the last few years, they can store a few thousand songs at decent compression levels. On the other hand, if the radio station is one of those centrally controlled things that don't have real DJs at each station, they can upload each song once and cue things remotely.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks