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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 read a recent story on Canada.com about a Vancouver station playing songs from the new Radiohead album that they downloaded from the net ...
Yay! The return of Pirate Radio!
And with great software like TuneTracker (at http://www.beosradio.com/ ), it's easier than ever to run a professional-level radio station with a low low budget.
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.
- Not multiple stations
- It's not that they can't, they just dont want to
- The article isnt much longer than this post, so you can read it yourself.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Yeah, right. So they're having problems ripping the commercially-released discs into their digiplay systems. All that we'll see happen is a separate release of non-cripped discs for radio airplay stamped 'NOT FOR RESALE, PROMO USE ONLY' or whatever, like they do with singles. I doubt this will even slow down the advance of the use of this technology.
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.
Copy protection on audio CDs obviously doesn't work, e.g. look at Massive Attack's 100th window and google for some of the tracks, like butterfly caught, and you'll find there are ripped tracks floating arround. That's not news to the crowd here on /., there are more than several dozen methods and programs to rip copy protected CDs.
But the point is, if the radio stations do *not* resort to these, if they just put the CD on the tray and try to download the tracks to HD and that just doesn't work, then there's a chance labels rethink the whole thing. They could choose to send custom made CDs to the radio stations (e.g., just data CDs with the audio tracks as wav files) or they could just drop the whole idea because the cost would be too high (from several POVs).
Or perhaps the labels choose to ignore these weird radio stations and all these crap gets less airtime.
Both ways, it's a win-win situation.
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.
This sort of thing is going to hit the public consciousness very soon in the UK, cos over the last two weeks there's been a new TV advert, touting the release of Pink Floyd's 30th anniversary edition of Dark Side Of The Moon using the new high quality SACD (Super Audio CD) format.
Though they mention SACD, no where does the advert mention anything about copy protection. Some people are going to get a rude shock.
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..."
You make the mistake of assuming that the people consuming all the new stuff are doing it because it's good music.
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.
Payola is reason is this a non-issue. Oh, it still goes on. In the lofty world of Clearchannel, it's all about sponsoring contests and event promotion. Nothing quite so obvious as envelops of cash. What you hear on the radio is that which has been paid for by publishers. Nothing as trivial as obsolete CD players is going to interfere with this very long. A couple phone calls and there will be a shiny new player arriving promptly at a studio near you!
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I bought the new Placebo album the other day (on Virgin Records). It had a "copy control" sticker on the front. There's no Compact Disc logo on it anywhere.
On the back is a blurb saying the disc is designed to play on CD players, DVD players, PCs and Macs. What it doesn't say is that in order to play it on a computer you're supposed to use the software on the disc (hmm... totally future-proof). Furthermore, it autoruns an installer to install the software.
We verified that we couldn't play the disc on a Windows 98 PC using standard audio players. We didn't install the software on the CD, for obvious reasons.
On OS X we were able to play it and rip it using iTunes. On Linux (on a same model thinkpad as the Win98 PC) we were also able to play and rip it.
The shop I bought it from was a small indie, and I notice that in the bigger shops the album doesn't have any copy-control information on it. It's possible that the indie sold me a promo, in which case perhaps they're trying to stop MP3s leaking before the album comes out, or it may be that the retail album is a regular CD (or copy-protected but not so labelled).
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".
Assuming these stations have paid the Australian equivalent ASCAP and BMI fees, have the rights to broadcast this material.
IP law is deliberately confusing and can only be sorted out by human beings. (In the case of complex situations, human beings that charge high fees).
There is no way that any simple, inexpensive bit of software can correctly determine whether or not the user does, in fact, have the rights to the use he or she is making.
In every case, of course, the DRM schemes err in the direction of denying use to people that POSSESS rights, never the other way around.
P.S. Yes, I did read the article. This sounds like Midbar's scheme, in which (when it works properly!) the computer still cannot access the real audio tracks, but the special software allows access to lower-quality compressed versions--which can only be played, not copied to the hard drive. So even if the boss had allowed the software to be installed, the station would have probably found that this didn't do any good.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The RIAA can eliminate the financial losses due to CD piracy in a really simple way...
STOP RELEASING NEW MUSIC!
- Profits will be restored to earlier levels if the labels don't have to spend money on new artists. They're still stuck back in the Elton John days, and have no idea on how to recognise and nurture modern talent. They're full of coke-sniffing old farts hopelessly stuck within their comfort zones
- Radio stations play 90% back catalogue anyway, and this provides a steady royalties stream, especially since the US Judiciary has effectively ruled that copyrights are eternal
- Independent labels will step in to fill the gap, and will likely evolve new business models to
make full use of internet technology
- A renaissance of new musical expression will ensue
Everyone wins!The RIAA gets to keep control of the back catalogue, while the fresher new artists and labels find ways to turn a profit, and perhaps live far better, without having to suck on that toxic nipple of the RIAA ripoff recording contract.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Any wonderful Arista artists like Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC or Kenny G.?
Maybe when a big-name star with serious legal representation (like Celine Dion) finds that she's not getting airplay because the record company crippled her product, we'll see some progress made against copy-crippled cds.
Oh. My. God. Could it be that Celine Dion could save us?
Funny thing is, I stopped listening to the radio for anything other than traffic reports around 1993 or so. It's not like I'd have even noticed...
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
These CDs should be referred to as "playback challenged." Don't get me started on the retards at the music companies.
Considering that the RIAA is making CDs without the official "Audio CD" label, aren't they technically violating the DMCA? They did, after all, reverse engineer the compact disc standard, to make a disc that can be played on otherwise audio CD compliant player.
Even though there was never any official encryption to begin with (and those who analyzed the CSS code probably consider it as minimal), that doesn't give them the right to perform an illegal act. The CD technology IS patented, and covered under international law as such.
Making a "Not-CD" (subliminal joke there if you say it to yourself out loud) in essense violates those patents, even if they removed the Compact Disc logo.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
The publisher of the german computer magazine c't has started a database on copy-protected audio CD's. They call them "un-CDs' (roughly 'not-CDs'). Unfortunately so far this is only in german.
s =suche
Query page:
http://www.heise.de/ct/cd-register/default.shtml?
Master page:
http://www.heise.de/ct/cd-register/
Feedback to
cd-register@ctmagazin.de
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
I have some knowledge in how radio stations work these days and a great many of them are totally computerised. For example, MegaMix2002 (http://www.soundsoft.net/) is a very popular radio DJ package. Basically you have a computer with this loaded and it does everything for you. The DJ controlls it, and that is all. Well, the way it works is by ripping CDs to MP3s and storing those on the computer. Much more efficient for the DJ to be able to call up anything with a few clicks than sorting through stacks of discs. Ok, so, if the discs are designed such that they can't be ripped, they'll screw over MegaMix along with other ripping apps and hence screw radio stations.
These days, radio stations really are just using the same technology as a normal user. They ahve specialised apps and some speical hardware, but at the heart is just a standard PC.
First off I haven't heard of any problems at our station so far...
However, we're quite flexible in how we can populate our playout system, Dalet in our case. We can use good old analog from a regular CD player, rip directly from CD or get them off a digital distribution system that runs in the UK called Fastrax.
Fastrax involves each station getting a machine and an ADSL line with the client software. The machine connects to Fastrax and allows you to download tracks that the record companies have chosen to distribute
... Poetic Justice.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Since most illegal mp3s come from critic and radio advanced copies, why don't the labels digitally watermark these advances? Of course the problem would be you'd want a unique mark for every copy (so, I assume, you could find the source and not pick on a bunch of kids who picked it up). But just burn them onto CDR then.
Then if a copy is found online, diff it with the original, and find out who leaked it.
Or maybe I'm oversimplifying things. I guess if you could make the key seeding random enough that it wouldn't be easy to wipe...
What is music when you despise all sound?
I guess I have no sympathy for the music biz, and, equally, no sympathy for the Kazaa crowd.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
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.
> If I order (online) 3 CDs from France, the odds are that one of them will be copy protected.
France already surrendered.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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.
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
The real problem is that most music radio stations have converted over to completely computerized and programmable systems then laying off the DJ's. One DJ can program music for 5-10 radio stations. All content is recorded and played back.
So it seems they couldn't rip the CD because it's not Redbook standard and their digital systems cannot read the proprietary tracks and formats. Same thing as trying to play it in a PC or Mac.
Good, I am happy the radio stations are having trouble as well. I hope it hurts the music business! The dirty bastards!
But had they simply not laid off all those DJ's they wouldn't have this problem. There is a single rock station left in my state that is still independent and run by real live DJ's. These guys kick butt and take names. All the other stations are lame as hell.
106.9 WCCC in Hartford Connecticut is the only local Rock station left! Out of 99.1, 105.9, 102.1, 104.1; they have all been bought out and dumbed down! 106.9 is the only one to play requests and they are the only ones to give away prizes to the local audience only! The other corporate stations lump you in with 25 other stations across the nation to compete for prizes, etc.
Also due to the RIAA, they've effectively killed online radio stations which were bringing back a revival of independent broadcasters. But due to the insane licensing they get forced out!
Geeks need to get together and bypass the corporate music giants. Make our own independent labels that actually pay the artists and provide the fans what they want. We do need to be careful to do it legally though!
Hell let fans download the music for a reasonable fee! WTF, this should have happened 3-4 years ago! The new media is being held back by the evil corporate greed and fear!
I am positive there are a ton of great musicians out there that are never going to be mainstream but will win fans worldwide if the world could only get to their music! We need a non-profit group that can help the Indie artists above and beyond sites like MP3.COM which actually sucks.
Regardless of how awful the government there may be, that doesn't give us the justification to go in there and mandate how they will govern.
Of course it's much easier to justify a war with Iraq when it HAS an awful government, a history of war with neighboring countries, and vast amounts of weapons. Which is why The CIA made sure it was so.
"Hidden elements of the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted to reduce the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government supported a very weak man, the Shah of Iran, who became very violent toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iran overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence that came after.
"People in Iran began supporting terrorism against the United States, in retaliation for hidden U.S. government interference with the Iranian government.
"To counteract Iranian support of violence against the U.S., the U.S. government began supporting and encouraging Iraq in a war against Iran. This was very profitable for U.S. weapons manufacturers. Weapons manufacturers in the U.S. were delivering weapons to Iraq under long-term contracts until the same month as the U.S. began war on Iraq the first time. (However, most Iraqi weapons come from Russia, apparently.)"
Yes, I'm well aware this is blatently offtopic. I don't give a shit about karma any more.. The people of America need to know what this war is really about, and you can bet your ass CNN isn't going to tell them.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Yes, that much is quite apparent. But the really stupid thing is that they blindly pretend that this small loss by going through an analog phase is enough to discourage copying, while at the same time they are agressively fighting mp3 users. Mp3's do vastly more harm to the audio quality, even at high bit rates, than a pass through the analog world with good equipment will ever do. They are willing to fight mp3s, when an mp3 user just might go out and buy an album to get a good quality copy of the songs, but at the same time tick off buyers with legitimate uses of the product they bought, and some of those will turn to making analog rips that will be far higher quality than if someone was given an mp3 file to preview a music group!
Of course, their ultimate goal is to have DRM in every A to D converter in the world, so that no one can use them to re-encode audio. Not very likely, considering the legitimate uses of A to D converters that would not work well with this, and the huge number of existing A to D converters out there. So instead they just tick off the consumer and complain that sales are not growing fast enough to suit them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
That depends on your source. If you're using one of the P2P services, that's probably what you'll get. If you get your music fix from alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*, though, it's more likely you'll see high-bitrate (often excessively high, like 256 or even 320 kbps) MP3s encoded with LAME or other decent encoders.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
This really screws the event DJ who uses a computer for mixing, like NI's Traktor (been playing around with it lately, really cool).
The computer can do things that only very, very expensive DJ CD players can, but I guess the RIAA would rather have the DJs just play the song, without using loops, effects, etc...
-twb
if i can't buy the CD and play it on my computer and stereo, i'll just download a pirate version and burn that to CD, then i can again do both.
The question is, are there more people in my situation, or non-pc-literate people that can only pirate music because the P2P programs have a nice user interface?
I was in the same situation before DVDs came out, in my experience purchased VHS were HORRIBLE quality, you get a much better quality version by pirating movies.
As the head of music at a student radio station in the UK, I've seen a large increase in the amount of copy protection issued on the promos that I get week after week.
Standard practice for our playlist system is that I rip the CDs to an MP3 format (using Xing), and then wrap the MP3s in a WAV header (for track information). This has become more difficult recently - as most people will know, some of the copy protection systems split the audio up into a bunch of really small data tracks followed by a huge long one. This can be easy to deal with in the software (just merge the tracks, and kill the white noise at the end), or it can be impossible to deal with (in that Audiocatalyst doesn't recognise any data on the disc at all).
As stated elsewhere, all the copy protection schemes include "music software" for PC/Mac playback. The most frustrating thing about this is that for the most part, the software playback of the CD is at some ridiculous quality (like 43kpbs). It has become easier for me to bring along a hi-fi to the station, and do most of my reviews on that (and take a mini-jack/mini-jack cable with me for A/D transfer). It's pointless to do this to us - anyone who would actually go as far as to violate the promotions agreement either by passing promos on or ripping them is not going to be stopped by some cheap 'n cheerful protection scheme.
The fools (damn them).
Sarcas
--
Make a man a fire, and he'll be warm for the night
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life