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New Online Music Push by EMI
akadruid writes "EMI has signed deals with 20 top European websites to sell its music online.
According to Reuters, 'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'.
This represents a major shift in policy by EMI, who previously went to great lengths to protect their music from copying.
Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?"
or Die
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
We need reasonable quality downloads. Lossless compression means big files, so watch out for the ISPs with restrictive download limits.
It would sure be nice to pick and choose what I want to download in flac.
EMI realizes that the Internet isn't just an avenue for music theft, it's rapidly becoming the most significant way to make money with little unneccesary investment.
They provide the music, other people handle the packaging, shipping and shelfspace, if you will and they collect the money.
They don't even have to pay to have the CDs pressed or the cover art printed.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Unless it's Free as in Free as in No Patents, No Nothing, I ain't buying! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Do you think we might have Apple to thank for this? No, seriously. Perhaps they got wind of what Universal was going to hook up and made a press announcement before the 28th.
I mean, this sort of thing should have been embraced five years ago by all of the labels.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Is a music service charging between 10-50p for each song I download...
New songs - 50p, old catalog titles - 10p
HOW FUCKING HARD CAN THAT BE?!?!?!??!
If, as rumored, Apple's new music service has significant DRM involved in it (can't copy tunes to hd, cd, etc.), this business model will completely torpedo it.
--- Submission is feudal.
Illegal online services, kick-started by the original maverick Napster, have brought the music industry to its knees in the past few years, forcing global music sales sharply lower.
I wonder where they're getting their statistics about "global music sales sharply lower". Most of the statistics that I've seen say that the music industry is still an unbeatable juggernaut.
I suppose that the RIAA pushing new "Super-DMCA" laws through state legislatures is just a symptom of them being on their knees.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?
No.
No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
You have just been PR'd.
This is of course, nothing new. FIPR just ran this story, and from the headline it looked like EMI was going to release singles for free...now THAT would have been news!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
"Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?"
Confused Philospher says:
NO.
This is because we will have to wait years for other companies to follow suit, since few people will use the EMI service initially because of the ease of using Kazza for FREE [minus jail time and billion dollar law suits].
The music industry missed the first boat when Napster sailed.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Is how they're going to sort out whom has a legal copy of a song, and whom has an illegal copy of a song. I suppose that even if you "buy" a song online you still can't put it on kazaa, as that would be considered distribution?
But what about if you're accused of piracy when you have a vast library of legal songs? Are they going to properly cross-reference their user-list, or just continue to send nastygrams to anyone whom they suspect of having Mp3's?
IMHO, it seems terrible ironic and two-faced to be blatantly accusing mp3's etc of being piracy and profit-stealers, asking for (in Canada) huge taxation on mp3-capable storage devices, and then selling off music to run on those same devices
it seems like a step in the right direction. It'll be awhile before we can really judge if it's worked, but at least it's progress for the cause, and progress is something more than we had.
What happened to apple?
Subject says it all.
They've been backed into a corner. It's this, or go out of business in 10 years. Of course, that's the only way you get any company to do anything; Make it the only viable financial option.
RIAA pull, EMI push. Together we make the internet go 'round.
At first I read this and I thought we're talking about downloading MP3's.
I thought "wow someone finally gets it! They know they have no choice". I clicked on the article hoping to find a link to one of these sites selling the music, and actually thought I'd buy an album to check it out.
After careful scrutiny, I noticed this line from the article:
We are using new technology to benefit both artists and consumers by massively expanding the amount of music available securely online,"
This is not MP3's nor is it Ogg, and I am not going to buy anything that limits me in any way.
Now I might end my CD-buying boycott, but only for EMI. The rest of you's in that biz can suffer ...
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
The cds will probably still "cost" £10 to buy, and the same measly sum of cash will go to the artists. Something is being done, but it will still be the same scam the record industry currently is. Only when 75+% of the fees go to the artists will I but cds at current prices.
Well after the english singer Robbie Williams claimed that piracy was 'great', and his record company (EMI) went ballistic.... it is quite an interesting change of tact from them.
Either that or they realised that expanding their online availability might be due to the new report that online downloads of songs will impact on the national pop charts?
Just my 0.02 downloaded songs (or cents/pence).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
...nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! hehehe.. Maybe the RIAA can stop them...
I don't know how many of you here have ever heard of this band called the Grateful Dead, but they didn't sell hardly any albums. Thier biggest hit was in the 80's, which was "Touch of Grey". During this time, they made thier money by working. That's right, they did work. They went out and toured, and performed for people, and managed to be the highest grossing band for years. They encouraged people to record thier music, and distribute is.
CDs are nothing more than advertisements for bands. Bands should make thier money working (i.e. touring, concerts, etc), and not sitting down at one recording session and cranking out 10 bajillion CDs.
People that want the cover art are going to be willing to pay for it anyways. But the rest of us who like to go to concerts and support the band by going to concerts should be able to do so, and even leave with a recording of the concert as a fond memory.
I'm a representative of the RIAA and I don't like this. I'll have to discuss this with our lawyers, special forces and the President. We won't let them hurt our money.
Finally they're slowly coming around to the idea that maybe they can't squeeze the life out of the downloaded music industry. Like so much before, now they can charge you for one song. Now your buying a CD, one song at a time, through the thrill of downloading!, without the CD itself!. Do'h. Of course in other news today, EMI sues the venture capitalists that backed Napster, trying to discourage it else where and take over the business! Tricky!
Science will save us. The question is, will it destroy us first?
Here is the main reason why I think the Music Biz is scared of technology, especailly when downloading is the "normal" way to purchase music:
*Large labels get web site and have music for download.
*Indipendant artist also makes website, has music for download.
And there you go... indi-artist and Brittney spears on the same equal footing. Suddenly the labels loose control of what gets distribution (downloads), what gets airtime (net radio), and that is where the money generation is reborn. The big money is not the few million off of an artist, but in the multiplication of said millions over MANY artists they can make "big" and push onto TRL and control. Oh, and if anyone actually thinks TRL (Total Request Live, a v-e-r-y popular MTV show here in the States) plays what you actualy vote for, you're an idiot. TRL is a marketing tool that plays mostly what you want, but is used to push no-names like P. Diddy's little boy-band on top very quickly. "Look everyone, B2K is #1 on TRL! You all love them!" And then little boys and girls run to the store because "everyone" who is "kewl" must be listenting to those dancing crackheads.
Yes, you do detect some envy. Brilliant minds created TRL and I'm sure every artist that wants to push a CD pays payola to TRL in huge ways. Brilliant business. Wish I thought of it.
Is how they're going to sort out whom has a legal copy of a song, and whom has an illegal copy of a song. I suppose that even if you "buy" a song online you still can't put it on kazaa, as that would be considered distribution?
What if they were just trying to track down the distributors? It would be SOO easy to put a signature on each track they allow someone to download. Then, they just connect to all the various file-sharing places, download songs, and analyze them. They find out who put their tracks out there. Then they prosecute those people.
This would be SOO easy to do, too. I mean...geeze...ESPECIALLY if they ake the people play the downloaded tracks with a special codec they have to download, that has a private key in it...but even without that, you can still sign a file without encrypting it, and just wait and see who's files get shared. Then when you arrest those people and charge them $10,000 per shared song, you take care of the problem from the other end. When people have 100Gigs of MP3's, there's almost no chance they have even 10% of the cd's to back them up. Someone, somewhere, ripped those cd's and originally shared them. So don't just go after the people who continue to share things they've never had - those go on and on. Go after the ones who do the original ripping.
Decent conspiracy theory?
An EMI representative has just released this statement: "Whoops, our bad. That was really a joke e-mail, you know, one of those 'this will never happen because it's so ha-ha funny' emails. No, we still embrace the 'you are thieves, not customers' philosophy."
Didn't BMG already have such ambitions with napster and was frightened away from it by forces only anti-american people would name?
Under the EMI deal, consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives. Consumers can also purchase singles online once they hit radio airwaves.
You can burn it, you can put it on a portable (assumes this means you can get it as mp3 or a player-compatible format), and you can put it on your drive.
I'm fairly sure the secure part means the billing/transaction system.
http://btplusplus.sourceforge.net/ (Bittorrent)
http://doa2.host.sk/ (Kazaa lite)
http://www.gnucleus.com/ (Open P2P)
http://www.overnet.com/ (Nice too!)
http://www.gnutellanews.com/ (News on P2P)
Enjoy!
Phase 1: Offer to sell mp3s which can be acquired for free elsewhere.
Phase 2: ????
Phase 3: Profit!!!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Illegal online services, kick-started by the original maverick Napster, have brought the music industry to its knees in the past few years, forcing global music sales sharply lower...
How many more time is the RIAA gonna try to stuff this crap down our throats and have us burp up sympathy?? Here are just a few of the reasons why a drop of sales in not at all necessarily due to downloaded music...
1. The most obvious of these is the drop in economy, with similar sales slumps in the last econo-drop of the early '90s.
2. Secondly, the increase in games and DVD sales is a contributing factor. With DVD's being, in many cases, cheaper than a music CD, their is much more value in a DVD than a typical CD.
3. Last, but not least, radio is highlighted as a problem due to its short play lists and the difficulty in getting playtime for new artists. Has anyone else noticed not that ClearChannel owns about everything, only about 20-30 bands ever get airplay??
I suppose EMI is stepping in the right direction, but IMHO its too little, too late. The future of music will probably have something to do with corporate sponserships, where hit songs are considered a form of advertising and bands are reduced to touring ad billboards where huge multinationals will "own" popular acts.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I can't find it anywhere on their website, but Best Buy has an advertisement for "Rhapsody" in their stores. I don't know who is promoting it. They are selling them ala Netflix, but I fear that their might be a real music company backing it. The service plan would be $19.95/mo.
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'
We already can-- it's called an analouge loop-back. Unless analouge sound cards are suddenly outlawed I don't see you ever won't be able to make copies of music on your computer.
"good bye I&M" - Johnny Rotten
the recording industry doesn't make money off the band touring. They make it off selling cd's. Bands like the greatful dead and phish made/make most of there money off of concert tickets.
You would if you could manage to tie land, property, and national identities to pudding preferences.
Sounds like they got what they wanted... if this really works, it will make buying music a lot easier. i can buy 10 tracks, all from different artists, and burn them all to one cd. No more buying 10 cd's to get 10 hit songs... sounds like a smart move on their part. they'll save a ton of money on putting out whole albums vs. just releasing the hit online, which costs effectively nothing.
stuff |
It's a number of European websites. One might think that they would do this in the US, since there are some people here who might want to get music online, but no. My guess is that they're trying to soften their stance in order to make DMCA-equivalents seem less bad in places that are considering them. Their position in backing copyright laws in the EU is currently sort of, "We have some music, which we don't bother to try to sell, and we try to make money by suing people. We need new laws to make this model viable." Actually selling something might make them look better.
There's unlimited supply
and there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
they onl1y did it 'cos of fame -
Who? EMI
2 1337 4 u!
From the article: "...giving them access to most songs on today's top-selling charts.". "them" being the consumers.
I could not care less about the top-selling quote artists unquote. I want EMI's back catalog. Unlike the material world the Internet does not entail the costs of reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material.
I will not get exited and more importantly I will not open my wallet until I see that the record labels are making an effort. There are ways to make music better through Internet distribution. As long as I sense that the music labels take care of numero uno first, so will I!
How can music be better? I'm glad you asked.
Small artists can get published for free through major labels and the second they catch on they can start selling. It sure beats touring like Black Flag did. The overhead of publishing a number of small new bands with a couple of songs each on an EMI server farm will be negligible.
If the user has bandwidth to spare uber-high fidelity downloads should be an option. We are not limited to CD quality on the net. High paying consumers can have custom stereo/mono/bitrate/hz files generated from the masters real time. These custom packages can be downloaded or burnt onto DVD and mailed. Will this allow you to get a perfect master and facilitate piracy? No more than high fidelity vinyl. 99.9% of the people that spend big bucks buying a custom remastered 60GB version of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" will not be disposed to spread it around until the technology allows them to.
To reiterate, I want back catalogs and so do most serious music lovers. I cannot imagine people buying rare Hendrix, King Crimson and Brittney Spears in one group.
Maybe "chart toppers" should be printed on disposable CDs? The music will be irrelevant in weeks anyway so why print them on the same material that you print real music?
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
1. Reasonable prices (remember $60 for a new movie back in 1983?)
2. Adopting new technology instead of fighting it (e.g., DAT audio decks, DVD+R vs DVD-R bs, mp3, etc)
3. Selling old content at low low costs to drive sales of new hardware/playback mechanisms
4. Enhancing the content/quality (e.g., an audio CD is unchanged since 1983 when it was introduced). At least DVD is much better than VHS
5. Selling different quality level versions of the same product at different prices (192k mp3 should cost more than a 64k mp3, A recent movie DVD should cost $12, SVCD $9 and a VCD $6).
6. Allowing flat rate pricing for content (e.g., $20 a month for all of the mp3 and all the VCD's you can download)
7. Actually apreciating the customers by including extras in the product (e.g., including 1 or 2 extra tracks on an audio CD or including a mini-cd with a few mp3's of other bands).
8. Packaging older material into collections at a reasonable price (e.g., a box set of all of the albums by a 1960's band should cost about $20 to $25). Same goes for TV shows (e.g., A complete collection of six million dollar man episodes should cost $50 max or no more than $1 an episode). Consider shows like Gunsmoke with 500+ episodes - would you pay $1000.00 for a complete collection?
9. Selling new audio CD's and DVD's by online auction to actually see what people are willing to pay for the content and then pricing content accordingly.
These companies will merge and get biggger and bigger until they collapse under their own weight.
Rent a DVD instead of buying it. The rental store does not have to share rental fees with the RIAA members.
Better yet, TIVO all of your content off of cable or over the air broadcasts and dont' support the RIAA members by attending movies, buying DVDs, buying audio CDs. Email them, their artist web sites, and tell them that.
Hello,
I really love your music. Unfortunatley, I cannot buy your latest CD since it is too expensive and does not give me enough value for the money.
Thank you.
If you haven't checked out emusic, give it a look:
www.emusic.com
If nothing else, you can get 50 free MP3s*... but I've found a subscription to be very good value (I must have at least 4Gb of MP3s from the site)...
[* they will ask for your credit card number; as far as I can tell they're secure and respectful of privacy]
I'm still waiting for an "objective" ratings house to help me with the selection of my music. While I am a TOTAL audiophile, I do not have the time to wade through mounds and mounds of crappy independent artists in order to find the 2-3 good songs I actually end up liking.
Take hip hop, for example. Now, I don't like ALL hip-hop, but I do like the "dance" hip hop songs that make my feet move. Gangsta rap? No. RnB? No. Soul? Nope. Don't like any of those....just a few of the "dance" tracks (think: In Da Club - by 50 cent). Right now, there is no easy way for me to identify, much less download this kind of music. I have to wade through piles and piles of crap (both independent and large record) to get what I want. Now, if there were a reputable "reviewage" site (ala the Billboard top 50 but more objective), I would have a use for it -- in a big way.
Hell, I might actually PAY for it!
Personally, I think this is the only way a middle man can survive in the music industry -- by providing a "service" to help people wade through the crap.
Do the fine folks at Slashdot really have that short of memories? EMI isn't changing, give me a break. After all, we just found out that they are suing Napster's venture capital suppliers YESTERDAY. They haven't changed at all! I would be willing to bet serious money that if they actually are going to offer music online it certainly won't be in MP3 format. They aren't going to use .ogg, because it's open and communist, and we here at Slashdot know how impossible it is for open source software and standards to produce things that actually work. If they do put anything online, it's probably going to be in some worthless proprietary format (like Windows Media Format) that has a shitload of DRM on it.
"consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives."
Somehow, I doubt it. I'll believe it when I see it.
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
Macrovision Protected Music CDs Surpass 100 Million
Wednesday April 2, 11:00 am ET
Strong Growth in Europe and Asia Helps Macrovision Reach New Milestone
SEE Press release here-> http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/030402/25294_1.html
Macrovision - listed on NASDAQ exchange http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=mvsn&d=t
Macrovision Corporation
2830 De La Cruz Boulevard
Santa Clara, CA 95050
Everybody making music aren't tripe rock bands or pop queens where the stageshow/appearance of the artist is 99 percent of their performance.
Some people actually make music for listening. I don't give a fuck about how Squarepusher or Aphex Twin looks. I'm not a fucking fanboy, why would I want to pay for going to their concerts?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Pie
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
It is all well and good to let users download the songs, but I am not going to be willing to pay to download something that sounds like crap.
One of the reasons I don't download from Kazaa is because the quality is poor. (I also think it is stealing)
How much time and effort is EMI going to put into putting the songs into a format that is actual CD quality and not the fake "CD Quality" that WM9 claims to have.
[SIG] Far better to be thought a fool then to post on
There seem to be quite a few "at last!" and "they're getting the message!" type posts here. I don't see anything in the article that specifies format or quality or DRM reuirements or any other technical issues. I'm inclined to doubt that these will be MP3's in any case. Does anyone have any more details?
Sigs are bad for your health.
I think you meant "analog" or "analogue". Not some strange naked olympic winter sport.
A quick look at HMV - one of the retailers mentioned in the article reveals that they are going to use Liquid Audio format. Player is free, but the format is as proprietary as it gets. Now, that smells like another software empire 5 years from now, doesn't it? The best M$ move now would be to simply buy LiquidAudio (if they haven't yet...). Of course, Liquid Audio player is only for Windows - I'm guessing why and I don't have to think hard. When will people learn?
iThink iHate iMod
I love how Apple fans attempt to give credit to the company for just about anything. This shift towards services has been years in the making. The initiative to license 20 distributors would have taken place long before anyone caught wind of the proposed Apple deal.
Microsoft Buys Liquid Audio DRM Patents October 1, 2002.
Sigs are bad for your health.
CDs are basically just ads to come and see the show
Really? If that is true then why is it most of the bands who've released albums that I bought in the last 12 months haven't played in my city? (I live in a large city so, please, no recommendations that I move somewhere people have heard about.)
How is the CD an advertisement for the show when there is no show?!
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
I think we are seeing the beginning of the record industry's transition from aristocracy to service provider.
To review: Musicians generally don't make money from recording contracts, they make money from gigs. With a standard recording contract all expenses come out of the musician's share, usually leaving zero. What musicians do get out of record distribution is exposure, which translates to paying gigs, from which they Can make money.
As more and more musicians learn to achieve the same thing with free online distribution, recording contracts will cease to be the carrot-on-a-stick that has always allowed record companies to call the shots. Fewer and fewer artists will sign away their lives to record companies, and eventually the record companies' only assets will be their existing store of controlled songs. Thanks to the Bono Act, this material will probably belong to them and their heirs forever, but the market for these oldies will shrink. The recording business will either die or become providers of streaming and download services, promotional websites for musicians, that sort of thing. And they will have to do it for a reasonable fee, without extorting perpetual rights and control over the musicians' careers.
Good stuff happening.
Having to pay CARP fees to the RIAA if you are a "web caster" in addition to the fees to ASCAP/BMI that radio stations and web casters and others pay. That's a something.
You no longer have the right to use non-Lexmark cartriges in Lexmark ink jet printers. That's another something.
It seems that every time there's an article on Slashdot about some new online music service "the geeks" blow it off immediately, citing concerns about it being too restrictive, too costly, low quality encodings, etc. This begs the question: what does a geek think constitutes a good online music service? The answer is usually something along the lines of:
"Well, IF they make available every song they've ever published and IF they make the songs available in mutiple MP3 bitrates and in OGG and in uncompressed PCM audio and in every other esoteric compression format I can think of and IF they can guarantee a full 10Mbps connection to me I *MIGHT* consider paying two dollars per month for the service. Until then, I'll continue to download music that I enjoy listening to but do not enjoying paying for."
I mean really, geeks have expectations set way too high when it comes to what an online music service should have. Yes, good selection is one thing but don't think they're going to have their entire library available for download immediately. Nor can you expect all sorts of bitrates and OGG and whatnot. You need to give it time and (gasp) try actually putting your money where your mouth is. If you want online music services so badly, try subscribing to one! Prove that the business model would actually work. Prove that you're not just a freeloader, that you would actually pay for something that you can copy easily. Just a thought.
If all of this really is going to pan out and go mainstream, then the demographic with the most discretionary income, i.e. teens, need to have a way to pay for it without having to borrow Daddy's Ccard. Most teens I know don't carry their own plastic (even debit).
why must everything so complicated. buying song by song sucks. make the songs available to the users, no download restrictions, no use restrictions, make collecting societies get the money from the isp's like its with the radio. split the money up under the musicians.
independent label fanatics remember: producing a CD is more expensive than the money that comes from the revenues - at least for small labels. independent groups mostly earn their money on stage, on festivals and such. and the biggies make most money anyway from collecting societies (radio stations - television, cinema) nowadays.
the labels should realize that producing cd's is expensive. install kiosks in your store where you can burn your own compilations. make it user friendly not user unfriendly with all this DRM shit.
and by the way: are you sure that a certain amount of internet traffic nowadays does not consist of mp3's ? why not charge the bandwith of home users?
You would if you could manage to tie land, property, and national identities to pudding preferences.
You would if a national government declared one of the ingredients in your favorite pudding a "controlled substance".
Mods: no bonus means I modded this comment down myself.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Harry Fox only gets involved if you're releasing a recording of a song that was written by someone else (ie, a cover). If a label is distributing a song written and recorded by one of its artists, then all the money should be going to the label and the artist.
Correct, but this doesn't always mean you'll be getting a discount. When the songwriter is a member of the band, this means that the artist has two revenue streams: the music and the recording. Many recording artists who (claim to) write their own songs make more money in the end from the music than from the recording.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Little Heroes by Norman Spinrad.
And to a lesser extent, Cyberbooks by Ben Bova.
The Spinrad book was *way* before it's time.
so that when a .aa file is encoded as .aiff and then re-ripped as a trueblood mp3 a good deal of signal is lost.
I know you're thinking about transcoding. But you don't need to rip to MP3. If you burn and then rip as .wav or .flac, you don't have a generation loss.
on the mac side, there're programs (like Audio Hijack) that intercept sound from a specific application on its way to the audio controllers
There exists an equivalent piece of software on Windows called "Total Recorder", but it doesn't work on restrictions-managed files because of the Secure Audio Path.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I would try it if it was fat, good, LAME-encoded VBRs...
The press release today by EMI seems to have been but a PR move. The thing is, the 20 sites mentioned have been open for a while already, and although EMI's music is available on them, there is nothing EMI-specific about these services.
The company that has been implementing the actual sites is (as someone already pointed out) OD2, or On Demand Distribution, founded by Peter Gabriel. OD2 has released music download services on about 20 European websites, including Tiscali's and MSN's. All of these services feature music from all of the major labels, and all of these services allow burning of songs & transfers to portable devices. (For a price of course.)
OD2 also organized a promotion effort for these services called Digital Download Day; check it out if you want to see the complete list of sites the service is available on.
Incidentally, OD2 uses WMA audio. If you check out the press release, you'll also see that it doesn't mention MP3. I sincerely doubt that EMI would go for an unprotected format, although some news organizations have interpreted it as such.
So you see, it's not just EMI that's doing all this. The only real news in the article is the amount of tracks available (200.000). The whole of the OD2 service includes ca. 150.000 tracks so far, so it could be that EMI has cleared a bunch of new songs for release.
Phase 1: Offer to sell mp3s which can be acquired for free elsewhere.
If this EMI deal is what it looks like, then it's going to be a lot like eMusic. The difference between eMusic and KaZaA is that with eMusic, you're getting guaranteed quality and fast downloads as opposed to files encoded with a crappy but popular encoder, possibly with clicks, pops, dropouts, and deletions, and available only from one user on a 56k in Yakkestonia.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Unlike the material world the Internet does not entail the costs of reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material.
Yes it does. Royalty checks take paper and ink to print and postage to send, and those cost money. Bandwidth costs money as well.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Most people don't know this but all of this is available in the US today via Liquid Audio and its affiliates. They've got content from most of the majors (60,000-80,000 tracks from UMG alone, which is the biggest), it's reasonably priced, and yes, it can be burned to CD!
Then take an MD5 or equivalent hash of the file sent. That hash becomes part of the purchase record.
If they run across another music file of the same hash, they have a pretty good idea who's leaking.
Get several together, you probably have a case.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
As most of you don't know, Australia has no "fair use" rights for the copying of music or video for personal use or archiving.
This method of selling the content, if it is indeed sold under the explicit condition of allowing duplication to different media for personal use, satisfies the Australian Copyright Act in that the license holder of the content is selling us that right along with the content.
Finally, we Australians will have the (in my opinion) reasonable right to protect ourselves against the loss of content through damage to the media it is sold on!
Of course, that means re-purchasing all your songs, and accepting the quality of the downloaded content - we won't have the right to rip a copy from CD of the same song we bought, just duplicate the downloaded copy.
(sigh)
Um... Yes?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
"Some top-selling bands such as the Beatles and Rolling Stones have not agreed to let fans download their songs, limiting the music supply."
LOL if this is not a major symptom of the ROT at the core of the music industry, The BEATLES have not made a tune in decades and yet they are one of the top selling bands, the Rolling Stones are older than dirt and riding on fame from 20 years ago, JUST LIKE THE RECORD INDUSTRY. Gee that means the combined might of the record companies have not been able to produce a better band in 25 years ?!?!?! It must be MP3's killing music...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And if you need a linux client for downloading EMusic albums, check out:
HotLead
arcane for life
A case in point: I recently got the latest album by Placebo "Sleeping with Ghosts" it had this copy protection notice stuck on it...anyway, it won't let you rip the tracks to mp3 format, like you can with a normal CD...but I just fired up my computer's CD Player and the sound recorder, selected the "CD Digital Input" option, hit the play & record buttons and it recorded the whole album to wave format; I was then able to edit it & convert the tracks to mp3 format... (You can do exactly the same on a professional CD recorder hooked up to your Stereo, BTW...) I've since made up a "proper" Placebo CD, uncrippled, and I can't actually tell the difference...(!)
I like having my music in mp3 format - I can mix & match my music selection on my personal mp3 player to how I want it, play music across my computer network, or make up my own compilation CD's for long car trips... This new copy protection scheme is a total waste of time & money for the record companies, since I managed to circumvent it SO easily...in fact it was utterly laughable how easy it was!! - And I hope someone from that ivory tower world that is the record company la la land reading this :)
NOT because I'm some scum sucking pirate criminal. (I actually own all of Placebo's previous albums, i.e. bought and paid for, WITH MONEY, in a record shop)
I just like the convenience that mp3 has brought to me. But this copy protection scheme has me facing a dilemma - why should I buy a copy protected CD now? It's extra effort to get the album into mp3 format. sure I can do it easily, but maybe now I'll just leave those copy protected CD's on the shelf. It's even MORE tempting to use p2p services. (Actually, the first thought I had when I saw the copy protection notice was "How easily can this be cracked?")
Now, this idea from EMI is great - FINALLY, one record company has the balls to erm, "face the music", and not bury its head in the sand, by offering its music to download, for a fee of course. Good luck to them. I'm sure they'll make money from it. (Virgin Records, on the other hand, who "own" the copyright for Placebo's latest album, can go straight to Hell) People will pay to download music from a reliable, high bandwidth service. Sure, those mp3's will get shared around, but that's just how thing's happen in the REAL world. Record companies have just totally lost it. It's time they got a clue, and faced reality.
Mp3's are here to stay, and there's nothing they can do about it.
I've said this MANY MANY times, but people still don't get it:
Record sales are NOT down. What is down, is ***RIAA*** record sales. More and more indie labels and indie bands are selling their own indie-produced CDs through their own websites and at their own shows, and those numbers aren't being totaled in these statistics. The RIAA wants us to believe that the whole industry is suffering, because it helps them with their anti-piracy, pro-DRM agenda.
Also, of the money that IS spent on CDs, because of the trend away from RIAA artists, more and more of it is going to the artists themselves and not the advertising/distribution/recording/mixing guys. Technology for recording and mixing quality shit is so much cheaper than ever before, so artists can create great-sounding albums without spending so much on it. Less people need to get paid to create the same thing. And the total money that is being made is getting divided up among the little people creating it, all around, instead of being funneled into one big RIAA pot. Most of the RIAA revenue doesn't even go to the artists. So yes, a lot of execs and studio technician types are losing their jobs and losing money. The world doesn't need them as much as we once did to have good music.
Those of you who never venture outside of the mainstream might think that everyone is like you, and that surely these "indie" bands aren't selling all that many CDs. But you guys are WRONG. Look at who was making all the money off of live music in San Francisco last New Year's Eve, for example. There was like one big RIAA-sanctioned show at some local arena, but how about the other top 10 largest sold-out venues full of people, charging $60+ per ticket? They were all bands that are big, but who don't ever get on ClearChannel or MTV. They sell quite a few CDs at many of their shows too. My friends that are into indie music spend WAY more on CDs in a year than the people I know who stick to the mainstream and get everything from Kazaa. Sure San Fran is not your typical American town, but they are an extreme example of the musical trend that is slowly taking over everywhere.
I don't have actual sales numbers to back this up, but many of these bands don't report their sales to any sort of statistics-gathering agency.
I've got more to say 'bout this but I'm tired of ranting for now...
I could pay to download them ... or I could get them from free ... tough choice
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
$1 an album or less
10 cents a song or less
Ogg Vorbis format, variable 0.5 quality - if not, MP3 of 192 kbs or so.
or else, I check the world's largest peer-to-peer network for free.
...so then even after "years in the making", the announcement comes 5 DAYS before Apple's? Seems like an argument FOR them wanting to beat Apple to the punch.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
There's unlimited supply
And there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
They only did it 'cos of fame
Who?
E.M.I. E.M.I. E.M.I.
You don't get infinite resolution with analogue recordings
Yes you do. Is it possible that you don't know what "analogue" means? An analogue signal can vary infinitely between its upper and lower limits as fast as its bandwidth will let it, whereas a 16-bit PCM data stream (CD) can only occupy one of 65536 discrete levels defined at intervals of 2.27E-5 seconds.
Will I get anything except people like Coldplay, Madonna or The Beatles? Will I be able to download Music Madness by Mantronix which is deleted, or just major label stuff?
Will I be able to get the music and extract it to an MP3 player on a Palm device? The article says it can be burnt to CD. Does that mean in CD format, or that the DRMd files can be copied to CD
If I accidentally delete the file, can I re-obtain it as I've already paid (like I can with things like my download licenses for software).
The whole thing smacks of an industry that is desperately trying to offer an online service that suits its needs, and not those of its consumers.
I don't see people switching to it from illegal networks.
"Oh no, Mister Prosecuting Attorney! I would never upload music to Kazaa for illegal distribution! A virus must have entered my computer and uploaded that music without my knowledge!"
Hey, a jury might buy it...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
If you are tired of the ClearChannel junk on the radios, I suggest you get XM Radio! I too, grew tired of the same songs over and over again. So, with XM, I choose what I want to listen too. And, if I'm in the mood for some Pop Music, I'll tune to 21 which is KISS FM in Los Angeles.
On a side note, I seriously think that the people at ClearChannel synch up their stations so they all play commercials at the same time.
What, me Tweet?
You make it sound as though the only reason a person would download an mp3 (and not buy the cd) is a moral flaw called "dishonesty". BUTT (and there's always a big butt) there are reasons other than moral flaws that a person might download. They might, for example, have a highly principled (aka moral) objection to the police state that the RIAA is trying to turn the world into. They might have a practical objection to having their computer hobbled by cd designed to curtail fair use. They might have a philosophical difference of opinion with those who think that intellectual property is a tenable notion. They might just be oblivious. None of the above is - per se - unfair, deceptive, shameful, or dishonest.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.