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New Online Music Push by EMI
akadruid writes "EMI has signed deals with 20 top European websites to sell its music online.
According to Reuters, 'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'.
This represents a major shift in policy by EMI, who previously went to great lengths to protect their music from copying.
Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?"
or Die
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
We need reasonable quality downloads. Lossless compression means big files, so watch out for the ISPs with restrictive download limits.
It would sure be nice to pick and choose what I want to download in flac.
EMI realizes that the Internet isn't just an avenue for music theft, it's rapidly becoming the most significant way to make money with little unneccesary investment.
They provide the music, other people handle the packaging, shipping and shelfspace, if you will and they collect the money.
They don't even have to pay to have the CDs pressed or the cover art printed.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Unless it's Free as in Free as in No Patents, No Nothing, I ain't buying! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Do you think we might have Apple to thank for this? No, seriously. Perhaps they got wind of what Universal was going to hook up and made a press announcement before the 28th.
I mean, this sort of thing should have been embraced five years ago by all of the labels.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Is a music service charging between 10-50p for each song I download...
New songs - 50p, old catalog titles - 10p
HOW FUCKING HARD CAN THAT BE?!?!?!??!
If, as rumored, Apple's new music service has significant DRM involved in it (can't copy tunes to hd, cd, etc.), this business model will completely torpedo it.
--- Submission is feudal.
Illegal online services, kick-started by the original maverick Napster, have brought the music industry to its knees in the past few years, forcing global music sales sharply lower.
I wonder where they're getting their statistics about "global music sales sharply lower". Most of the statistics that I've seen say that the music industry is still an unbeatable juggernaut.
I suppose that the RIAA pushing new "Super-DMCA" laws through state legislatures is just a symptom of them being on their knees.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?
No.
No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
"Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?"
Confused Philospher says:
NO.
This is because we will have to wait years for other companies to follow suit, since few people will use the EMI service initially because of the ease of using Kazza for FREE [minus jail time and billion dollar law suits].
The music industry missed the first boat when Napster sailed.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Is how they're going to sort out whom has a legal copy of a song, and whom has an illegal copy of a song. I suppose that even if you "buy" a song online you still can't put it on kazaa, as that would be considered distribution?
But what about if you're accused of piracy when you have a vast library of legal songs? Are they going to properly cross-reference their user-list, or just continue to send nastygrams to anyone whom they suspect of having Mp3's?
IMHO, it seems terrible ironic and two-faced to be blatantly accusing mp3's etc of being piracy and profit-stealers, asking for (in Canada) huge taxation on mp3-capable storage devices, and then selling off music to run on those same devices
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.
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.
Well after the english singer Robbie Williams claimed that piracy was 'great', and his record company (EMI) went ballistic.... it is quite an interesting change of tact from them.
Either that or they realised that expanding their online availability might be due to the new report that online downloads of songs will impact on the national pop charts?
Just my 0.02 downloaded songs (or cents/pence).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
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.
Here is the main reason why I think the Music Biz is scared of technology, especailly when downloading is the "normal" way to purchase music:
*Large labels get web site and have music for download.
*Indipendant artist also makes website, has music for download.
And there you go... indi-artist and Brittney spears on the same equal footing. Suddenly the labels loose control of what gets distribution (downloads), what gets airtime (net radio), and that is where the money generation is reborn. The big money is not the few million off of an artist, but in the multiplication of said millions over MANY artists they can make "big" and push onto TRL and control. Oh, and if anyone actually thinks TRL (Total Request Live, a v-e-r-y popular MTV show here in the States) plays what you actualy vote for, you're an idiot. TRL is a marketing tool that plays mostly what you want, but is used to push no-names like P. Diddy's little boy-band on top very quickly. "Look everyone, B2K is #1 on TRL! You all love them!" And then little boys and girls run to the store because "everyone" who is "kewl" must be listenting to those dancing crackheads.
Yes, you do detect some envy. Brilliant minds created TRL and I'm sure every artist that wants to push a CD pays payola to TRL in huge ways. Brilliant business. Wish I thought of it.
Is how they're going to sort out whom has a legal copy of a song, and whom has an illegal copy of a song. I suppose that even if you "buy" a song online you still can't put it on kazaa, as that would be considered distribution?
What if they were just trying to track down the distributors? It would be SOO easy to put a signature on each track they allow someone to download. Then, they just connect to all the various file-sharing places, download songs, and analyze them. They find out who put their tracks out there. Then they prosecute those people.
This would be SOO easy to do, too. I mean...geeze...ESPECIALLY if they ake the people play the downloaded tracks with a special codec they have to download, that has a private key in it...but even without that, you can still sign a file without encrypting it, and just wait and see who's files get shared. Then when you arrest those people and charge them $10,000 per shared song, you take care of the problem from the other end. When people have 100Gigs of MP3's, there's almost no chance they have even 10% of the cd's to back them up. Someone, somewhere, ripped those cd's and originally shared them. So don't just go after the people who continue to share things they've never had - those go on and on. Go after the ones who do the original ripping.
Decent conspiracy theory?
An EMI representative has just released this statement: "Whoops, our bad. That was really a joke e-mail, you know, one of those 'this will never happen because it's so ha-ha funny' emails. No, we still embrace the 'you are thieves, not customers' philosophy."
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.
Illegal online services, kick-started by the original maverick Napster, have brought the music industry to its knees in the past few years, forcing global music sales sharply lower...
How many more time is the RIAA gonna try to stuff this crap down our throats and have us burp up sympathy?? Here are just a few of the reasons why a drop of sales in not at all necessarily due to downloaded music...
1. The most obvious of these is the drop in economy, with similar sales slumps in the last econo-drop of the early '90s.
2. Secondly, the increase in games and DVD sales is a contributing factor. With DVD's being, in many cases, cheaper than a music CD, their is much more value in a DVD than a typical CD.
3. Last, but not least, radio is highlighted as a problem due to its short play lists and the difficulty in getting playtime for new artists. Has anyone else noticed not that ClearChannel owns about everything, only about 20-30 bands ever get airplay??
I suppose EMI is stepping in the right direction, but IMHO its too little, too late. The future of music will probably have something to do with corporate sponserships, where hit songs are considered a form of advertising and bands are reduced to touring ad billboards where huge multinationals will "own" popular acts.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I can't find it anywhere on their website, but Best Buy has an advertisement for "Rhapsody" in their stores. I don't know who is promoting it. They are selling them ala Netflix, but I fear that their might be a real music company backing it. The service plan would be $19.95/mo.
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'
We already can-- it's called an analouge loop-back. Unless analouge sound cards are suddenly outlawed I don't see you ever won't be able to make copies of music on your computer.
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.
From the article: "...giving them access to most songs on today's top-selling charts.". "them" being the consumers.
I could not care less about the top-selling quote artists unquote. I want EMI's back catalog. Unlike the material world the Internet does not entail the costs of reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material.
I will not get exited and more importantly I will not open my wallet until I see that the record labels are making an effort. There are ways to make music better through Internet distribution. As long as I sense that the music labels take care of numero uno first, so will I!
How can music be better? I'm glad you asked.
Small artists can get published for free through major labels and the second they catch on they can start selling. It sure beats touring like Black Flag did. The overhead of publishing a number of small new bands with a couple of songs each on an EMI server farm will be negligible.
If the user has bandwidth to spare uber-high fidelity downloads should be an option. We are not limited to CD quality on the net. High paying consumers can have custom stereo/mono/bitrate/hz files generated from the masters real time. These custom packages can be downloaded or burnt onto DVD and mailed. Will this allow you to get a perfect master and facilitate piracy? No more than high fidelity vinyl. 99.9% of the people that spend big bucks buying a custom remastered 60GB version of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" will not be disposed to spread it around until the technology allows them to.
To reiterate, I want back catalogs and so do most serious music lovers. I cannot imagine people buying rare Hendrix, King Crimson and Brittney Spears in one group.
Maybe "chart toppers" should be printed on disposable CDs? The music will be irrelevant in weeks anyway so why print them on the same material that you print real music?
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
1. Reasonable prices (remember $60 for a new movie back in 1983?)
2. Adopting new technology instead of fighting it (e.g., DAT audio decks, DVD+R vs DVD-R bs, mp3, etc)
3. Selling old content at low low costs to drive sales of new hardware/playback mechanisms
4. Enhancing the content/quality (e.g., an audio CD is unchanged since 1983 when it was introduced). At least DVD is much better than VHS
5. Selling different quality level versions of the same product at different prices (192k mp3 should cost more than a 64k mp3, A recent movie DVD should cost $12, SVCD $9 and a VCD $6).
6. Allowing flat rate pricing for content (e.g., $20 a month for all of the mp3 and all the VCD's you can download)
7. Actually apreciating the customers by including extras in the product (e.g., including 1 or 2 extra tracks on an audio CD or including a mini-cd with a few mp3's of other bands).
8. Packaging older material into collections at a reasonable price (e.g., a box set of all of the albums by a 1960's band should cost about $20 to $25). Same goes for TV shows (e.g., A complete collection of six million dollar man episodes should cost $50 max or no more than $1 an episode). Consider shows like Gunsmoke with 500+ episodes - would you pay $1000.00 for a complete collection?
9. Selling new audio CD's and DVD's by online auction to actually see what people are willing to pay for the content and then pricing content accordingly.
If you haven't checked out emusic, give it a look:
www.emusic.com
If nothing else, you can get 50 free MP3s*... but I've found a subscription to be very good value (I must have at least 4Gb of MP3s from the site)...
[* they will ask for your credit card number; as far as I can tell they're secure and respectful of privacy]
A quick look at HMV - one of the retailers mentioned in the article reveals that they are going to use Liquid Audio format. Player is free, but the format is as proprietary as it gets. Now, that smells like another software empire 5 years from now, doesn't it? The best M$ move now would be to simply buy LiquidAudio (if they haven't yet...). Of course, Liquid Audio player is only for Windows - I'm guessing why and I don't have to think hard. When will people learn?
iThink iHate iMod
I love how Apple fans attempt to give credit to the company for just about anything. This shift towards services has been years in the making. The initiative to license 20 distributors would have taken place long before anyone caught wind of the proposed Apple deal.
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.
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.
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)