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Microsoft Prepares Alternative To Apple iTunes
bmarklein writes "According to CNET, Microsoft is working on a version of its DRM software that supports expiration of files on portable devices. Combined with a subscription service like Pressplay (soon to become Napster) that allows unlimited "tethered" downloads, you'll be able to fill up your high-capacity player with new music for a flat monthly fee. Of course it will expire once you stop paying the sub fee, but which do you think is the better deal: $7500 to fill a 30GB player (7500 songs at $1 each) with iTunes Music Store, or $120 a year with the ability to swap in new music whenever you want? How much is it worth to you to "own" the bits?"
Watch the verbage. As far as the RIAA is concerned, you never 'own' a song. Unless the consumer has the right to rip, mix, and burn, you can't say they 'own' anything but the right to listen to it, and even then only if they pay a recurring charge. From the looks of this system the best you could call it is renting, and that's a stretch.
-R
"Of course it will expire once you stop paying the sub fee, but which do you think is the better deal: $7500 to fill a 30GB player (7500 songs at $1 each) with iTunes Music Store, or $120 a year with the ability to swap in new music whenever you want"
And if this subscripton doesn't have the music you want? What are you supposed to do - SWITCH and lose your existing collection.
And when the price doubles what do you do then? Lose your collection or continue paying!
and how about 5 times? How much can Gates raise the price before you give up your collection?
What happens when the choice is crap and your paying just to play your existing music?
Ironically, the appeal of the Apple music store is that you "own" the titles that you buy for. I believe that many people rather choose to pay for specific offers, instead of subscribing to some service.
By way of example: I pay for cable TV, and I have certain expectations. Especially, I don't expect stuff to be worthwile to keep after (possibly) timeshifting it; if there's a movie, series, mini-series I feel I might watch more than once or twice, I'm quite willing to pay some premium to get (practically) unlimited rights to it. Apple's offer is not unlimited, but it's close enough for me to accept it.
On the other hand, a music subscription service, for me, is full of hassles. I need an Internet connection to have my right to listen confirmed; I might need to stream stuff, at potentially low quality, I can't use the devices I want to, etc. pp. In essence, I don't "own" the music.
A newspaper or magazine subscription is similiar in that I don't care that much about last month's issue (with most publications, anyway), but with my personal interest in music, I want to be able to "own" a recording, and rest calmly knowing that I can listen to it when I want, not when some commerical service deems appropriate.
The article mostly talks about Microsoft trying to improve their DRM so that other companies can use it in their services... not about MS coming up with a service themselves.
I believe MS'd like a consumer service for MSN, and I think it may actually be in the work, but the article doesn't really address it. MS either views the back-end b2b type DRM-provider stuff as more important at this stage or is under a lot of secrecy.
nonsig. unsig. desig.
what? you dolt...if apple went out of business you have a bunch of files that still work!!! why? because you OWN the files dumbass...the music store on iTunes is not a rental service retard.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Anyway, I'd prefer a rental system with an option to buy. I could then fill the device with rental music, and when I decide I like something enough to want it permanently, I'd buy it.
i agree.
besides i only have 1.43GB of 44.1khz 16-bit 128kbps vbr oggs (692 files) and about 110 of those were individual songs I selected from listen.com when they had their $0.49 per song deal. i can't imagine possibly filling up more than about 5GB let alone 30GB with songs I actually WANT to hear. So Apple's deal sounds like a better deal to me personally.
apple sells it's music in AAC, not mp3 nor ogg.
MABASPLOOM!
$120 for a year
120 bucks a year works to 6 CDs a year . I doubt any music company is going to allow such a scheme to go forward.The catch is that the music industry expects a certain amount of money from a person (or family) per year.Apple is paying that money. And I am sure that if MS is too meet that, it would work out to something around 4 or fve times that. To top it you have to factor in the cost of the player (you probably need a portable, a car sterio and a computer ) which need to be DRM enabled.
And I wonder if I have only 6 songs in my playlist and I have license to have 10, can I share my password with my friend so that he can download those 4?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
iTunes allows at least a 30-second preview of tracks at least prior to purchase, which greatly reduces the likelihood of buying something you don't like. still, seasons change and so do tastes; eventually, i'm sure those 'must have' trackes of yester-month will lose their luster and i'd like to dump them. allow a second-hand market to come into being that parallels that which exists currently for CDs. or books. perhaps a trade-in option : get some % for every track returned as credit towards a new purchase.
i want to keep my music but i also don't want to feel *stuck* with music
The big question is, which way will the consumers go, Microsoft, where it is cheaper, but your music goes *poof* when you don't pay or apple, where you pay more but get to keep. Obviously there is gonna be some app that will come out that will change the codec so you will be having that music for keeps. Does this mean that apple will lose out? Also how would microsoft react to the app? And what is Emusic doing to respond to both of these contenders?
"Guns don't kill people, bullets do."
The bitrate has recently been increased on most songs to 192 VBR encoding. Sounds much, much better now.
As for errors, I haven't downloaded a glitchy song yet.
The point is that the songs you get from Apple should work on Linux once you have them. As long as there is a Linux AAC player, there is no reason that they wouldn't. My guess is that Microsoft is going to rent the files in their own closed format and sue anyone who tries to make their own player for it.
At the risk of sounding like someone who feeds trolls and replies to flame-bait,
I'm glad you took the risk, because I feel the same way. I wish more people would realize how exactly it affects the industry and what they are doing when they use P2P services.
Think of it this way - when you choose not to purchase CDs and instead download the songs for free, you are inadvertently 'boycotting' the artist. Now, I don't know how well boycotts work, but their intention is to shut down their target. Do you want your favourite artist to go golfing instead of producing music?
I guess. Of course everything can be cracked somehow.
If you look at current MS drm tech though, it's not maybe as sinmpleton as you would think. A service run by microsoft would likely have a lot of tools at it's disposal. While nothing will stop you from attacking a single file and being successful, even current public ms drm tech has the ability to use a seperate key for every asset, or indeed have a bunch of keys for the same asset so that every consumer doesnt even get the same encrypted version of the same song. And of course these files will be tethered or close to tethered, compromised keys can be expired, compromised players can be expired, and since it's a monthly type service they can enforce needing the newest software to continue to participate.
Keep in mind that ms has been planning extensions of the drm system into the rendering chain including the OS and drivers for some time now. I would be surprised if their efforts weren't ultimately related.
Once you put all of these hurdles in the way, the practical approaches to wide scale piracy of the system dwindle. The most likely compromise of a system like this is in the rendering path, either near the driver or actually plugged into the sound out of a computer. Once you've made it so that piracy can only happen at 1x as the song is playing, needs to be re-encoded, possible quality loss, etc. You make piracy really not that appealing.
I worked on a system that was similar in some ways in that it offered a large variety of music on a subscription basis. The trouble with this approach so far has ultimately been liscensing, it is difficult to acquire liscenses to music in this way that allow for everyone to be paid as they believe they should and still provide something affordable to the consumer.
BUT, if you do manage it, the niceness of a service like this is something you truly have to experience to appreciate. Having access to a wide catalog of music was a transformatice experience for me. I have a much broader musical background now and I believe i appreciate music much more as well. If i had simply logged on and pirated my favorite 5,000 songs for $10 and logged off i never would have gotten the best experience out of the system. Indeed much of what i listened to with it i wouldnt have even wanted to pirate. But it was great to be able to play a song you remembered once or twice or explore new music that you might enjoy listening to once (if not again).
Case in point: Out of the experience I ended up with man thousands of albums, all professionally encoded, that i keep on a home server. While storage obviously keeps going down, needing to have a 600gb raid array at home just for piracy is out of the league of most folks. Even then this amount of music only represents about 5% of the US in-print catalog (to say nothing of the international and out of print works). With all of this music at my disposal, i'd still gladly shell out several times the usual expected fee for this kind of service (normally priced at like $5-$15/mo, i would easily pay $50/mo but then i am probably not the typical user) if i could get access to the other 95% of the US music catalog.
Said another way, if the service is designed well and compelling piracy may be a non-factor as you could get much more out of the system using it as it was intended.
Too late for iTunes and whatever Microsoft winds up releasing. I've got at least 500 CDs of music and I'm tired of reading about the latest RIAA atrocity with the feeling that I'm funding it. Artists and labels that give money to RIAA get no more of my business.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Or I think you can host Windows in VMware and use that instead.
And if you let your subscription lapse, but later renew it, do you get use back of all the previous downloads, or are those files now no good so you have to start over from scratch?
Another issue: say they HAD stuff you wanted at first, but later they have only pop crap. You'd still have to maintain your sub to keep use of your existing files, even tho nothing currently offered is of interest and may not be for years to come.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They require you to use their own proprietary DL manager now, which is designed to run on RH 6 and similar. Their suggestion to Linux users who couldn't get the thing to run on modern distributions was to downgrade! And no, you cannot use third party DL managers (until someone cracks the encryption they've gone to for linking to the downloadable songs).
Here's their most recent email:
Dear EMusic Customer,
In response to your email regarding issues you have had with the new EMusic Linux Download Manager 2.0, we are pleased to inform you that within the next few days, we will be releasing a new version which addresses many of the bugs that have been reported. While we have fixed many of the bugs that were reported, the versions have not changed their system requirements and may not work on all flavors of Linux. In the future, we plan to create new builds of the Download Manager to be functional on other flavors of Linux.
We apologize for any inconvenience the current Download Manager may have caused you and appreciate your patience as we address the issues in future versions of the EMusic Linux DLM.
More information will be available early next week.
Regards,
EMusic Support
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
They get some money per tune. They make the music easier to get than with downloading. You can even download a couple times and not get charged so your money is not wasted.
The DRM approach is foolish. No matter what, people will be able to move the music outside the DRM. Why not get enough cash up front for the whole thing to be worth it?
That is exactly how the current CD model works now and they have made plenty of money doing it.
Streaming via monthly subscription sort of works, if you don't mind sitting at your computer to listen. The Satellite and Cable people have been doing this for a while now and people like it. Think about those systems a bit. The music can still move, but it takes a bit of work to do that. Plus there is some value in their rotating playlists. It would take quite a while to reproduce a couple days of their service in a way that makes sense. So, people pay.
Subscription DRM where you basically give up all your rights to your own damn hardware are not going to fly when perfectly workable business models exist that work with what we have now.
Seems to me Apple has understood something most companies don't. Though, they could save some time and read Slash. Most of us have this down cold for a few years now... Heh.
BTW: I purchase DVD media instead of rent and or pay per view because I do want to have some ownership of the bits. Costs more that way, but I find it very worth it.
Blogging because I can...
That's still not going to help the millions and millions of hardware mp3 players people have sunk billions of dollars into. mp3 is a defacto standard, sure it's not the best quality (sorry 'audiophiles'), there's no drm (sorry record labels) and the format isn't really free (sorry slashdot), but it's the standard. People just need to get over that and live with it.
The MS service has a lower entry cost, and better provides immediate gratification (for the first few months).
It is equivalent in price to owning 12 CDs, or 120 songs per year at the Apple service. Presumably one would use the Apple preview abilities to only buys what they like, and to roughly prioritise buying what they like most before buying other options that they like less. The average consumer buys more than 12 CDs per year, but usually receives less than 120 of their favourite songs per year, due to how CDs bundle good with poor songs. So, a person who buys more than average quantities of music, or would prefer to, given the economic means, would receive superior value, initially, from the MS service. A person who buys less than average quantities of music would receive better value with the Apple service, always.
So, for the above average consumer, who sees better value in the MS service, they have to ask themselves:
- Will the service price increas, at least proportionally over the Apple service? Since the Apple service provides more revenue for the labels, one could assume so.
- Will the collection disappear for any reasons other than discontinuing paying the service fee, such as MS service being discontinued, MS Windows 2005, 2008, 2011... being required to run the service, in effect having additional hidden monetary, hardware and labour costs.
- Will the collection disappear from not paying the service fee anymore. For those who follow the law that has a simple answer, no, but for those willing to bend/break the law, that might be resricted by technological concerns, outside of the user's control.
- Psychologically, most consumers prefer the feeling of "owning" objects, rather than "leasing" them. The feeling of ownership is one of having increased tangible wealth, which makes one feel successful in a consumer society. Leasing an object is alright for short time periods, as little attachment has occured, and so the loss is not as noticeable, at least for small ticket items like individual songs. The feeling of losing wealth when a big ticket item, like a ferrari, or a 30 GB music collection is suddenly taken away, is not a pleasurable feeling. This affect is worsenned in the case of the MS service, because it proves its economic superiority only in the long-term for mot users. This one single psychological reasonning will undoubtedly be sufficient cause for many users to pay a price premium to own any product.
So, depending on how the user can answer the myriad of questions, the MS service might be worth-while. That complexity of reasonning might tip the balance to the Apple service. Look for very simplistic marketing from MS, targeted at base, short-term neurosis, and immediate gratification to push their service.
Neither is the better deal for me. I won't go in for any pay service until the following occurs:
1.I can actually afford it....i'm sorry, but i'm a broke college student, and while I wish I could support the starving artists, I need to support starving me first, and I'm not willing to give up music to do so when I am able to get it for free, but once I can afford it, i'd be happy to.
2.They have the music I want....Sorry, Britney and Eminem don't cut it, I listen to a lot of electronic music and what I want is full DJ sets, such as those from the BBC's Radio1 Essential Mix. The only way I've found to get those so far is to download them off P2P apps. But god would I die for a high bitrate version that had the tracks available seperately, but still in mix form so I don't have to have one 100 MB file for a 1 hour set, but rather many smaller tracks that blend together seemlessly so that I can skip around the set easier.
3. Apple makes a version of their service for Windows. Right now, there's not a chance in hell I'd sell my soul over to M$. Sorry, but if a better service comes along that steals the show from M$ and Apple, I don't want to have my entire music collection evaporate (sorry, it wouldn't evaporate, it would still be there taking up space, just useless) just because I have found a better place to spend my money.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Microsoft seems sure that consumers will find renting music more desirable than owning it. Personally, I think they're crazy
;) Seriously, how often do most people listen to albums they bought as little as 5 years ago? Most music is bought by young people and it's flavor of the month. How many people who bought "Baby One More Time" still listen to it?
Don't think like an audiophile, think like the average person.
That's one of the reasons (poor college students being the other big one) that used cd stores spring up. We buy an album for one song, listen to that one song for 6 months then go on to the next flavor.
Audiophiles are different. We really want to own the music, but for most people this will be much better.
A lot of the technical issues that we care about simply don't matter to the average case.
Ok, back about 20 years ago, we were under the dillusion that we actually owned the music that we bought in a typical store. You paid money, you got music. It's was what we thought a simple concept, even the little disclaimer that it was for private expoition only in the rare cases an album actually had one. Still, there was a level of simplisity of it all.
However based on what I read about many contries, it's been established that you don't own a copy of the song to do with as you please, but rather you own the media but not the contents, making it illegal to make a copy (aka a backup) for use in other media players.
The apple i-tunes system gives you music in a file that can be placed on a CD if desired. This sounds very simple like it was in the 20th century. From what I can see, you buy a file, not the media. I assume you own the file and have the right to private use. Too me this is fair and reasonable.
I would not support a microsoft system where files have an experation date. While I've never been an audiophile, I do own some tapes, CDs, vinyl, and the odd 8track. I own them, they are mine. While there is some argument about end user rights, I can if I so desire it place media on a player and play it when ever I wish without additional license fees, cause I bought a copy.
While I am a fan of the idea of something subscription based... what I desire is the ability to actually support the folks who made the music. I would pay money for stuff I downloaded in order to get a jewel case, and an offical sleave for a particular release. Only diffrence being, I don't have to go to the store.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
won't remove anything the second time. Music compression doen't remove arbitrary bits each time; it's standards stay the same.
No, I don't think you can't generalize "music compression" like that. An audio codec is free to be asymmetrical in its coding/decoding. It also free to be nondeterministic. For example, using any kind of psuedorandom seed in the compressor for statistical reasons (and perceptual encoding relies on statistics heavily) can result in different output for subsequent runs on the same input.
Either of these properties -could- violate your blue balls example. Only after looking at a specific implementation (at the code if necessary) can you make a statement about its "arbitrariness".
I'll give you a quick pseudo-code example:
-Start with F bits
-Goal is to reduce this to C bits
-Find bits we don't "need" (according to psychoacoustic principles), ranked according to significance.
-Remove the first (F-C) bits.
-Done.
So lets say we start with 100 bits. And we want to reduce this to 75 bits. (A real world example might be starting with a 44 kHz stereo @ 16 bits/sample stream and reducing this to a 192 kbps stream.) Anyways, we make the list of bits that we can remove. Let's say the very first psychoacoustic rule determines that of those 100 bits, there are actually 40 that are equally unimportant. That's a result of the resolution of the codec and its principles of acoustics. So we only need to remove 25 of those first 40 bits to achieve our goal. (The user wants 75 bits, not 60.) According to our codec's principles, we can "arbitrarily" remove any 25 of those 40 bits to achieve the desired result with equivalent quality. But which 25 to remove? Removing the "first" 25 as they are found would make the algorithm deterministic. However, consider that this 100-to-75 bit reduction may need to be repeated on each frame of the stream. So randomly picking the 25 bits from their 40 bit bucket -may- make for less artifacts if this step needs to be repeated many times. At any rate, this is a decision of the implementation. It's free to do it that way. See the problem?
Perhaps I should have put more emphasis on MS's perseverance... but the fact still remains... MS has a LOT of cash... SURELY it is an abuse of their position (illegal?) just to muscle into other markets by way of financial attrition?
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
Apple gives you access to exclusive tracks, and a better selection the Press Play. I personally would rather pay a little more, own the selection for life, have more digital rights with the music, have access to more music, and not be teathered by a monthly subscription like Press Play.
I think you're underestimating the nostalgia factor. Haven't you ever come across an old album, listened to it for "old times's sake", and then find yourself listening over and over as you rediscover why you bought it in the first place? I don't have hard numbers but most of the people I know admit to having that experience, multiple times. People like their record collections. All of these download services undermine that tactile feel.
Plus, I don't think the average consumer is as dumb as everyone else thinks. Wait for the first Windows bug to crash the MS music server, causing subscriptions to terminate abruptly. Then watch everyone move to a different model.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
it is crazy! because they start with a low fee to start with and once they've cornered the market hit you with the price-fixing later on. It's not about money, it's about control. if they own all control THEN, and only THEN can they hit you with the price-fixing. Economics 101, control, if you own it all there is sweet-fa your competitors can do about it. Especially if you own the government too.
Oh, that will never happen (remembering the flame wars between pro and anti DIVX folks where the DIVX opponents were saying all of those silver DIVX disks would one day be useless and the pro DIVX folks saying they were full of shit).
I think the final thing when DIVX went under was that those silver DIVX discs would only play for another year or something...
(Awaiting flames from 13 yo /. readers too young to remember DIVX and not understanding the difference between DIVX and DivX...)
This is one more example of how Apple understands "people" and Microsoft is antisocial. Truly, the Steve vs. Bill show has been funny lately.
It really comes down to this: How do people feel about handing out their credit-card number, knowing their entire music library will be held hostage for a monthly payment vs. paying a buck for each song they like and keeping it forever without strings attached.
It doesn't matter that the buck a song model is more expensive, human beings have a pack-rat like instinct to put things they want under their own protection away from "scavengers" or whatever... The idea of a monthly commitment is really just too much... The idea that all of your music can go "poof" if the monthly commitment isn't met is just too much...
Music palladium will fly like a lead balloon... iTunes for Windows will simply destroy it...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Let's see... A Certain Abusive Monopoly has only been doing this for decades:
Every time their competitor comes out with a new, innovative service, they create some poor excuse for a copy and sell it as "New, Improved, Innovative." Most people are too god-damn lazy to see through it, and go along with the Party says.
My limited research indicates that the data is encrypted. This is based on taking an m4p file that a friend bought, buying the same track myself, and looking at both in a hex editor. What is presumably the audio data (the several megabytes following the "mdat" key) is completely different between the files.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I have been keeping an eye on CD prices since the iTunes Music Store went up, and I think that it may have had an effect on the price of real CDs. I have purchased more CDs in the last month than I did all last year. The reason being the I could buy the CD for the same price that I would pay for it on the iTunes Music Store. The upside being that I now own the full quality CD, and I can rip it at whatever bit rate I like. I have purchased some individual songs, and a few albums from the store when the cost was less than buying the CD, and I much prefer owning the song and being able to do with it what I like, as opposed to having it go away if I unsubscribe.
-- Charles A. Plater