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?"

Comments

Adapt...

[brunson]

or Die

Re:Adapt...

[Brandon Sharitt]

Hopefully this is the year that online music really takes off.

Re:Adapt...

[Bonker]

Mod parent up Insightful.

EMI looks like it's the smart little rat running in and out between the toes of rapidly-starving dinosaurs.

The old dinosaur food-chain will dry up. It will look like it's getting more powerful, but it will be because all you can see are the major predators at the top who've eaten all the rest of the food-chain out of desperation.

Eventually, they too will starve and those who have evolved will eat their corpses.

Re:Adapt...

[falzer]

Mod parent up Insightful.

...or die.

Re:Adapt...

[Alphtoo]

"Or die." Yeah, finally, somebody got a damn clue.

First step... next...

[HeelToe]

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.

Re:First step... next...

[chrisseaton]

I often see people complaining about the use of compression, but I generally encode at 196Kbs, and that is almost always fine - even on a professional sound system where you would expect to be able to pick out any imperfections.

Sure, sometimes it fails. I did a 196 encoding of a Dvorak piece and when the singer hit the really high notes the vibrato sounded like a fire alarm. But that was only once.

Re:First step... next...

[HeelToe]

I use MD in the car. I used to use MP3 in the car. I have spent considerable time listening to both on headphones at the office. Unfortunately, I can hear the imperfections in that environment. In the car I can't, so I don't mind its use there, it's appropriate given the limited ability to discern detail, but on my home audio setup and on good headphones, I really get annoyed by the artifacts.

Re:First step... next...

[Pieroxy]

Your statement is just... empty. What are you comparing exactly ? MD with MP3s... what MP3s? Which bitrate, which encoder....

I defy anyone to discern a 256kbps MP3 encoded with LAME from the original or even to tell there is a difference. Of course you need a true blind test for that.

Now on the other hand, lossless compression would be better to download these files, I totally agree with that. MP3 is good for *listening* only. Even a basic filter as a High/Low button or a band equalizer can make diffences audible.

Re:First step... next...

[cloak42]

Given the right sound equipment and a discerning ear, you can tell the difference quite easily.

Of course, that also means that you've spent thousands of dollars on your sound system and you really care about the quality of the music being played on your stereo.

But it doesn't really much matter anyway, what with the quality of engineering that's being done these days. Since most albums are being WAY overclipped (that is, mixed higher than -0dB) and are distorting anyway, and so much digital compression is being done that you'd be able to hear digital noise just from the vocal effects and equalization used, it doesn't really matter what kind of stereo you're listening on anyway.

I think the appropriate thing would be, rather than getting in a huff about the quality of downloads, we should get in a huff about the quality of the MUSIC, or at least the quality of the production on the album. After that's taken care of, we can worry a little more about the fact that compressed and lossy files are being distributed.

One thing's for certain, though: The general public is getting more and more used to crappy-sounding recordings. The larger amount of shoddy stereos and low-quality file formats is contributing a big amount to that.

Re:First step... next...

[cayenne8]

Hear ,hear!! (no pun intended)

:-)

I"m hoping that a lossless codec such and FLAC will be used...cuts the uncompressed file by about half...but, no loss of data. I too am frustrated in that so many people do not know what truly good sound CAN and should sound like. I have people blown away by my stereo when they come over...

http://www.klipsch.com/index.asp?path=/products/pr oductdetail.asp?frame=y&id=15&line=Home

http://www.decware.com/zpage1.htm Along with a new Sony DVD/SACD player...and some other stuff for HT. But, this simple set up, give you the willies when you listen to it...very realistic...very large soundstage. Especially with the DIY CAT5 speaker cables I did for the system. I do find, that many of todays songs in fact do suffer from poor recording, and it must be by the over compressed, over mixed recording techniques. I mean it seems very unreasonable that older, and I mean really older recorded stuff often sounds much better than today's stuff. Given the equipment we have today, it amazes me this is the case...but, I think many of today's songs are recorded to sound the 'best' at the lowest possible common denominator: a cheap boom box....and mixed way too loud.

But, one needn't spend 12 tons of $$'s for a great sound system...but, you do need to know what you're looking for...

Re:First step... next...

[LionMage]

Others have responded to the assertion that one can't distinguish between a 256 kbps MP3 encoded using the LAME psychoacoustic algorithms. So I won't address that here, except to say that on a decent (read: expensive) stereo system, I can distinguish between subtle nuances of source materials. Any material that's been lossy-compressed (MP3, ATRAC on MiniDisc, etc.) is going to sound inferior for certain types of recordings. There's no one perfect psychoacoustic model that compresses all types of music equally well.

No, what I wanted to really respond to was this:

Now on the other hand, lossless compression would be better to download these files, I totally agree with that. MP3 is good for *listening* only. Even a basic filter as a High/Low button or a band equalizer can make diffences audible.

Excuse me? The whole point of MP3 (and other lossy-compressed audio formats) is to reduce storage requirements for the data, and to reduce bandwidth requirements for its transmission over a network or broadcast medium. Your statement runs completely contrary to the spirit of that engineering design goal for MP3 audio. MP3 is obviously inferior to uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) source material for critical listening; where MP3 shines is in streaming applications and applications where storage space is at a premium. Of course you can jack the bitrate up to 256 kbps, but if you're going to do that with MP3, why not use a better codec that's engineered for musical reproduction, instead of using MP3, which was engineered for digital television broadcast and network streaming? ATRAC seems to get some things right that MP3 doesn't, especially at more modest bitrates. I've been hearing good things about AAC as well, although the patent restrictions may hinder its adoption.
I mean, seriously, would you rather listen to an uncompressed CD or DVD-A or SACD on your high end home stereo, or an MP3 compressed copy of the original source material? I don't even think there's a contest here! No, the MP3 copies are good for putting ten hours worth of music on a CD-R that you can play on a portable player or in a car's deck. When you're in a car, or flying cross-country on a plane, or stuck in a hotel room somewhere, or visiting family, or when you're camping somewhere -- these are non-critical listening environments, and highly compressed audio is not a problem.

Re:First step... next...

[jhines0042]

Why does it even have to be compressed when sold from EMI?

Why not just let us download a full format file and decide to compress it on our own if we want to save space/sacrifice quality?

Re:First step... next...

[nolife]

The general public is getting more and more used to crappy-sounding recordings.

As compared to the higher quality content of cassettes and 8 tracks from the 60's and seventies.

Honestly though, I do agree that overall, the studios are putting out crappy recordings, or maybe that they have not increased the quality they are putting out in relation to the quality of the end media.

Re:First step... next...

[afidel]

Yes it is a competition, with a decent quality soundcard and heaphone amp I can't tell the difference between 44.1Khz 16bit wav's and ~200Kbps VBR mp3's from Lame using my Sennheisers for ~95+% of my music collection. I did true A-B-C blind tests between LAME, wav, and OOG and I could only pick out OOG on most samples.

Re:First step... next...

[Pieroxy]

I don't know how my statement "runs completely contrary to the spirit of that engineering design goal for MP3 audio"...

I was just saying that the psychoacoustic models used in MP3 compression removes supposedly unaudible frequencies. But if you boost the low (or high) frequencies through a trebble/bass button, those frequencies are going to become all of a sudden audible, but they're not here in the MP3 file (or worse, instead there is some artifacts)!!!

That's all I'm saying, and I don't think I'm wrong with this.

Now I also wanted to reply to your other statements:

would you rather listen to an uncompressed CD or DVD-A or SACD on your high end home stereo, or an MP3 compressed copy of the original source material

I may be a special case ;-) but my "high end" home stereo is not often used in the optimum environment, giving that I have kids and that I rarely do nothing but litening to music. I use it more for ambient music and to watch tv/dvds.

Another thing is that I am tired of having TONS of CDs in my bookshelves. They are now in my garage and I ripped everything in 256kbps MP3s that I burned on DVD-ROMs. A DVD-ROM can accomodate roughly 40 audio CDs at this bitrate and I just need 6 to hold my entire collection. That's another win!! (though as I said, that's my personal needs)

I'm just waiting for the next generation of Shitloadofdata-ROM where I can put ALL of my MP3s as well as all of my movies so I have everything in one disk ;-)

Re:First step... next...

[Pieroxy]

Probably because that would justify a lower price than the equivalent on a good old CD. That would just boost their media presence (at least for a while) and rejuvenate their image as "innovators", but people caring for quality would still have to buy the CD.

Re:First step... next...

[DrXym]

So I won't address that here, except to say that on a decent (read: expensive) stereo system, I can distinguish between subtle nuances of source materials.

I don't doubt you, but some people swear they can tell the difference between a normal CD and one that has been stuck in the freezer for a few hours even when there is absolutely no difference at all in the output. The point is that if your mind expects there to be a difference you may very well end up hearing (or thinking you hear) a difference.

Now obviously MP3s are different from CDs and compared side by side there may be subtle differences that you pick up on. But if they're not compared side by side and considering that even CDs are themselves are digitally sampled and thus just approximations to the actual recording, I doubt it makes much of a difference to your listening experience.

Re:First step... next...

[lactose99]

Compare a 192kbit MP3 to a piece of vinyl and in many cases you can hear the difference. Quite often, you can hear the difference between a CD and vinyl as well.

I've noticed that most high-frequency sounds don't really translate too well with MP3s. I produce music and most of my hi-hat and high-octave synths definitely have artifacts. This is most likely because I'm still learning how to mix instruments, but I have noticed some of the same behavior on CDs that I've ripped (at 160kbps and 192kbps). The true solution would be to give consumers DAT tapes or vinyl.

Of course, DAT isn't really an option for your average listener and vinyl doesn't translate to digital all too well for the consumer market (when was the last time you saw an mp3-capable turntable?). Granted, they both sell, but to the upper 15th-or-so percentile of music enthusiasts, DJs, and recording artists.

Re:First step... next...

[Drakonian]

When you're in a car, or flying cross-country on a plane, or stuck in a hotel room somewhere, or visiting family, or when you're camping somewhere -- these are non-critical listening environments, and highly compressed audio is not a problem.

But that's where 99.9% of people do listen to music. They (we) don't have critical listening environments. MP3 has had unbounded success because it's good enough for 99.9% of people.

Re:First step... next...

[Pieroxy]

More than crappy, I'd say that the current productions are way over-engineered. Tons of filters are applied to the music so that most of the tiny details that a high-end stereo system can render are just absent while tons of artifacts are added along in the process....

Sad but true.

I once gave CS lessons to an old audiophile man that ended up telling me that CD was crappy. I asked him what he meant and he showed me the brand new CD he just bought about a very famous recording of some classical music (I can't remember what it was). He made me listen to a specific part and then showed me a tape (yes, audio tape) of the same recording he bought 20 years ago on LP (he recorded that on tape with a *very* expensive tape recorder). The difference was just stunning!

Then I just told him: "Let's see if CD is that crappy" and we ended up recording 5mins of the tape on his PC and then burned a CD-R with the new WAV.

The result was just the same as the cassette, and way better than the CD.

Very sad story but unfortunately true. The brand new CD reedition of this concert was just way worse than the same old LP version!

Re:First step... next...

[nathanh]

Quite often, you can hear the difference between a CD and vinyl as well.

Yeah, the CD frequencies don't wobble all over the place as the deck changes speed, and the CD audio isn't ruined by pops and squeaks caused by dust on the platter, and after playing one CD a few times you can still hear the high frequencies unlike vinyl where it gets muted over time.

Yes, there's certainly a difference. No wonder my entire collection is CD.

Re:First step... next...

[afidel]

clean your vinyl and use decent needles and you won't have much problem. My dad has 35 year old LP's that still sound damn good today because they were well cared for. Actually I want to get a laser record player so I can have the best of both worlds, the nice analog form of LP's with the replayability of cd's. That and real DJ's will never switch to cd, it just isn't anywhere near the same thing. Mixing with vinyl is a tactile experience that none of the cd scratch decks comes close to replicating (I know I've tried most of the "pro" ones.)

Re:First step... next...

[nathanh]

The "analog form" of LP is overrated. You don't get infinite resolution with analogue recordings. There is still a SNR to worry about.

Re:First step... next...

[cloak42]

As compared to the higher quality content of cassettes and 8 tracks from the 60's and seventies.

No, you're right, CDs are much higher quality than cassettes or eight-tracks, but you're forgetting about LPs. LPs, on the right equipment, can be so much higher fidelity than any CD you've heard. Ever.

And, in fact, cassettes, in the right tape player and at the right tape speed (the faster the tape speed, the higher the fidelity and thus the higher the quality) can be quite professional quality as well.

Eight-tracks are right out.

However, I hadn't been referring to the quality of the recording medium, but rather the quality of the engineering going onto that medium.

Re:First step... next...

[nolife]

Actually I did not forget LP's, I left them out on purpose because I know it is a touchy subject ;)

Same with reel-to-reel players. I've had various levels of each and very good tape decks (several old Nakamachi's for example) in the past. I did like the quality of LP's but it really is a personal preference.

I've had very good luck with Telarc label CD's. About the best one I have ever heard is "California Project". It is a collection of Beach Boys songs done by Papa Do Run Run. One of the best recording I have ever heard, and I have never listened to or liked the real BB's. Well worth the price new or used. Not to change the subject but I took this cd and converted it to ~256VBR and ~192VBR (--r3mix) with Lame and EAC and there is an obvious difference in the quality compared to the original. Not really with artifacts but the dynamic range is just not there.

of course

[Oculus Habent]

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.

Re:of course

[Threni]

Surely it's obvious that the only solution is to allow people to play music from the internet whenever they want, wherever they are, with wirelass links to diskman/ipod style hardware. The problem, surely, is how to collect payments, not if or when or how. You pay a fixed amount and can listen to n MBs of *any* music that label is responsible for. I can't see any other solution working.

Re:of course

[DavidLeblond]

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.

True, but it costs less to make a CD than it does to make a cassette tape... yet CDs are more expensive.

I wouldn't be surprised if they slapped a "convenience fee" on the downloads.

OGG or NOTHING!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's Free as in Free as in No Patents, No Nothing, I ain't buying! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Re:OGG or NOTHING!

[Clipper]

Although this comment is kind of fundamentalist (essentially, Ogg or Bust), it does raise an interesting question: How will EMI distribute the music online? The article doesn't get into this at all. There's been talk about lossless vs. lossy compression so far in here, but even amongst these there are choices. If EMI chooses lossless, will they go for WAV, FLAC or some other encoding. For lossy compression, there's a plethora of options: Ogg, MP3, Real Player, Windows Media, etc.

Although I am a fan of Ogg as a media format, I think it's safe to say that it will not be the number one choice of EMI. What's more, I feel that there is a narrow chance that even MP3 will be offered as one of the d/l options. Although MP3 has near ubiquitous compatibility with audio players and consumer hardware, it does not provide a key feature that companies like EMI do crave: Digital Rights Management. I predict that the only d/l options available to users will be Real Player and/or Windows Media.

EMI, if they have not done so already, will make "distribution deals" with both Microsoft and Real so that these two formats are the only ones used for downloading. In return, software like "Windows XP Media Edition" (or whatever that new thing is called :-) could push the user to acquire Music from EMI (MS did a similar thing with respect to Internet access and AOL... I'm certain many of us remember installing Windows at some point and seeing that the Desktop had, by default, a few icons for various large commercial ISPs).

As a final note, I don't feel that my claims that Windows Media and Real will be the only formats available is unsound. /. readers are, typically, a bunch of nerds (self-proclaimed :-). While it is easy to give arguments like "But MP3 is better" or "Ogg roxors cause it's patent-free", these do not hold much water from a business perspective (which is where EMI is coming from). Other major sites already use Windows Media and Real as their only distribution format (e.g., amazon.com, when previewing tracks from CDs).

Re:OGG or NOTHING!

[squeaple]

The article says the following: "...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 implies a format with DRM extensions. Since Real DRM is (last I checked) extortionately expensive and has little ground in the market, I would wager they have gone for Windows Media. This is an educated guess though (despite being a bit of a no-brainer), as I have worked with EMI Group before on their digital music projects and they always chose WM or Real over the other commercial formats available.

On a side note I'd say it's a guarantee - DRM or not - that MP3 is a format that will never be used commercially by any recording company.

Re:OGG or NOTHING!

[SwiftBiscuit]

EMI are using OD2 for the distribution. OD2 use Windows Media with DRM.

Apple?

[BWJones]

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.

Re:Apple?

[inertia187]

Or maybe it's the other way around.

Re:Apple?

[mattyohe]

We will just have to wait... the 28th might not detail Universal and that could all be speculation.

Wouldn't it be sweet though if they did make this move because of apple, and then it turns out to just be a rumour?

Re:Apple?

[the-build-chicken]

I mean, this sort of thing should have been embraced five years ago by all of the labels.

Five years ago...1998...I don't know about u, but I knew almost noone that had the bandwidth to make this viable 5 years ago.

Re:Apple?

[BWJones]

Five years ago...1998...I don't know about u, but I knew almost noone that had the bandwidth to make this viable 5 years ago.

Hmmmm. Cable modems were rolling out in 1998 I think, and I have personally had high speed internet access since I started my first email account back in 1990 or 1991.......Oh my....Have I been wired for over a decade?......weird. I now have memories of Gopher and Veronica floating through my head.

Re:Apple?

[the-build-chicken]

yeah...were rolling out...but in 'profitable' numbers?

What I want...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?!?!?!??!

Re:What I want...

[MushMouth]

US Mechanical royaltys are at least 8.1 cents a song. Paid to the song writer with 3% cut going to the Harry Fox Agency for overhead of collecting the royalty. You aren't going to get such prices.

Re:What I want...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What I want is a music service charging between 10-50p for each song I download."

• While we're making up imaginary monetary values, I want every song for 6-9q.
• 
  Slashdot may be globally accessible, but the rest of the world has no clue what a 'p' is.

Re:What I want...

[Nasarius]

AFAIK, 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.

Re:What I want...

[Joey7F]

if it is imaginary, shouldn't it be 6-j9?

I personally only accept currency in Norwegian kroner or Zambian Kwacha, as should everyone.

--Joey

Re:What I want...

[Dthoma]

That comment wasn't very nice of you. You should mind your ps and qs.

EMI 1. Apple 0

[sensate_mass]

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.

Re:EMI 1. Apple 0

[jo_ham]

I don't know if Apple would go this way.

Just look at iTunes - Rip, Mix, Burn. Admittedly, this was designed for CDs that you had purchased, but anything you download from an Apple-run music service would be music you have purchased.

If there's going to be any DRM it will be like that of the iPod. Or it will be Rendezvous style streaming (not copying) if you connect to other people's Macs on the network.

Just like the iPod though, it's easy to copy if you so want, but Apple aren't going to make it into a feature.

Re:EMI 1. Apple 0

[masonbrown]

Where did you hear that Apple has "significant DRM"? I've been keeping up with all the rumor sites and haven't seen anything like that... there was a mention of not making it seemless to copy files from computer to computer.....

Re:EMI 1. Apple 0

[Oculus Habent]

It will probably be something like the Audible system that works with iTunes. You load the file. It checks with the service (using the account info you supplied) as to whether you can have that song. That info is then cached so you can use the computer offline, and put the songs on the iPod.

Re:EMI 1. Apple 0

[LionMage]

Funny, all the other rumor sites I'm reading say that Apple's resisting putting DRM into their music service, because they want customers to be able to burn music they purchase to CDs, or copy to their iPods, or whatever.

All this talk of Apple pushing DRM sounds like FUD to me. Why don't we wait and see what Apple actually offers?

Objectivity is journalism makes me happy

[reverendG]

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.

Re:Objectivity is journalism makes me happy

[Darth Troll]

have brought the music industry to its knees

Yes, the music industry is on their knees but what they're doing down there is reaming the consumers' (and artists') cornholes.

Re:Objectivity is journalism makes me happy

[Kelz]

"have brought the music industry to its knees"

Is it just me or is the music industry just a big pity-whore? The industry is still getting profits far surpassing that of almost any other industry out there today. Compare the cost of searching for a good band, developing or funding them, with the output and the difference is astronomical! Somehow this reminds me of the old cartoon Duck Tales in which Schrooge has a vault of money that he swims in but if even one coin is stolen he will stop at nothing to get it back.

Re:Objectivity is journalism makes me happy

[rzbx]

Yea, the industry is down to its knees begging to have laws passed to help keep them alive in the future.

Um...

[elixx]

Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?

No.

Nothing new to see here. Move along!

[Beautyon]

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!

This makes little difference

[confused philosopher]

"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.

Re:This makes little difference

[Red Warrior]

I dunno. I rather expect that I'll use it. Unless they decide to charge $55 a song or something.

Re:This makes little difference

[nomadic]

It will be a lot easier than Kazaa though, and more reliable. As long as they charge a reasonable rate I plan on using it.

Re:This makes little difference

[asscroft]

know what, kazaa is slow as shit and labor intensive if you're trying to get good quality. If someone would sell me a real unprotected mp3. (Not a windows only spyware-required piece of shit.) available for download on a fast connection with guaranteed quality and a simple search/purchase/download mechanism I'd pay.

of course, then what's to stop somoene from uploading it to kazaa.

But the fact remains, as long as I can share amongst all of MY computers and MP3 Players I have no real desire to share with the universe if the price is fair.

Back when we had to buy a cd, rip, encode, and upload for 3 days on a crappy modem there was a cost that made it worth trading with others. I'll waste days of my life on artistA if you waste equal time on artisB and we'll swap. With quick high quality legal downloads for a fair price I'd rather say "go buy it yourself, here's the link".

If they can tap into that me-first (leachers abound) mentality and call it honest consumerism, they'll be loving life again. They can do so without limiting our civil liberties and suing the fuck out of everyone too.

Unfortunately, until a record company actually does something to repeal the evil fuckin dmca, I ain't buying shit from them, ever again. And I haven't since that piece of shit communist legislation was passed. FUCK YOU RIAA!!!

Re:This makes little difference

[I_redwolf]

When you say easier, what exactly is it that you mean? I've seen Kazaa in use it doesn't look too hard to me :)

Re:This makes little difference

[nomadic]

Finding a file isn't always easy, downloading isn't always reliable.

Re:This makes little difference

[ctishman]

Wait, isn't the DMCA the very ANTITHESIS of a communist law?

Re:This makes little difference

[Prof.Phreak]

Most music on kazaa is low quality 128 mp3s. I can seriously tell the difference between a well encoded song and some crap on kazaa. If people would just encode things properly, I wouldn't buy CDs! There is only so much trouble I'm willing to go through to download a good encoding of a song... after that, I usually end up paying for the CD.

In my opinion, 128 MP3s work to their advatage as asvertising. You like the song, you wanna hear a good non-crap version of it, you go buy a CD and encode yourself a good copy.

What they should do is give away 100% free unlimited 128 MP3s (like Kazaa ones), and actually sell VBR or some high encoded stuff.

Re:This makes little difference

[The_K4]

I would too as long as they don't make me pay for a ton of streaming music as well! I want stuff I can DL, put on an MP3 DVD and put into the car's MP3 enabled CD/DVD player.

Re:This makes little difference

[ctishman]

What, pray tell, is that "something"?

Re:This makes little difference

[PD]

The music companies are too late. I haven't bought any CD's in the past few years, except for Johnny Cash's "American IV" (great record BTW) and I don't plan to buy any more. Now I listen to independant bands on www.garageband.com and I like what I hear. They've got a huge amount of music there, and it's quite a lot of fun to listen to a wide variety of things.

Re:This makes little difference

[Galvatron]

kazaa is slow as shit and labor intensive if you're trying to get good quality.

Not anymore. Many of the songs I've searched for recently have actually shown that the most popular 192 kbps copy has more users sharing than the most popular 128 kbps copy. As little as 6 months ago I would have agreed with you, but as the recording industry has dragged their feet on this, the black market (black free resource pool?) has continued to improve to the point where I'm not sure a private solution would ever be able to compete.

In this example, they've already said that they're unable to secure permission to use the works of major artists like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It's obvious that the RIAA members will never be able to offer the same catalog that Kazaa can (which is to say, all music ever put on CD). There's too much legal entanglement with copyrights that go back 75 years.

Re:This makes little difference

[Mikey-San]

of course, then what's to stop somoene from uploading it to kazaa.

This is going to sound dumb and naive, but listen for a second, my fellow Slashdotters:

Honesty.

Dishonest people will download the MP3s with/from their favourite p2p service and never buy the album. Honest people will either download the MP3s and buy the CD, or just buy the CD outright.

The world is how it's always been, and the record companies don't understand that. An honest person will be honest; a dishonest person will be dishonest.

No DRM or tricky license agreements--not even the DMCA--will ever change that. It takes only one person to rip a CD before it's available to every dishonest person out there.

Perhaps one day, this will be realized by the content providers, and they'll stop screwing the people who were going to be honest in the first fucking place. If you're gonna steal it, you're gonna steal it. Simple. You will find a way around the restrictions.

-/-

Mikey-San

Re:This makes little difference

[Mikey-San]

Ah, shit. Didn't switch that to HTML-formatted.

Very sorry for the bad formatting, people. :-/

Re:This makes little difference

[yelims]

. . . I have no real desire to share with the universe if the price is fair.

I couldn't agree more, but the problem is this:

Who defines whether a price is fair? The current asking price seems to be between $1 and $2 (USD). At these prices, you are paying the same as going out and buying a CD. Except, you don't get the actual CD or cover art.

This is a bit off-topic, but bear with me, and I'll bring it around. I've taken to eBooks lately, as finding English books in Greece is a challenge. Anyways, I was going to buy a new release via Palm Digital Media. They were asking $17.99 for the eBook (list price $24.99). So I went out to amazon, and found the book for $17.49. Now the publisher does not have to pay to make the actual book (paper, binding materials, etc.) or do they have to pay to ship the thing.

So as curiousity got the best of me, I emailed Palm Digital Media, and this is the response I got:

Palm Digital Media doesn't set the list price of the books that we
sell. That's totally controlled by the publisher. We pay the
publisher a fixed price for each copy that we sell, based on a
percentage of the publisher's list price. But we have to pay that
price, even if we were to give the book away. In fact, the price we
pay to the publisher is almost exactly the same amount that your local
bookstore pays when they buy a dead tree copy. So our prices are
usually in the same range as what you'd pay at that local bookstore.

I looked at Amazon.com for this book, and their price is about the same
as our subscriber price.

So until the publisher's of e-media realize that it isn't a good deal, there will not be a "fair" price.

Re:This makes little difference

[MSBob]

A Polish proverb: "It's the opportunity that creates the thief".

Unfortunately the truth is that if 90% of those who want to steal cannot do so because the lack technical know how and the other 5% are too afraid of getting caught, you've just cut the 'crime' rate by 95%.

Even though the crime will still exist the scale of it is very likely to be significantly reduced if you introduce strong DRM systems and appropriate legislation to back it up, which is exactly what RIAA is doing.

Re:This makes little difference

[DaemonGem]

"[minus jail time and billion dollar law suits]"

Wouldn't that be nice, unfortunately it's trillions.
-Dae

Re:This makes little difference

[adamfranco]

Dishonest people will download the MP3s with/from their favourite p2p service and never buy the album. Honest people will either download the MP3s and buy the CD, or just buy the CD outright.


This isn't entirely true. I consider myself to generally be a very honest person -- I don't ever even eat the nuts from the barrel in the grocery store before eating them. However, at least untill now (I haven't tried or looked at the EMI thing) there wasn't a way for me to leagally get music without being raped by the music industry. If CDs cost $8 or less ($1 for production, $2 for retailer, $2 for artist, $2 for label, $1 for distributer) I'd buy hundreds of them. At twice that price or more though, I feel used for over-paying. As I really don't like the feeling of being used, especially be supporters of such anti-first-amendment legislation as the DMCA, I download mp3s and burn friends CDs.

Maybe this EMI thing will include reasonable prices like $0.25-30 per song (for a 12 track album that's several dollars of profit with little overhead). Then I can honestly pay without feeling cheated.

Re:This makes little difference

[BlueTooth]

The problem is, people want their music on their computer/portable player/car/etc and they want it as quickly as possible. P2P makes this easy. Order / Rip / Burn is slower. I frequently use P2P because it is faster or easier. Of course Kazaa sucks way more than a good legit service should. Make it easy and affordable for me to buy this stuff online and I will probably spend more money on music than I do now.

What I don't understand

[phorm]

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

Re:What I don't understand

[HermanZA]

Well, it is even more insiduous than that. Canadians can buy the same devices and black CDs by mail order from the USA and circumvent the taxes. Also, not one penny of this tax actually reaches the music industry, so it is just another Federal tax grab...

Re:What I don't understand

[glitch!]

[What I don't understand] 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....

Maybe they will watermark the downloads individually. If they were really nasty (clever?), they would embed your credit card number into the watermark as as additional deterent from file sharing. (Nah, they aren't that evil...)

At least this might cut down on the number of retards that keep claiming that "downloading copyrighted files is illegal" (So downloading a Redhat ISO is illegal then?)

Re:What I don't understand

[LarsG]

They don't go after the downloaders, they go after the providers.

(Downloading isn't illegal according to copyright law in at least a few european countries, but woe be to the person who distributes.)

Re:What I don't understand

[akvalentine]

At least this might cut down on the number of retards that keep claiming that "downloading copyrighted files is illegal" (So downloading a Redhat ISO is illegal then?)

I think that you are in denial. You can download a RedHat iso legally because RadHat says you can. Downloading an mp3 (or whatever) of a piece of music that is owned by someone else, who hasn't given you permission to download it, is copyright infringment. I'm sorry you don't like it, but that's the way it is.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that the RIAA and familly suck, but that doesn't change the fact that they own the copyright to the music and they don't want you to download it.

Re:What I don't understand

[.com b4 .storm]

[...] 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.

They could do what EMusic does, which is keep a catalog of all the music you've ever downloaded with your account. This is supposedly for convenience so you can look back and grab songs you downloaded before, or something like that. But I bet it'd be a good way of proving that you have a legit copy of a song you got from the service.

Don't believe that I have a legal right to that copy of "Hey Pachuco"? Check my EMusic history, bub. I got it fair and square.

Re:What I don't understand

[glitch!]

You can download a RedHat iso legally because RadHat says you can.

Of course. Duh. That was my point, that there are too many people thinking that downloading ANY copyrighted file is necessarily illegal. By their reasoning, it is illegal for me to transfer MY OWN documents and other works, since they are also copyrighted. Never mind that I am the copyright holder. Get my drift?

Re:What I don't understand

[gurps_npc]

I have to agree with him about what he said. He never said it was legal to download stuff, he said it was not prima-facia illegal to download something that is copyrighted.

Re:What I don't understand

[cayenne8]

What is so special about black CD's?

Re:What I don't understand

[NanoGator]

"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."

Does it matter? It's not like they're doing that today where the exact same problem exists.

If I have a CD-R copy of a music CD, how are they to know that I'm using it because my original was lost in the move?

I don't think you show up on their radar until you start giving the files to other people. Then they can bust you on a fresh charge.

Re:What I don't understand

[dirk]

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?

So far, I have yet to hear of anyone being accused of "having" MP3s. Every person that has even been approached (that I know of) has either been downloading MP3s or distributing MP3s through P2P. Distribution is illegal, as you say, but so is downloading. It is not illegal to possess MP3s, as long as you have the legal right to them, and no one has been prosecuted for that.

Re:What I don't understand

[HermanZA]

'blank'...

Re:What I don't understand

[phorm]

...and downloading is alright if you have the original CD. Most people download when they don't own - but I know a few who are too clueless to rip a CD so they just download the Mp3's from kazaa if they want them in file format (for collections, etc)

Re:What I don't understand

[darien]

That's not what he said. Prima facie (or prima faciæ) means "at first sight", or "by external appearance." Some might argue that it currently IS prima facie illegal to download copyrighted material, since the overwhelming majority of copyright material on the net is not licensed for that method of distribution.

What the original poster said was that copyrighted material is not ipso facto illegal to download. Which is to say, the fact that it's copyrighted material doesn't necessarily mean that downloading it is illegal (though some other factor might).

good

[bryanthompson]

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.

Eh?

[unterderbrucke]

What happened to apple?

Re:Eh?

[Daniel_Staal]

Announcement to be made on the 28th. See you then.

They have no choice...

[Dr. Bent]

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.

Re:They have no choice...

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Go out of business? Listen, the record companies aren't as poor as they want to make themselves out to be. Record sales are supposedly down but that can't be blamed entirely on internet piracy. CD prices are up and quality is down as well. Yet the RIAA is so sure that music piracy is why they're not selling as much of their shit as they used to. I don't believe it. I'd download music and violate copyright law, if there were any being produced that was worth the bandwidth.

What is a lot more important than EMI selling their product online is lone artists selling theirs. With the widespread acceptance of the internet as a means of commerce, there will, hopefully, come a time when there's no need for the middleman. I'd much rather pay ten bucks to an artist and have that artist get all the money than make some fat cat asshole a little bit richer.

Of course, I'm still waiting on something worth buying but that's another problem altogether - and one the RIAA doesn't care about - they'll market the shit out of the shit they've got and bribe politicians into making laws that lead to suits which will finance their lifestyles since the music isn't good enough to sell anymore.

Re:They have no choice...

[Dyolf Knip]

They are also indiscriminantly calling their customers criminals and, despite complaints by virtually everyone, introducing DRM onto CDs which at best won't play and at worst screws up hardware. This sort of behavior simply does not fly in a market with easy entry, no matter what near-monopoly is currently gripping it.

Re:They have no choice...

[Dr. Bent]

Did I say anything about piracy? That's not the issue. The issue is that sales are down about 10%. Using the McM.B.A. portion of my brain, I figure that means they've got about 10 years left of doing what they're doing now before they go out of business. It doesn't matter if the drop in sales is due to piracy, crappy music, 9/11, the war in Iraq, or the phases of the fucking moon. The goal here is to increase sales (or, at least, lower costs) by moving to a new delivery system. Which is what they should have done 5 years ago.

Re:They have no choice...

[Threni]

What is a lot more important than EMI selling their product online is lone artists selling theirs. With the widespread acceptance of the internet as a means of commerce, there will, hopefully, come a time when there's no need for the middleman.

This will never happen. The music business isn't about music, its about selling lifestyle choices. 99% of music sales has nothing to do with people continously seeking out new bands - it's people listening to what their friends listen to, and what is "in" this month.

Re:They have no choice...

[Some Dumbass...]

Record sales are supposedly down but that can't be blamed entirely on internet piracy. CD prices are up and quality is down as well.

Not to mention the economy. I can't believe that nobody ever mentions this. So CD sales have sucked since about 09/11/2001... How have sales of everything else (especially non-necessities) been doing?

Re:They have no choice...

[Dr. Bent]

First off, I don't disagree with you on the cause of declining record sales. It's not just piracy.

However, you're missing my point. EMI is looking at this from a purely financial point of view. They don't care about music, or fair-use, or artists. They care about money.

That's why I used the "McM.B.A. portion of my brain" for those calculations. They see the 10% drop in sales this year, as continuing at a linear, fixed rate (for example $6 billion a year) and not as a percentage. So if you have a 60 billion dollar a year industry, and you lose 6 billion a year for 10 years... This is the same kind of thinking that makes them conclude that 3 guys at a University can do 80 billion dollars in damage, and it's typical of business types who wouldn't understand mathmatics and statistics if you tatooed a bell curve on the inside of thier eyelids.

What I'm saying is that the reason behind the sales drop is irrelevant. Any way you cut it the effect is the same; EMI is forced to adapt to changes in the market, which is a good thing.

Re:They have no choice...

[Dr. Bent]

The reason that the causes for the drop in sales are irrelevant is because digital distribution of music is, far and away, a better method than mailing out a bunch of round plastic discs. This is EMI's motivation...simply to cut costs and increase profts by adopting a better system. The drop is CD sales are just a catalyst for change.

Is this the only thing EMI is doing to stay alive? No. They're laying off people, they're suing people, they're doing all the things that a company does when it starts to die. But they are dying...for the simple reason that the Internet made thier business model obsolete.

not MP3's..

[CySurflex]

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.

Re:not MP3's..

[splanky]

>I am not going to buy anything that limits me in any way.

Have you ever bought a MS O/S? Talk about limiting! At least CDs you can play on a bunch of CD players... If MS ruled the music biz, you'd have to buy one CD for each CD player you had. And if you CD player broke, you'd need to buy a new one since your CD's license is attached to your now defunct CD player.

Re:not MP3's..

[tuffy]

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.

What the word "securely" means in this context is difficult to determine. It might mean the music itself is somehow secure (Digital Restrictions Management, etc.) or it might simply mean the purchasing itself is secure (SSL). I'm going to wait to hear the nuts & bolts of this thing before jumping to conclusions.

Though I'm not buying anything packaged in a closed format.

Re:not MP3's..

[$carab]

Have you ever bought a MS O/S?

Wait...you mean like....purchase something digital?

Fuck that. Gimme Kazaa Lite and IRC any day.

Re:not MP3's..

[MrNemesis]

Personally, I've got no beef about it being non MP3/Ogg Vorbis as long as:

I can play the files on any computer I wish (Win32, Mac, Linux, etc etc), and the software required is free to download, the file format is well documented and the ware does NOT attempt to spy and/or phone home

I can transfer them to portable devices or put them on my file server and listen to them anywhere in the house

I can burn them onto an un-crippled CD for the few times I have recourse to use an actual Audio CD player

Yes, it'd be lovely if the file format and software was completely open sourced, but there's bound to be some DRM in there somewhere which would make such an option unthinkable to the industry types. Since this is a bit of an immovable object, I'd also require a clause in their TOS they they can't change the format or start charging for the software, so that the files you buy are always going to be playable.

Unfortunately, as much as I'd love to buy into a decent online music service, I think this is rather too much to ask for from the cartels, and I'm probably likely to stick to my file server crammed full of Ogg rips for the time being.

Re:not MP3's..

[mblase]

This is not MP3's nor is it Ogg, and I am not going to buy anything that limits me in any way.

I hope your DVD collection is standing at zero, then?

Re:not MP3's..

[NanoGator]

" If MS ruled the music biz, you'd have to buy one CD for each CD player you had. And if you CD player broke, you'd need to buy a new one since your CD's license is attached to your now defunct CD player. "

That's interesting?

That's how the Windows license works, however that's not how content from Microsoft works. One only need to look at games published by MS (like anything for the XBOX, or Age of Empires, etc) to know that's not at all how they'd handle it.

This comment is about as '+1, Interesting' as saying "If Linux ruled the music industry, they'd give away sheet music. The customers would have to play the music on their own instruments. But, for a nominal fee, they can buy a CD with the music already produced on it. However, the ISO could be downloaded free from the web. The entire time, the whole music industry would be running PBS style pledge drives to keep it funded."

I don't know which is stupider, the moderation that comment got (+1 Funny would have been fine, but not +1 Interesting) or that somebody with a mod point read that nodding his head saying to himself "yep yep, that's right!"

Re:not MP3's..

[EnVisiCrypt]

Um. Right.

Have you purchased any WMA files? That's exactly how it works.

Re:not MP3's..

[NanoGator]

"Have you purchased any WMA files? That's exactly how it works. "

Um right. That's not how it works. The license isn't tied to the computer. You do, however, have to make a copy of the license to work in another computer.

What he described was how the Windows OS license works. "You can only use it on this computer", which really only refers to the copies of the OS that come with pre-built machines like Dell or Gateway.

I agree MS's licensing is shitty, that doesn't mean that the original poster's imaginitive work of fiction was even close to acccurate.

Re:not MP3's..

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Well, if he has a Region 0 player, then it doesn't matter.

Similarly, if he could play these music files wherever he wanted to, then he would buy them.

Re:not MP3's..

[EnVisiCrypt]

Actually, you can copy the license if it's a CD that you've ripped with Windows Media Player. All the WMA's I've bought could only be played on the computer I bought it for, and only on portable devices that connect to WMP.

Good for them

[0x00000dcc]

Now I might end my CD-buying boycott, but only for EMI. The rest of you's in that biz can suffer ...

Re:Good for them

[tindur]

I don't exactly boycott CDs but since I bought my first unrippable CD I haven't bought any. That was one year ago and normally I buy on the average 20 discs a year.

As I said I don't exactly boycott but I would like to be sure that a disc is rippable before I buy it as all the music I listen to resides on a HD.

Too good to be true

[Neophytus]

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.

Re:Too good to be true

[Jason1729]

The only way to get 75% to the artists is to cut out the middlemen. I've recently gotten involved in the board game development industry. The numbers I've seen are that 50% of the retail price goes to the retailer, 25% goes to the wholesaler, the rest has to go into manufacturing, and possibly paying an agent. You're lucky to see a 5% royalty.

If out of a $15 CD, 75% goes to the artist that means there's only $3.75 to cover the cost of manufacturing, and profits along the distribution channel. Even if you deal directly with resellers so there's only one link in the chain, that means the retailer is paying $$12.25 (75% plus a $1 manufacturing fee) for an item they can only make $2.75 on. Out of the $2.75, the retailer still has to pay their costs to keep the store open. Rental of the location, employees, cash register ink, etc. If the artist takes 75%, the retailers will go bankrupt, then the artists won't have anywhere to sell their material and they will get 0%.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Too good to be true

[Dyolf Knip]

Actually, netting 5% would not be that bad. Lotsa businesses run on profit margins that low or even a few points lower. What is criminal about the recording industry schemes is that the artists are usually getting a fraction of a percent (pennies on the album) and are then expected to pay for many of the other expenses with their take. Just what are the RIAA members using their cut for if not to actually make, sell, and distribute the things? Lobbying and paying their legions of IP lawyers, evidently.

Robbie Williams anyone?

[T-Kir]

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).

Re:Robbie Williams anyone?

[Kelz]

Piracy was great

The reason he said that was in his opinion, piracy helped him sell more records due to his songs getting out there to people who would not normally buy the songs on a cd, but did after they heard how good he was.

He had a good point there and I believe that EMI finally got the truth of his statement into their slow little heads.

Re:Robbie Williams anyone?

[Pendersempai]

Well after the english singer Robbie Williams [bbc.co.uk] claimed that piracy was 'great', and his record company (EMI) went ballistic.... it is quite an interesting change of tact from them.

Does it occur to you that they're still against piracy? Legally purchasing song files (mp3 or otherwise) is not piracy. Advocating the legal sale of song files is not advocating piracy.

Grateful Dead

[LamerX]

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.

Re:Grateful Dead

[Zangief]

But not everyone like to go to concerts, but that does not means they can't support the bands they like.

Re:Grateful Dead

[splanky]

The idea of that sounds great, but unfortunately in reality, over 95% of bands do not make money touring. I work with tons of small localish bands, and can say here is how the current biz model works for small, medium, and large bands.

Small (i.e. local bands)
1. May break-even on their CD after recording costs. Some even make some decent cash on the CDs if they sell more than 2K of them.
2. Unlikely to get any decent amount of ASCAP/BMI money.
3. Lose money playing out. Lucky to get a beer for a show.

Medium (i.e. developing artist - sales under 900K)
1. Lose major cash on the CD. Label invents big dough in videos and stuff hoping to push them to Large sized act.
2. Make a bit of dough from ASCAP/BMI if they get radio play.
3. Band breaks even playing out generally because the label generally underwrites their shows (called a guarantee) in hopes that it will drive CD sales. If the label has given up on CD sales, the band loses big touring.

Large Act (over 900k):
1. Either make huge cash or no cash on their CDs. The no cash ones are like MJ where the label spent massive dough promoting and producing the album but saw sales that would make money with most artists, but because they poured so much dough into the album, they lose.
2. Almost all large acts make good dough off of ASCAP/BMI.
3. Only the acts who have a number of huge selling albums or extensive, extensive touring history make huge cash here. but when they do get to that level (i.e. rolling stones) they make massive, massive cash.

Re:Grateful Dead

[gosand]

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.

Bands *DO* make their money by going out and working. What you described is how the record industry makes money, not the artist.

What will break the RIAA is if a few artists go it alone, don't sign a deal with the devil, and make it big. If others see it is possible, they may follow suit. Of course, that presumes that it is possible to succeed without the RIAA's blessing.

Re:Grateful Dead

[k3v0]

And then, if you are a cool Grateful Dead song writer, you can start the EFF, and become even cooler.

Re:Grateful Dead

[k3v0]

Ani Difranco has been pretty successful in her endeavors. She realized the RIAA wasn't interested in her music, so she made it all herself. So it is not totally impossible to exist outside the RIAA

Re:Grateful Dead

[goober]

In a recent interview for Rolling Stone, Jon Fishman of Phish expressed the opinion that (I'm paraphrasing) if you're a musician who relies on album sales to make a living, you're doing something wrong.

Re:Grateful Dead

[angle_slam]

Mod this up. The standard /. line is that bands make money touring, but that thinking is based on seeing the year-end figures for the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney. I'd always thought that a Medium sized act (which is mostly what I listen to) doesn't make that much money from touring.

Re:Grateful Dead

[bogie]

"over 95% of bands do not make money touring"

I find that hard to believe. If literally nobody made any money then they wouldn't do it. Artists may be falky but their not stupid. Sure maybe small time bands are not paid that much, but any band with name recognition can make money touring. The bottom line is if you can't make money touring your in the wrong business. If your good enough and "make the cut" then you'll make money. No one every said just because you want to be an artist you automatically get to make money at it.

The parent was right. CD's are basically just ads to come and see the show. Since the vast majority of artists don't many any money from CD's why not give them away for free? All they need to do is hand them to a few people to put on their websites and boom, off the music goes. Within days it would be on Kazaa, Donkey, etc, all with little to no cost for the artists.

The grateful dead model works and lets the artist concentrate on the part that pays, touring. The CD biz is afterall just a scam set up to make Recording companies rich. Why even participate in something like that?

Re:Grateful Dead

[gosand]

Ani Difranco has been pretty successful in her endeavors. She realized the RIAA wasn't interested in her music, so she made it all herself. So it is not totally impossible to exist outside the RIAA

True, and there are others. But I don't think anyone has made it BIG. You can exist outside the RIAA, but not very well. The system they have put in place makes sure of that. Radio stations, big record stores, MTV, etc. They all cater to the whims of the record industry. Rap actually had a chance to buck the system because they had such a strong following. Most rap labels are members of the RIAA though.

Re:Grateful Dead

[AirRock]

One major problem with not signing to a major label, is their connection to producers or high quality mixings, and the money these labels would be willing to spend on them. I dont know many artists that do not need a producer or need to be remixed that have made it big. I can think of a few small bands that did well on indie labels, signed to a bigger label and got their albums remixed, and the record went huge. This is probably one of the few ways a record label can actually help their artists.

Re:Grateful Dead

[TMB]

The problem with this line is that it fails miserably for some musical styles.

For a good rock band, hell yeah they should be best when seen live. An orchestra might be good live, but is just as well enjoyed at home with a good stereo. Rhythmic ambient noise would awful live, but great at home late at night on an excellent stereo.

And the thing is... I like all those. I want to support all those. And in some cases that means going to see them live, but in others it necessarily means buying the CD because that's the best way to enjoy it.

[TMB]

Re:Grateful Dead

[Wylfing]

in reality, over 95% of bands do not make money touring...[They] lose money playing out. Lucky to get a beer for a show.

Are you sure about that? That sounds like BS to me. A lot of bands make a fair living playing gigs. Sure it might not be their full-time job, but so what. Probably 95% of writers can't live full time on their writing either (or at least not on a single writing job). People aren't morons. If the thousands of small bands playing gig to gig were losing money each time they did it, they would stop real quick.

Re:Grateful Dead

[splanky]

Yes, I am sure about it... and it's a conservative #... The reason small bands keep doing it is so they hope they get "discovered" and think that getting signed is this massive road to riches. Where getting signed will raise the bar for you (meaning some cash may be put behind you) it is by no means a sure thing...

The reason most people don't believe the # when they first see it (I think it was pollstar that put the losing show estimate at 99% a couple years ago) is that they're only looking at big shows! Take a look at your local alternative paper and see how many bands that you've never heard of who are playing dive bars trying to make it big. In decent sized cities, those bars make you *buy the show out* before playing... so you only can hope to break even if your show sells out...

It works like this:

club owner: i've never heard of you. I don't want to risk losing beer sales.
band: we'll promote ourselves.
club owner: b.s.
band: we swear
club owner: well, ok, then my club has 200 capacity. at 10 bucks a head, that's 2K. I'll let you play but you have to give me the 2k up front. I'll give you the full door for that.
band: time to call up grandma and borrow more money.

Re:Grateful Dead

[Nasarius]

"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." You've obviously never written a song in your life. There are many months of work that go into making an album before you see a cent.

Re:Grateful Dead

[nathanh]

The idea of that sounds great, but unfortunately in reality, over 95% of bands do not make money touring.

I claim "bullshit" on your figure. If your 95% figure was true then it couldn't explain the vast numbers of small-time performers who play at local clubs in my area who don't even have CDs or tapes for sale.

And it certainly doesn't explain the concerts (chamber orchestra) that I occasionally attend. They'll get an audience of 1000+ people per night but I can see they only have a single box of CDs for sale at the door. When I've attended multiple successive nights I have seen the same box with the same number of CDs remaining.

I'd like to know what the real percentage is for successful touring bands. I believe your 95% figure has been pulled out of your arse.

Re:Grateful Dead

[nathanh]

An orchestra might be good live, but is just as well enjoyed at home with a good stereo.

Absolutely not! Be it a symphony, an orchestra, a quartet or a choir, you've got to hear it live. The difference is beyond description.

For a good rock band, hell yeah they should be best when seen live.

I hate live rock music. It's always too loud, clouded in cigarette smoke, expensive drinks, no seating, smells rank, and crowded. I'm happier to hear rock music on my stereo.

Go figure. Horses and courses, I guess.

Re:Grateful Dead

[SwiftBiscuit]

CDs are nothing more than advertisements for bands.

Rubbish. That's like saying a book is only an advert for the author doing book reading tours.
The art is in the music, it should be paid for.

Some on ought to su.....give a slap on the back

[Zerocool3001]

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!

Death of the industry...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

..but not before we all get sued and laws mark us all as criminals.
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.

Re:Death of the industry...

[splanky]

If that was the case, MP3.com would have some huge successes... They haven't... Because, sad as this is, most of the value in big name artists is in the marketing --- *not* the music.

Re:Death of the industry...

[1000101]

i wouldn't be surprised if trl did this, but do actually have proof that they do? or is this just your conspiracy theory speculation?

Re:Death of the industry...

[gmhowell]

If it weren't for that, you and Jennifer Lopez wouldn't be quite so famous. Just admit that you're making it all up Cartman.

(Now, now, before we get into another little tiff, last week's South Park featured a story revolving around Mr. Cartman annoying the fuck out of lots of people by painting his hand like a puppet, calling it Jennifer Lopez, and probably having it give Ben Affleck a blowjob.)

Re:Death of the industry...

[angle_slam]

*Large labels get web site and have music for download.
*Indipendant artist also makes website, has music for download.

And how does the independent artist get his name out there? Mostly by word of mouth and hopefully some positive reviews. Britney still has MTV and the radio to pimp the hell out of her music.

Re:Death of the industry...

[ConfusedVorlon]

Unfortunately the web has not proved itself quite the great equaliser you speak of. Big companies still control the capital and this gives them a massive advantage in marketing.

However good your music - I won't download it if I haven't heard of it.

Britney is still unfortunately ahead.

Re:Death of the industry...

[Mark Dentari]

Yes cutting out the middle man is one of the key concepts we need to inform the people about. As an artist I know this is the only way. The only other thing left is the marketing. I see artist hosting their own content and then hiring marketing firms to advertise for them. This would be excellent way to conduct business but I think down the line marketing firms would then become the new middle man if artist kept picking the same company for their advertising needs. Well if I know the problem, I as a musician can avoid it. Anyone care to start up a web marketing firm with me for new artist? I think something like this would be the last hurdle for empowering the artist.

Re:Death of the industry...

[Dr. Photo]

*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.

Technically, indi-artist is on better footing, since Ms. Spears is a bit top-heavy.

Re:Death of the industry...

[EnVisiCrypt]

They did, only they bolted for greener pastures. I'm not a huge fan, but Linkin Park and Drowning Pool started on MP3.com and got their deals through their popularity on that site.

Re:Death of the industry...

[splanky]

You're right - I did overlook those two. Hybrid Theory (which had to be renamed) got signed almost solely because of MP3.com - I'm not as sure about Drowning Pool's deal, but it I believe you.

Re:Death of the industry...

[anubi]

And how does the independent artist get his name out there? Mostly by word of mouth and hopefully some positive reviews.

Maybe its about time to restart Internet Radio and make a client where it is very easy to change "stations".. indy artists can fire up their own stations and link to others, much as web pages are done now.. and being it is their own stuff ( or stuff they have explicit permission to broadcast ), the **AA probably can't do nothing much about it, like imposing all sorts of recordkeeping and the like. Of course, the artists would know they are in this for exposure.

I am not really up on this stuff here so I may be quite a bit redundant here, but ever since all this hubbub about equating listening to music as being theft, I have not expended much energy anymore trying the new stuff. I can't name any artists that came to be last year, or technologies to listen to them. If RIAA's goal was to make me as cognizant of artists as I am on baseball scores played on another planet, they succeeded.

Re:Death of the industry...

[pod]

And there you go... indi-artist and Brittney spears on the same equal footing.

There's no equal footing there, just like there's no equal footing between cnn.com and your blog. Everyone knows who Britney Spears is. How will people discover new bands and new music when there is no promotion? As long as there are large labels pushing their roster, the independat will never be on equal footing.

Re:Death of the industry...

[Saeger]

However good your music - I won't download it if I haven't heard of it.

Which is a major reason I'm looking forward to p2p netradio combined with "amazon-like" recommendation services such as AudioScrobbler, Gnod, and others. It's coming together.

--

Re:Death of the industry...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

How will people discover new bands and new music when there is no promotion?

I think that will happen the same way Linux vs Windows happens, and the same way Shareware applications get downloaded. I know a bunch of authors of Palm Pilot software that gets tens of thousands of downloads and many subsequent people to register the product, and all they do is make themselves available on www.palmgear.com and other like sites. A few people will pop up to review all the indi-artists, and the blogs and other reviews will be more valuble than we think! I know many people that value the "blog" type reviews on epinions.com more than Comsumer Reports, myself included!

That said, of course an "artist" with a record label pushing them will have that much more of a boost. That's the whole point to record labels. But when the model of distribution is equal (website) and an indi-artist no longer needs cd-pressers, cases, distribution contracts, trucks for delivery, payola for shelf space piroritization in the physical store location, etc, it will make things that much more equal for indi-artist vs. Brittney.

God, that little Bitch is cute, though. Yum.

a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[dAzED1]

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I'm going to make a tongue-in-cheek jab at a wild "what if" here...

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?

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[dAzED1]

I'd like to see two different people buy and then download the same song, and then compare the two files. Now that I think of it, this signature thing probably isn't all that wild. I bet you'll find the two files are different...anyone? Maybe I'll just do two accounts on my own, for fun.

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[Daniel_Staal]

Yeah, but why is that a conspiracy?

I mean, they are giving you a legal method of obtaining the file. If they insert something to track people who abuse that so what? That person has then broken the law. As long as it cannot be used to track your legal use/actions and invade your privacy good for them. (EMI)

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[hoggoth]

If they are hiding IDs in digital watermarks, just download two copies of a song from two different accounts. Compare the two. Any bits that are different, write a program to randomly alter those bits. Bingo: no more watermark.

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[GigsVT]

Do you really think two MP3s compressed with two different ripping programs are going to be bit for bit identical?

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[angle_slam]

But if they allow you to burn a track to a normal audio CD, then you can just rip that CD and have a new file in the format of your choice. They can't track that. I guess you would call this CD laundering.

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[dAzED1]

rather simplistic. You don't have to sign the same bits every time. There's all sorts of noise, and inserting things at random places that don't get interpreted as a sound (and are therefore effectively ignored) yet do offer a valid signature...not very complicated.

then all that would need to happen would be to have someone write a program that identifies areas that the player would be ignoring, and delete them. But that would probably be quite difficult, and easy for the record companies to fool...

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[dAzED1]

if you take a downloaded file, convert it back to a format for the cd, then rip that cd...hmm...might still be able to give it a signature, really. There could just be noises you can't hear, tiny streams outside the human hearing range, and that effectively sign who it was that downloaded it. Have it be a repeating 2-5 second thing, and then any corroption can be taken care of in the redundancy.

eh, just a way you could still do it. As it is, if you buy a CD in a store, that's hard to track. But really...it shouldn't be. I'm suprized they're not already doing this sort of thing on music cd's.

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[Dyolf Knip]

Hey, that's a great idea. You know, they should offer a contest to see if people could break it. Let's see, securing music on computers... let's call it the Secure Digital Music Initiative and offer rewards to people who can break the watermarking! I bet there's some university professors who would happily try it.

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[hoggoth]

> Do you really think two MP3s compressed with two different ripping programs are going to be bit for bit identical?

No, I don't. Do you really think a music downloading service will be re-ripping the song for EACH user to download instead of having a library of pre-ripped digital copies?

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[GigsVT]

Oh, I thought we were talking about watermarks on tracks from physical CDs, due to the last part of the original message which was about physical CDs.

Re:a shot at a conspiracy theorist guess

[mattsucks]

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.

IMHO, this could be a Very Good Thing. If they (EMI in specific, the record industry in general) have the capability to identify the people actually sharing the MP3's, it makes it a lot harder to justify blanket taxes on media, DRM enabled players, strong-arm tactics against ISPs, mega-enhanced-super-DMCA, etc. If this in fact pans out, and at a reasonable price (I didnt' see any prices mentioned in the articles, go figure), its nice to see at least one of the majors making an effort to locate a clue.

Of course, this doesn't totally solve any of the problems. For example, suppose somebody steals your cc number, buys a bunch of music, then goes a-sharing. Or someone cracks their "signature", strips it, then shares an un-trackable version of the file (yes, it _will_ happen). Or, just like today, someone buys a CD, rips a mp3, THEN shares.

It just sounds like an ever-so-tentative step in the right direction.

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:No!

[elronxenu]

The EMI website mentions HMV, and HMV's UK site points to a "shopfront" on od2.com.

I tried to use it, but it requires Windoze and Windoze Media Player, so I didn't get anywhere.

It seems that "some" of their content requires Windoze Media Player with DRM support to play. I wonder how EMI will fulfil their promise of "download to portable devices" -- unless they mean only those portable devices which implement Microsoft's Digital Restrictions.

It doesn't seem worth it to me, to buy music which becomes unplayable when I upgrade my computer. I have 20-year old LPs which would still be playable if I had a turntable, 10+ year old CDs which work fine whether I put them in the car, the DVD player, or the computer. Why should I consider buying music which will only play on a computer I am likely to replace entirely within 2 years?

In any case, it seems that it seems that EMI is still more interested in gouging the maximum amount of revenue from these works than in providing what customers really want. Linux users will not be supported.

Huh? Limited?

[phorm]

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.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[CySurflex]

You're right - but when a press release has the word "new technology" and "secure" in the same sentence....it's a pretty good chance there's DRM involved.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Dyolf Knip]

I'm kinda split. On the one hand, if they were releasing it in a totally open format, you'd think they'd make a point of saying so, right? On the other hand, these are the same guys who think that DRM is a perfectly logical and completely practical system for widespread public usage and it honestly might not occur to them that saying "We aren't using this piece of shit at all" would actually be a good marketing strategy.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Triv]

YOu mean like an Audible (.aa) file? They're more open than most, I agree - I can transfer a .aa to my iPod or listen to it on my computer. I can Burn it to a CD, but only once. That sucks, a bit, but still - not much of a problem for hour long radio programs, but it'd suck just a bit for 3 minutes songs and mix CDs. What I can't do is transfer the file itself - the host computer needs to be enabled with your account # and password for it to work and you're only allowed a small number of computers to do that on.

Guess the bottom line is, we'll see.

Triv

Re:Huh? Limited?

[angle_slam]

I can Burn it to a CD, but only once.

Can't you just rip the CD you just burned? It would then be in .WAV, .MP3, or OGG format and you can do whatever you want with it.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Triv]

you can. But it's a pain and the sound quality deteriorates quite a bit.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Galvatron]

How does the sound quality deteriorate? It's a direct digital copy, isn't it? The only way the sound quality could deteriorate is when it's being burned to the cd (because of some kind of DRM watermark), not when it's being ripped. Besides, if you can burn it to cd (even just once), it should be trivial for someone to write a program that pretends to burn to cd, but instead just writes that .wav to your hard drive.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Triv]

ok, here's a guess: a .aa file is an mp3 variant, in that the data that is stripped from it to compress it is slightly different from the info lost in a real mp3, 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. Again, just a guess.

As to the pseudo-ripping, it's easier than that - on the mac side, there're programs (like Audio Hijack) that intercept sound from a specific application on its way to the audio controllers. Rather than pretending to rip a CD, simply boot up hijack, boot iTunes (or whatever), start recording and hit play. Couldn't be simpler - it's what I do, not to distribute mind you, but because the audible files I have consist of multiple artists and I'd like each hour program to be split into artist-by-artist tracks. Easier to find what I'm looking for that way.

Triv

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Galvatron]

Okay, you've got a good guess there. But the .wav would still have the same quality as the original, it's just the mp3 that'd be degraded, right? So instead of compressing it to a standard 128 kbps mp3, you'd want to either use a lossless compresion, or a really high quality (256 mp3, or quality 8+ ogg) lossy compression. It wouldn't be CD quality, but it should be indistinguishable from the original .aa file.

For psuedo ripping, my thinking was that it could be done in better than realtime, and you could also do a whole bunch of files in a batch, rather than having to manually start and stop your recorder at the beginnings and ends of each tracks. I suppose a clever program could probably get similar functionality out of the play-record technique too though.

As an aside, where are these .aa's cropping up? I've never bought any digital, compressed music to date, so my experience with these DRM formats is limited at best, but I'm curious who's using this stuff.

Re:Huh? Limited?

[Triv]

The problem with using high-quality sound formats with .aa files is the space requirement - a one hour .aa file takes up about 14MB (it's all spoken word stuff - mono and not inherently complicated) - no big deal on a HD, but transferring large numbers of ripped files to an iPod seriously cuts down on your available space for music.

.aa (AudibleAudio) files are proprietary to audible.com. Not a bad company, really. Check 'em out.

Triv

possible reason

[tandr]

Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?

Could be. As pure speculation for the possible reason: assuming that Apple will buy Universal, they are afraid of "next big move" -- Univapple (Appleversal?) will be selling music online just like that -- no protection, unlimited copy etc. So, my WAG is that we are witneses of the beginning of the new pricewar.

Re:possible reason

[chasm!killer]

I would like to point out that Universal already is doing a variant of this. emusic is a subsidiary of Vivendi/Uinversal and has a fair number of subscribers -- they just charge so much a month for the downloads and the files are pretty much stock MP3s. I liked the service when I signed up for a free trial, and if I listened to more music, I'd certainly subscribe: they have a lot of the older stuff I really do like and they don't charge an absurd amount for it.

BTW, you actually own the music you download -- the link above makes it clear that after you terminate your subscription your rights to the music don't end.

ONLINE MUSIC SOON? TRY "NOW"

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

same old BS...

[Connie_Lingus]

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.

Re:same old BS...

[splanky]

As somebody working in the music biz, I feel a little bit like I work at a buggy whip manufacturer or something as we are perhaps a business destined for the history books...

Anyway, I agree with your three points--- especially #2. At the store I work at, DVDs and games are going through the roof. Some in the music biz argues that that's because they can't be pirated, but I think it's simpler than that: customers like video games better than a CD and would rather spend 50 bucks on a game than buy 3 CDs.

Re:same old BS...

[splanky]

I don't know where you shop at, but man are they ripping you off :)! The store I work at averages 9.99 to 11.99 on release week for major new releases (like Madonna this week is at 9.99 and last week Godsmack was at 9.99) and none are really over 13.99. A lot of developing artists (i.e. new bands) are at 6.99...

But you're right on about video games... They start at 49.99 list, but drop to 39.99 - 29.99 pretty quick and a lot are 19.99. They are very sharp and very aggressive at discounting them quickly. The margin as far as the retailer goes is incredibly low (the 49.99 games cost us about 41 bucks - but they're one way, so if you don't sell them all and the price goes down ....) but the video game companies have their pricing pretty figured out.

DVD companies, otoh, are all over the map... warner is incredibly aggressive on pricing while some others are pretty high for the most part...

Re:same old BS...

[Kelz]

Has anyone else noticed [now] that ClearChannel owns about everything
I sure have. I'm damn sick of their commercial advertising that the music industry is losing 80 some percent of their business due to downloading. What if stealing music were like stealing anything else? Take all the downloaded music on your hard drive and multiply that by a doller and thats how much money the music industry is losing per person per year
I averaged this out and if everyone has like 30 .mp3s on their hard drive, the music industry should be in debt over 3 billion a year. So shut up about the industry losing money.

Re:same old BS...

[Dylan Zimmerman]

We, the member companies of the RIAA have prepared the following reply to the above.

1. We blame the economy on these "illegal online services". It is clear to us that music pirates are the cause of all of the world's troubles. We are laboring day and night to prove this to our representatives (We paid for them, so they're ours!) in Congress.

2. The MPAA should follow our lead and publish fewer movies. When they start to lose money, they can simply blame it on invisible pirates stealing their work.

3. We only want ClearChannel to play 2 groups, so when record sales suffer across the board, it's obviously ClearChannel's fault for playing more groups than we want them to. They're in league with the pirates! They give music away for free! That's Communism! Communists are terrorists!

RIAA_mode := OFF

Their reality distortion field is almost as powerful as Steve Jobs'. Of course, they are far more evil than he is.

Re:same old BS...

[Ironpoint]

"customers like video games better than a CD and would rather spend 50 bucks on a game than buy 3 CDs."

Its called value. Its what takes over when the price fixing is eliminated.

Re:same old BS...

[djeaux]

Of course, we'll leave these out it:

Dylanbase
Bob Dylan Boot Database
BobsBoots
# The Bob Dylan CD Field Recordings Review Page Of William J. Clinton

Couldn't resist this as a follow-up to anything posted by "Dylan Zimmerman" :-D

Now, if ClearChannel would maybe put Love And Theft on their rotation...

Re:same old BS...

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Actually, my /. name is a play on my real name. I should have gone with Bob Zimmerman, but I think that it was already taken.

Rhapsody

[theedge318]

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.

Re:Rhapsody

[tadheckaman]

aka Audiogalixy... Its pretty cool though, have most the music I want, you can try it out for free, get the first 30 seconds of it.

The already can!

[use_compress]

'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.

Re:The already can!

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

Well, I think the 'master plan' is to have a hardware architecture that will restrict the circumstances under which the sound card will work. Whether this will succeed is a very interesting question. We shall know in a couple of years.

huh?

[ipjohnson]

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.

pay x and download what you want

[192939495969798999]

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.

Only for show, perhaps?

[iabervon]

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.

Re:Only for show, perhaps?

[Repugnant_Shit]

Damn, I blew all modpoints earlier. Good thin-king though.

mr. lydon said it best

[Frymaster]

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

Re:mr. lydon said it best

[Potor]

And you thought we were faking
All this money making

Time to get my rant on!

[lateralus]

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?

Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to add:

10. Burn audio CD's, print books, burn DVD;s on demand at the retail store (much lower distribution costs == lower retail prices).

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[palutke]

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.

Wouldn't that determine the MOST that people would be willing to pay?

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[lactose99]

In the RIAA's econimics, they equate to the same dollar value.

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that determine the MOST that people would be willing to pay?

No, it would determine the most that the richest people are willing to pay. It's a bad idea. The others were pretty good. Auctions are too competitive, when the material being sold can be easily duplicated for a fraction of a dollar.

Relevant Plug

[26199]

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]

Re:Relevant Plug

[McLae]

I tried them. Same old Rock/Blues/modern %$@&^. When they have a decent collection of Celtic tracks, I will try again. I like GOOD stuff, not same old same old.

Re:Relevant Plug

[26199]

Well, depends on what you like. I generally find that half an hour's searching will turn up a handful of new artists I can enjoy listening to... then I download all their albums. Works for me...

Rebirth....

[tacokill]

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.

Re:Rebirth....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't like any of those....just a few of the "dance" tracks (think: In Da Club - by 50 cent).

I'm very keen to get the opinion of a TOTAL audiophile such as yourself...

What exactly is it about "In Da Club" that you enjoy? Is it the insightful, thought-provoking lyrics? Their expressive, passionate delivery? Or maybe the innovative and challenging music?

It sure is nice to hear from those who truly appreciate fine art, and not just from people who blindly accept whatever crap they hear endlessly on the radio and MTV.

Re:Rebirth....

[tacokill]

Actually (assuming your question is legit and not flamebait), I appreciate the rhythymic tone of the lyrics. It makes my feet move and it has a very nice beat...

When I say I'm an audiophile, that means I love usic. All different kinds of music. I'm not a snob about the music I listen to. I don't like independent music just because its independent and I don't hate "big" music just because its big. I listen to what I like. Sometimes, that's Top-40 "garbage" as some call it, sometimes it's unheard-of local bands. I will say, however, that I tend to discard the Top-40 fairly quickly and it "gets old" to me after hearing it too many times.

EMI CHANGES!!!! Or not...

[Tuckdogg]

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.

Yeah, but..

[CausticWindow]

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?

Re:Yeah, but..

[Tokerat]

*blinks*

I'd pay top dollar to go see Aphex Twin if he played a show anywhere near me. Why wouldn't you?

Re:Yeah, but..

[trotski]

You obviously have never heard the music of the grateful dead; the stageshow ment nothign in the concert; there was to stage show! It was just 6 guys playing some of the most amazingly complex music ever devised. They played hours on end if amazingly original improvised and writen pieces of music.

The pop bands you are refering to (like say Britney Spears) make most of they're money through albums, and the shows are mearly marketing tools for the CD's. Music is and always has been ment to be enjoyed life. Music recording has only been around for less than a century, yet music has been around for centuries.

Please, you have a good point, but you make yourself sound so ignorant and stupid. Put a little bit more thought into you're comments, and don't be an idiot.

One word...

[Rassleholic]

Pie

But what is the quality going to be?

[Skier4Life]

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.

What Am I Missing?

[Snork Asaurus]

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?

Another Microsoft?

[stj]

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?

hah

[asv108]

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.

Re:hah

[BWJones]

I love how Apple fans attempt to give credit to the company for just about anything.

I am talking music here, but to keep things on topic, suffice it to say that it has been pointed out in Slashdot ad-nauseum the number of items the PC industry has to thank Apple for.

This shift towards services has been years in the making.

Oh? Then why have recording companies not done anything to date that takes advantages of all of the missed boats as another poster pointed out?

The initiative to license 20 distributors would have taken place long before anyone caught wind of the proposed Apple deal.

I suppose it could be argued that Apple has the cojones to implement things that other companies would love, but either do not have the guts or foresight to. Take for example USB, the CD-ROM, the GUI, the iPod, etc...etc...etc... And by the way, might I point out that the supposed press announcements are only 5 days apart, so if you call that long before, I suppose you might be correct.

Nope, Same One

[Snork Asaurus]

Microsoft Buys Liquid Audio DRM Patents October 1, 2002.

Well, sorta

[r_barchetta]

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

Re:Well, sorta

[leviramsey]

I can tell from your username that you are a fellow Rush fan, so I will use this example:

In one of Neil Peart's frequent letter-answering columns for a fanclub publication, he got a letter from a fan in Israel who asked why they hadn't stopped there in the past several tours. He answered by saying that, looking at the royalty statements, no one was buying their CDs there, indicating that there wasn't enough interest in the band to justify a tour stop (especially since, for a band like Rush, each concert is hugely expensive, especially when transport and labor are taken into account).

For each tour, they figure out the cost of putting on a show. Dividing the cost by what they figure they can get for tickets yields the number of people they need to have show up to make money on the tour. Thus the question of whether they hit a particular city is dependent on whether it seems they can sell that many tickets. If that required number is 10,000 per night, but the sales figures indicate that only 100 copies of the CD were sold in that area, then the band isn't going to do a show in that area.

I suspect that you're a fan of a type of music (presumably rock of some form) that isn't that popular in your area, especially relative to areas where that/those genre(s) are more popular. So it is likely a consequence of your neighbors' tastes in music.

Re:Well, sorta

[r_barchetta]

I know they have to try to maximize their chances of turning a profit on the tour. And that these bands (more likely their management) made the decision to pass us by for whatever reasons.

What I was really getting at is the notion that CDs are just ads for the concert and should therefore be free. If there is no concert the CD cannot be an ad. (In this case "concert" is defined as "a concert I can personally get to.") Unless you're in trapped in the Matrix you can't advertise something that does not exist.

Which is not to say you shouldn't support bands by seeing them in concert. Of course you should, if circumstances allow. There should just be other methods by which musicians can earn money. The problem with this idea is that it assumes there will be a show in a location at a time that one can get to for a price one can afford. People who proclaim this theory never address the fact that it's not always a done deal. There are a lot of variables that can prevent someone from getting to a show. What's a guy to do to support his favorite acts when seeing them in concert is not an option? From what I can tell, the "recorded music should be free and bands will make money on concerts" argument is flimsy and not well thought out. Heavy on the "we get music for free" and not so heavy on the "we want to support musicians."

But I tend to be cynical that way.

And, because I can't resist:

So it is likely a consequence of your neighbors' tastes in music.

"Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people"

Sigh.

(quote from "Banditos" by The Refreshments)

-r

Metamorphosis Begins

[serutan]

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.

Online music will never pass the geek test

[Cereal Box]

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.

MicroPayment Model for Minors Now Needed

[ferret70]

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).

Re:MicroPayment Model for Minors Now Needed

[stj]

That would be actually a very interesting service. Say you go to the bank and ask the bank to provide a number for your kid with some monthly allowance from your account. They don't actually have to give your kid a plastic - just the number. Of course that would have to be exactly debit, no other uses possible. That means that you'd have to be able to actually use some PIN number. One option would be that the bank could list such transactions as pending on the account and you'd have to access the online banking site of your bank to authorize them.

Re:MicroPayment Model for Minors Now Needed

[ferret70]

Maybe it's niche for PayPal to fill. I'm actually in the Banking (Online) industry and most kids I've talked with (15, 16 yrs & older - let's not even get into the COPPA quagmire) have a savings account but no means of tapping into it other than visiting a teller. They'd love to dive into eBay et al but are locked out unless they piggyback someone's account. There's too much easy revenue with teens to have the status quo sit around for too long.

Re:MicroPayment Model for Minors Now Needed

[Dave2 Wickham]

I've been paying for stuff online with a debit card since I was 11 (Solo card via NatWest) - I'd love to use eBay, but can't becauase they lock out people under 18 :/. If they currently lock out under-18s for no reason, I don't really see them opening it up...

Re:Let's see here

[Dyolf Knip]

This has been covered. Obviously the industries can't beat P2P on price. What they can beat it on is quality, organization, reliability, and completeness of works by an artist. Have you ever tried to get an entire album from KaZaA?

(OT) pudding

[yerricde]

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.

The songwriter still gets paid

[yerricde]

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.

This always reminds me of

[SLot]

Little Heroes by Norman Spinrad.

And to a lesser extent, Cyberbooks by Ben Bova.

The Spinrad book was *way* before it's time.

Then rip to wav

[yerricde]

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.

Limited to 128 kbps for the moment

[AnonymousDot]

Check out their FAQ:

What is a bitrate? At what bitrate are EMusic's MP3s encoded at?
Bitrate is the number of bits per second used in the encoding process. A higher encoding rate usually means a larger size file, but higher quality sound. EMusic currently encodes its MP3s at 128 Kbps.
Due to high demand, EMusic is planning on increasing the bitrate at which our songs are encoded.

NB: You can submit your email address to get notified when they upgrade to a higher bitrate.
I would try it if it was fat, good, LAME-encoded VBRs...

This is just a PR move, and old news already

[tohveli]

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.

Guaranteed is the key

[yerricde]

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.

Bandwidth costs money

[yerricde]

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.

Re:Bandwidth costs money

[lateralus]

Ok, just read the line again.

I'm talking about reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material. That does not cost on the Net what it costs in the material world.

You are talking about royalty checks. If you think that royalties are inclusive in redistribution then you looking at royalties in a simplistic way. No matter how much royalties EMI pays for redistribution that sum is neglegent compared to what they gross. Since when is it news that artists get %1 of the revenue their music generates (if they are the lucky few that recap anything at all)?

Bandwidth? We are talking about EMI here not slashdot. These are companies that buy actuall real world shelf space in Virgin Megastores. If they smell money they will buy entire server farms without batting an eye.

It's here today

[no_opinion]

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!

Technique guess...

[anubi]

At the music industry end.. while you are sending, mix in an extremely low-level white noise.. so that maybe statistically you may alter the least significant bit maybe 0.01 % of the time.

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.

Copyright law in Australia - Legal backups

[lgftsa]

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)

Does this mark the beginning of a major change?

[Thing 1]

Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?

Um... Yes?

houston the problem has manifested itself...

[Archfeld]

"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...

shameless plug

[_marshall]

And if you need a linux client for downloading EMusic albums, check out:
HotLead

Tough Choice

[Solosoft]

I could pay to download them ... or I could get them from free ... tough choice

exactly...so then...

[eclectic4]

...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.

Unclear on the concept

[Handpaper]

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.

Re:Unclear on the concept

[nathanh]

Don't be stupid.

Re:Unclear on the concept

[nathanh]

Blasted submit button... entire post was:

Don't be stupid. An analogue signal does not have infinite resolution. The "resolution" of the signal is determined by the ratio of signal to noise. This exactly equates to the amount of information you can extract. This is all described by Shannon's Theorem.

Vinyl has a very low SNR and therefore a very low resolution. This is caused by many things: grains in vinyl are quite large, the LP warps with heat and age, the LP wears because of friction against the needle, there are imperfections in the groove during the stamping process, the needle dynamics introduce a complex noise to the signal, and many other causes.

Concentrating on the "analogue" part of vinyl is an amateur's mistake. Vinyl is not a good medium for recording audio. It's only the "audiophiles" that enthuse about vinyl. My take on the matter is that "audiophile" is a secret code word meaning "stupid rich git with tin ears who doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about".

Now there's no disagreement from me that vinyl has a very unique sound. It's definitely different to CD. The cause of that unique sound is the extreme distortion and noise. Some people happen to like that noise - fine, whatever - but don't try and pretend that it's hi-fi.

No, it's same old story

[ctve]

The cost is ridiculous. £1 ($1.57 at current rates) per track. Coldplay's current album has 11 tracks, and I can buy it for £8.99. That's about 80p per track online, posted, packaged etc. Downloading would cost me £11 + media and it would look rubbish on my shelf. I'd pay if it was more like 50p/track, or if there was some deal to get a reimbursement on an actual physical CD later.

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.

A virus defense would work against that

[alispguru]

"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...

My Advice to you..

[Rudy Rodarte]

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.

Great concept, but too simplistic

[sacrilicious]

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.