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Comparing Online Music Offerings
hype7 writes "The Wall Street Journal has just posted a comparison of the three main legal music download services: Apple's iTunes Music Store, MusicMatch and Napster v2. The review covers the pros and cons of each of the services, and concludes with: "I'm sure all three services will evolve and get better, and others will enter the fray. But, for now, iTunes is the best choice on Windows.""
To my mind this is by far the superior service. I get to listen to anything I want as often as I want for ten bucks a month ('cept for the Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Elton John's Blue Moves.)
The only downside appearas to be that I can't take the music on the go, unless I pay 70(?) cents to burn a track, but since I'm a shut-in who's always sitting in front of his computer anyways, what's the diff?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Yet this discussion completely sidesteps one of the aspects of Napster (1) and the like -- that they were international. From almost anywhere in the world (assuming internet access) you could get music, that was itself from all over the world.
I've purchased 134 songs so far from itunes. Every time I have purchased songs from them the download has been fast(i am on a DSL) and the quality is amazing..Selection is great but i wish they more stuff from the 80's.
Now with books and personal playlists and gift certs, they have made it even better...
the best part is that the artists get their share...whether you agree its a fair share is a different matter since apple did not write the contracts between the record companies and the artists...
I will tell you this though... whatever they are getting from itunes is way more then they are getting from Kazaa downloads...
Yes, I know the restrictions can be gotten around by burning, and then ripping that, but that's not the point. It's a matter of principle. Companies everywhere keep trying to put restrictions on what we do with things we *own*, and that's just not right - economically, morally, or socially. It saddens me so many people are willing to accept the situation without question.
But in the meantime, I'll stick with services like Magnatune which don't try to control the content once it leaves their hands.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
IMHO, the biggest con for all of them is that none of them (that I'm aware of) consolidates ALL music. Every song ever recorded. This is understandable considering that all music is owned by different companies and understandably, they aren't going to share. BUT, I think it'd be cool if there were a database that would tell me who has what songs/bands/artists/etc... That way I wouldn't have to search all of them individually for a particular song or artist. Or is there such a thing and I've been under a rock?
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
At the moment I'd gladly pay US$9.99 for an album of M4P tracks. Most CDs over here are between AUD$20 and AUD$30 while the equivalent CD in the iTMS is only about AUD$16.
If you rip with AAC in iTunes it attaches no DRM to it at all. Also AAC > OGG.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
"I'm sure all three services will evolve and get better, and others will enter the fray. But, for now, iTunes is the best choice on Windows."
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[ waiting for my +Insightful mod points for simply repeating the last line I just read =P ]
Yes, the last line does say it all, which is why it was quoted in the article writeup. I can read, don't bother parroting Slashdot's writeup for me. Who modded this insightful?
So what's the best one for the Mac?
Seriously, do any of them work on Linux?
HH
I really don't dig those wonky formats. Makes it impossible for my pitiful Sony mp3 CD player to cooperate. And when you burn it to disc, and then re-rip to get it into mp3, hooboy. The sound quality is shittastic. (And while I'd very much like to buy one of those swank iPods - A geek I am, but moreso, a broke student geek)
Please enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...
Allofmp3.com beats all those mentioned so far hands down. You get to choose your format (mp3, Ogg, aac, wma) and bitrates (from 128k up to 384k) and you pay based on the number of megs you d/l. Furthermore, there's no DRM on the files you d/l.
I recall a lot of folks ((in my circle of musician friends) with apple computers) saying that the music they downloaded from iTunes (when it first was launched) was kinda 'muddled' sounding, many blamed the copy-protection as doing it.
Or is it just the encoding into an mp3 that does this? Any comparisons between the other `legal' music downloads and the end-quality of sound?
Just curious. I personally buy CDs still, except for the old blues/british invasion stuff that's out of print or never made it past vinyl.
do() || do_not();
A year or more ago I purchased lifetime updateds to MusicMatch (back when linux was supported). I have only used it as a jukebox and haven't downloaded the latest versions for downloadable music. Can anyone provide some more indepth analysis than what this report is giving.
You never saw a fish on the wall with its mouth shut.
You can burn a playlist 10 times before you have to edit it again. After you edit it, it can be burned another 10 times.
It will let you burn a single, unchanged playlist 10 times. Of course, you can change that playlist, and then burn the new one 10 times, and then change that one...
Honestly, maybe you are excited about this BUT this is just reaffirmation of the fact that there is very little interesting going on in the current popular music scene. It's nice that they're selling music online - now someone just has to start making some music worthy of being bought.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Considering all the errors and omissions in the article, I wouldn't put too much stock in this review.
;)
iTMS lets you re-download music you've already purchased. It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install, which some may see as a drawback.
MMJB doesn't work with the iPod? Somebody better tell Apple that they shouldn't have shipped it with all the iPods up until now.
The other thing he doesn't cover is that Napster and MMJB downloads will work directly, without laborious circumvention techniques, on many different portable players and also on the computer itself on MMJB, WMP, and Winamp.
iTMS only plays on iTunes or iPod. iThink unless you have an iPod, you're better off with another service.
Here's the deal with the burns. You can only burn the same playlist 10 times. So say you download 20 tracks from the music store. You can only burn those 20 in that exact same order 10 times, but if you switch the 1st and 2nd song you get 10 more burns and so on and so forth. I've also heard you can just delete the playlist and create a new one, but I'm not sure if that works or not. Anyhow heres how Steve Jobs puts it. Unlimited burning of individual tracks, 10 burns per playlist.
Until the next Microsoft monthly patch which will intentionally break it in some manner.
;o)
Are you suggesting that it even takes Microsoft a few tries to break something too?
do() || do_not();
As you read this play an mp3 of Johnny Knoxville laughing hysterically.
you can only burn the exact same playlist 10 times. but, you can easily make another playlist and put the songs on there again and you're good to go. i guess this was put in to avoid mass duplication on CD's.
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
It's open or nothing. If you want the roughly $1k per year that I spend on music, then they way to get it is to sell me standard CDs, FLAC files, wav files, aiff files, or very high bitrate Vorbis files.
This little piece of the market has spoken. Don't complain about lost revenue, if you're not selling.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You stole the article's punch by putting in your submission. Why should I even bother reading it now?
What does this really do? A "special encrypted format"? This is significant limitation. Again, I understand the issues, but is it really necessary to force people to (1) install some special software in the first place (2) use this special software to make purchases (3) use this special software to play music on their computers (4) use this special software to actually burn the music to a CD?
A great deal of the music I have on CD (all 800 of them) is ripped to MP3 and sitting on my Archos jukebox. I guess these online music solutions care not about people like me.
Not to be a big baby, but I also hate the idea of having to use some catch-all piece of software, rather than choosing my own applications to browse/purchase (web browser), listen (xmms, winamp), and burn CDs (groaster) etc. Never mind that I run a Linux desktop too of course. I could understand if this was the only way they could think of to prevent unlawful activities. But once the music's on the CD, couldn't it just be ripped to MP3? So is their system not putting up secure walls but rather presenting annoying hurdles?
Please someone smack me down if I'm not thinking clearly (it wouldn't be the first time).
You can burn a given playlist 10 times to CD. After that, you have to mix the tracks up to get another 10 burns, and so on. Any particular song can be burned as many times as you want.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
However, I'm sure plenty of people will disagree.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Personally, while I would defend unto death your right to obtain music from whatsoever source pleases you the most, I just can't get excited about the thought of downloading music.
For me, a huge part of being a music lover is the tactile quality of having a lot of CDs, and while I do play music on my PC, sometimes, I far prefer to slot a CD in my stereo. Apart from anything else, it doesn't mean using tying up a portion (however small) of my PCs CPU time.
I guess I'm in the minority now, huh?
-- Soluzar
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
Musicmatch, napster 2, etc are startups with no track record. How long they last may depend on their burn rate. Best Buy (buymusic.com) is the only other player that's not wet behind the ears, but their committment to eMusic is unknown.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
None of them are as good as just buying the damn(hopefully non-copy protected) CD's and ripping them yourself. (Hopefully with the good, sweet, cleanness of Ogg Vorbis). Fuck DRM
Yeah because I love having to buy a whole CD when I just want one song for $12! I don't know about you but I'd prefer to spend that money on 12 individual songs that I actually want and burn those songs to a CD then buy 12 separate CD.
How do these three services ensure copyright protection? I mean, what technology? Just because they encrypt stuff doesnt mean that it's safe - someone has to decrypt it somewhere before sending it to the sound card, and what's more, this is your computer, so you can figure out where that's done. So how do they ensure you don't pick out the audio data and then use it as you like?
...
Or is it simply protection by obfuscation? No one knows how the code goes and so no one tries to break it? So we all have to wait for some midnight hacker to come along and destroy all these services
I had this idea that without special hardware support, there was no way anyone could keep some content that was ultimately on my machine safe from me. This thing seems to go against that belief. Or am I missing something straight in front of me?
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OK. As long as I can be assured that The RIAA and the "Big Five" never sees a penny of my money. The RIAA is evil and must be put to (commercial) death.
Oh...AND I AM NOT A TROLL! This is a LEGITIMATE point to make about this news item. Just because reasonably priced download sites now exist, we still all have an obligation to do every thing we can to quash evil, lawyer flinging, corporate association associations like the RIAA and the MPAA.
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"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Use your microphone to hum a bit of the song, then upload the resulting wav file, and have the computer return a set of songs that contain that melodic line.
I'd pay good money for that.
It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install
An updated version (4.1.1) became available for windows yesterday and it addresses the known issues from the initial release last week. read about it here
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
You should try the Riaa Radar
It shows you which labels are not affiliated with the RIAA, and thus are 'safe'
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Are you suggesting that it even takes Microsoft a few tries to break something too?
When they're trying to do it on purpose. They then need a patch to make their bug work, because it's too buggy.
Why do you boycott non-RIAA labels in response to RIAA's activities?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Although there have been several attempts at online music services in the past, I find it very interesting that the only 'viable' and well-publicized services today can be considered derivatives of the iTMS.
The same is true for the iPod - there were several HD-based MP3 players on the market before its launch, and more than a few released after. However, virtually all 'modern' portables seem to take several chapters from the iPod playbook, and some are far less subtle.
I won't believe that Apple is the only company with the talent to conceive and release groundbreaking products, but they may very well be one of the few companies with the courage to do so. I find this to be very disheartening.
An object at rest cannot be stopped!
Napster is the only service that will redownload songs you've purchased, even if you're using a different computer. Does anyone know if iTunes will ever get this feature?
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
How are rights managed after you rip the song to Mp3 as stated in the article? Can you rip at any bit rate?
What is it with all of you Ogg Vorbis fanatics? Unfortunately, my iPod and my set-top player only like AAC or MP3. Does anyone make a portable Ogg player?
I'm glad that they are not even being considered. Horrible restrictions, and even worse customer service.
and the Ogg suport is only a temporary setback, once someone writes a plug -in for quicktime on the PC you will be able to bask in the same Ogg goodness the Mac users can
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Except you just paid $17 for 1 or 2 good tracks, a couple that are so-so and nine that are garbage.
Seems only thing considered legal nowadays is something making money for someone - preferably some (RI)|(MPA)AA kind of outfit.
*Free* stuff also is legal. If a band decides to offer their music for free download, this is legal, too.
Go to that other site for a nice discussion and list of free legal music downloads.
With everyone raving so much about iTunes being the "best app ever" for Windows users, it's been hard for me to see what the advantage is. I mean, iTunes is easy to use and nice and all, but it's hardly fundamentally different from a variety of services out there.
I downloaded the application the first day it came out, and so far liked it, but come on, there's nothing super-duper-extra-spectacular about it. Furthermore, there are some minor technical and technological problems that I've experienced.
1) Selection of radio genres is not that great. If all you wanted was to listen to some high-quality Internet radio, the genres and bitrates are okay, but MusicMatch and Live365 seem to be better.
2) Some radios are just silent. Listed in the app, some radios just don't have any music on the air.
3) All downloaded music is in AAC format. Great if you have iPod. Sucks for like 99% of the music players outthere that support MP3 and WMA. Yeah, there's always a way of burning a disk, then ripping that into MP3, but that's a hassle.
Other than that iTunes seems to be a nice app to have around for a music lover, but come on, it's just one of many. With Napster and Microsoft getting into the arena the competition will be heated.
Yet even more unfortunately, purchasing anything from a major music label makes me feel really really dirty anymore. I have stopped buying CD's altogether.
Before you ask, no I have not replaced my CD purchasing with mp3 downloading, from itunes or anywhere else. I have a moderately large (if now aged a bit)collection of CD's that have all long since been transfered to a RAIDed 60Gb file server.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Yes, you are showing the man that as long as the artists are defending their rights to have copyrighted material, you will continue to steal music from them. I don't agree with the RIAA tactics, but they have to try something to defend their rights. Maybe if the online music stores do well, then the RIAA will see that there are ways to use the Internet successfully, and therefore stop such aggresive measures. By refusing to buy music from any source, you are simply fueling their fire.
According to the article it states that, using iTunes, one cannot download a song more than once. So what happens if my computer crashes and I didn't have a chance to backup some songs, I'de have to buy the songs again?
Like
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Thanks! Very helpful resource.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
It looks like Apple is poised to win the online digital music vending business. They right now have the best promotions to attract people to find out about their service, and I think the Pepsi promotion this February will bring a LOT of users to the service. iTunes is free and you get a free song. Heck, buying cases of Pepsi and getting a couple of free songs.
I just installed iTunes for Windows the other day and was amazed at how easy it was to use... mirroring the thoughts of countless reviews of the service. This is the key, because if it's easy to use, average-joe user (i.e. the big market) will like to use it. And with the best fair-use policies of all of them, and many artists backing them (rebooted or not, why would Metallica suddenly feel good about a product named 'Napster'?) I think this is the one chance for legal music downloads succeeding.
The problem with the business model of all of these is that the same thing is available free. Well now it's cheap... 99 cents you can buy ONLY the songs you like instead of the entire album where only 3 songs are good, and they are better quality than what is on Kazaa.
The iPod's huge market share certainly doesn't hurt their case.
Just so you all know I'm not an Apple hater, I own a 30GB iPod and I love it. I also use iTunes for Windows and I've already bought a couple of albums. I agree with the article that iTunes is the best jukebox and music store for Windows, but isn't this the same author that gives every single Apple product a favorable review? It would be nice to see reviews from an unbiased source.
I like Apple products quite a bit and I'll probably buy a 15" G4 PowerBook in the next couple of weeks, but something that really bothers me about the Apple culture and the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is that it seems like the Apple zealots love any product that Apple releases, regardless of how good or bad it is. Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.
Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
has there been any converter program written? like aac2mp3 or wmf2mp3 that will move through the encryption?
also i would be curious to know what security each of these 'stores' have in place, seeing how you are using their app to go over the network.. would be interesting to see if any concerns arose from shortcuts to meet promo deadlines..
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
Like here, for example.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The other posts are not quite correct: You can only burn a given playlist 10 times if it contains protected music. You can burn lists of MP3s or unprotected AACs as many times as you want.
Give me a break. The RIAA does not speak for the entire music industry, and there are plenty of great independant labels and pseudo labels (such as CD Baby) that whole-heartedly disagree with the RIAA on many levels. Even before the RIAA was suing its customers it was fucking over the artists, many of whom have become basically indentured servants to the 'big 5.' Personally, I haven't bought major label music in years, just because I think that in general it isn't innovative. Here's who I *do* buy from:
Beta-lactam Ring
Elevator Bath
IDEA
Wholly Other
And last but not least, the best independant distributor of anything ever... Forced Exposure
Maybe partying will help...
I agree with you about the limited choices --- 500,000 songs....pfft. Most of it is pop music crap anyway. Just hop over to etree where you can peruse some 119,000 unique shows from quality artists of many genres. Enough to keep your highspeed connection busy for a while.
Regards,
Jeff
Yesterday somebody at K5 posted a short article listing sites with downloadable music, including Magnatune (which somebody else mentioned).
I'm taking a business/technical writing class at the moment, and after viewing the link in the news, I noticed that it's not presented that well for people who don't really wanna read the whole thing but wants to get the comparisons only (lazy people like me). Something what my instructor will frown upon if we write something like this in his class.
:P
I think if the article has tables for comparison between the 3 services, people will be able to compare them better and faster, dont you think?
I wasn't looking for opinions, just looking for the hard facts like: cost, number of songs available, etc.
or am I going too off-topic here?
iTMS lets you re-download music you've already purchased.
;)
Not true. Once your download has completed, you can't download a song again unless you purchase it again. Apple recommends that you burn a backup of the downloaded song to CD or anything.
It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install, which some may see as a drawback.
As someone just said, they released a version that takes care of that.
MMJB doesn't work with the iPod? Somebody better tell Apple that they shouldn't have shipped it with all the iPods up until now.
MMJB's DRM-infected^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprotected songs are WMA's, which will not play on the iPod. Regular MP3's and such work just fine, but you can't copy the songs you purchase from their music service (which wasn't around when Apple first packaged the two together).
The other thing he doesn't cover is that Napster and MMJB downloads will work directly, without laborious circumvention techniques, on many different portable players and also on the computer itself on MMJB, WMP, and Winamp.
So they work with anything that can read protected WMA. And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.
iTMS only plays on iTunes or iPod. iThink unless you have an iPod, you're better off with another service.
At least one company (I can't remember the name) has said that if the AAC format (the one that iTunes/iPod uses) catches on, then their players will support it. So don't be too sure about the strictly-Apple requirement in the not-so-distant future.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Have a look at: http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/eff_oal.php I think we should be doing our best to encourage artists to publish their own music under a free licence such as this, by downloading and listening to their music - after all that will ultimately make them more popular and hence more able to make a living from live concerts. After all, why should the RIAA and it's ilk make a living out of other people's talents, while simultaneously overpumping a very small number of artists and ignoring the vast majority who's artistic talent is equally good (sometimes better)? Yes I will buy music, but not from any organisation that has anything to do with the RIAA.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Not that I've actually used anything but iTunes.
However, what these it alone has given me is a renewed appreciation for the compact disc. It's often possible to get a disc for the same amount of money as the m4p tracks of it.
Even when it's more expensive to get the disc, I still have something I can hold in my hand. Something I can see (even if cover and liner art will never be the same since the demise of the LP). The music doesn't come in a lossy format from the start. I can rip it into whatever format I want (copy protection schemes notwithstanding), and still have the original to fall back on.
Of course, none of this means anything to anyone who has that wacked sense of entitlement to music without paying for it...
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Depends if you're an albums or a singles man I guess :)
I find the MusicMatch Radio MX service to be much more suited to my listening habits than buying individual songs. I've blown lots of money on CDs that I only listened to for a few months. For $60/year I can listen to unlimited music from thousand of artists. I've tweaked my artist's match ed stations so I can listen to them for hours without a bad song. And if I get a hankering for an artist I just do the artist direct option and listen to music only from that performer. Saves me disk space too. I know everyone's listening habits are different (for instance if you want to take your music with you then you're screwed), but for me it works great.
Thanks for the clarification. But why would they impose a restriction that is so easy to get around and inconsequential? Because I don't understand the intended point, I worry that I don't actually understand the restriction to begin with...
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Then the "artist" you purchased sucks and will have a crappy follow up album if at all.
Seriously, if there are only a couple 'good songs' on an album that tells you something about the person/people that made it and their future...
Fighting to stifle one-hit-wonders before they happen!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Although [Emusic.com] just got bought out and is significantly reducing the # of songs one can download, it has been an amazing value for lovers of non-pop genres, as well as contemporary indie pop stuff. I've been using it for 5-6 months and have mined their amazing jazz/blues/world catalog to my great satisfaction. I would guess I've paid a nickel a song at most, and that's about the right price. At their new rates, it is up to 30-40 cents per song, so you need to be pickier, but I'd still rather have a timeless gem for that price than a tune that will soon seem like last weeks news for a buck.
We have a collaborative filtering system which attempts to recommend Canadian Music to you based on your ratings... you like Celine Dion, you might like other Canadian artists...
http://racofi.elg.ca
Cheers!
I won't pay a penny for it until it supports Ogg Vorbis.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Judging by the last three words, the parent post should be modded Redundant! Ha ha, get it? All three of those words mean the same thing?
:-(
Too bad the moderators weren't quick enough to catch that and mod it that way.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
The other replies are 100% correct. But I thought I should throw in the fact that this 10 time limit for a playlist, while it might seem silly, is actually quite justified. It was a requirement put forth on Apple. The idea is that it prevents you from downloading an album, and burning it billions of times and selling those albums. Yes, there is a way around it, but it's a hassle, and that's all that Apple had to do to keep RIAA happy.
But iTunes doesn't rip Ogg Vorbis, even on Mac, or did I miss something? Sure, you can rip it with another program, but that takes away from the integrated iTunes experience. You also can't play Ogg Vorbis on the iPod. It doesn't seem like it should be too difficult an option to add...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Mmm, pie...
And they're not going to let you download a perfect digital copy without some reassurance that you not just going to plop that perfect copy down on Kazaa. Fortunately for you, you can still go to the store and buy the album and rip it yourself. However the last time I spent $18 US on an album, there was only ONE song on the album that I liked. I paid $18 US for one track. Complain as much as you want, but if I could have bought just that one track for $1, I would have. As far as restrictions go, Apple's the best compromise.
For everyone else bellyaching about the DRM, would you go for a system where the music you bought was watermarked to it could be identified to you? So you could do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, but if it got out they would know exactly who to sue?
It's a compromise. I haven't bought any music from iTunes or any other online vender for that matter. But if I did it would be from iTunes. I can authorize 3 different systems for the music. When I sell a system I simply unauthorize it. I put it on my iPod, or if I had some other player just convert it to mp3 and use it.
You know what saddens me? People who don't pay the artist anything because they're upset about $1 a track, in a format that is superior to mp3 at the same bit rate.
Me? I still buy CD's on occasion, maybe a couple every year. I get the perfect digital copy I want. But the next time some one-hit-wonder has a song I want, iTunes will definitely be a temptation. $18 for the perfect digital copy (buy the CD) or just $1 for an acceptable electronic version of just the track I want.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
We should be encouraging complete freedom to copy any music as much as we want - by only supporting artists that release their music with an open license, such as that at http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/eff_oal.php These people have no interest in imposing DRM, restrictions, proprietary formats etc. and deserve our support. This is what peer to peer should be about - the freedom to copy anything as much as we want. It's the same issue as with open source software - the proprietary mindset of microsoft and their mates is good for them in the short term, but ultimately damaging for the consumer. That's why we should support open source software . If a wider number of musicians were promoting themselves in this way, they would do better for themselves and would make the world a better place for everyone. The RIAA simply runs on greed, and the abuse of what amounts to a monopoly position - just as a certain software company has done recently. The corollary is that we should be willing to pay for 'open' goods, as doing so helps them to stay 'open'.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Admittedly, the choices in iTunes are limited. Even though they signed several indpendent labels, including Matador and Kill Rock Stars, though don't have the entire catalog of those labels or any rarities. Heck, they don't even have some of the new releases - try looking for Her Majesty the Decemberists.
The advantage of the P2P networks from a selection standpoint was that you had thousands of people adding tracks, not just one or two labels. On the old Napster, I remember finding tracks from B-Sides and compilations albums from the 80's along with ton's of live materials - let alone regular recordings. In that respect, I think the P2P networks will probably stay around for hardcore fans, looking for rare items. However, I don't think the RIAA is worried about people who are downloading the Reiver's cover of "Atlantic City".
If anyone stands to lose from online music stores, it's Rhino and the producers of the "That's What I Call Music" series. For the hit single buyer, the online store is a great bargain. I wonder if you can pick up "Billy Don't Be a Hero" on iTunes yet.
Rio Audio makes a player that support Ogg. I can only find one, but I could swear they made more than that.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Apple has far more exclusive music than its competitors. It's the only legal service, for instance, to offer most songs by the Eagles and the Grateful Dead.
Legal? What the...? I though The Dead were all about sharing the bootlegs, at least of their concert performances!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
You must look at this from a realistic perspective.
1. The major record labels - meaning the people who control the content - will never release their "property" without DRM. If Apple wants to provide music online, it must do so at the whim of the content "owners". Hence, DRM. Otherwise iTMS is Napster v1, and we all know how that turned out.
As a matter of opinion, I find 'Fairplay' or whatever it is Apple calls its DRM method to be quite fair, to me. I can play all my music on my computers (laptop, desktop, work desktop) and devices (rev1 iPod), burn CDs, and so forth. I've been using iTMS since its inception, and have no complaints.
2. Apple has to balance their costs and resources, and the resources of their paying customers. Sure we all want uber-high-bitrate encodings. Remember that Apple has to push out all that data, and ensure the highest-possible success rate. I also assume they pay for their bandwidth, like everyone else. Moreover, many of their customers are probably still on dialup. In order to work, the experience has to be as close to instant as technologically possible. Like all things in technology, it's a balance. Until your uber-bitrate song fits in under a meg, it went with what it had that fit its requirements and needs.
Again, as a matter of opinion: P2P blows, people lie, allow bad rips, disconnect halfway through (mom's coming! quick, disconnect!), whatever.
3. The notion that one day this will all go away is a very fair criticism. So do the smart thing: burn to audio CD. You aren't prohibited (provided you don't try to turn that shiny G5 into a duplication studio). And getting around the DRM by re-encoding isn't all that hard (google it). iTunes enforces no DRM on user-ripped material, as WMP did at one point (could be turned off, IIRC). DRM applies only to content it re-sells.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
i guess this was put in to avoid mass duplication on CD's.
Because after you've burned it once you can't just copy it like a normal CD in your favorite CD burning software. The restriction just doesn't make sense to me.
I love having to buy a whole CD when I just want one song for $12!
Just to make sure, does every one know why this is a problem?
The big record lables, in conjunction with the RIAA, MTV, Clear Channel, et. al. etc, market a product which DOES NOT EXIST!
They market the one or two good songs on the CD. However, they make no product by which you can purchase the one or two good songs. It's like marketing a wheel and requiring you to purchase a car in order to get it.
I know that, technically, there are CD singles, but they're hard as crap to find, they're still $5, and most of them are import bootlegs.
~Will
sig?
...as purchasing a CD.
I heard the hype about iTunes and thought that I'd give it a shot... I'd love to support a quality pay-to-download service.
I was going to buy the Ultra Lounge Christmas CD, so I thought that it would be a good test. I easily found the songs for the disc but then I caught the price per track.... $0.99. That's $20.79. Amazon sells the the CD for $10.99. Even adding $4 for shipping it is still significantly cheaper than iTunes and I get the CD and coverart too! (order a few CDs and shipping is free)
I guess iTunes is geared more toward single tracks than albums. oh well.
Right, but when you buy a CD you have the ability to rip to AAC, WMA, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc. That's a lot of flexibility for $15. AAC at 128 is good, but you can hear the difference at AAC 192, and I'd rather err on the side of my ears. Plus I can use the tracks I rip in as many of my monthly mix cds as I like. This is assuming that you aren't buying some "copyright protected" pop CD. But of course, if you make that assumption you kind of also assume that more than 2 tracks will be good.
Numbers to prove this last statement (generated by checking the track count of an automatic playlist made by adding anything with a 3 star rating that was purchased in 2003 or 2002):
Of the cds I've bought in the past year, 87% of the tracks have been well worth it. Then again, only a few of these albums were really popular...the big three were the last Queens of the Stone Age record (at 100% because i am such a Mark Lanegan fan), Audioslave (which offsets the average with only 6 tracks marked as three star or better) and the new Radiohead (100%).
So anyway, assuming 13 tracks, a CD costs about $1.50 per good track. That is 50% more than the files at 128 kbit AAC...so you make the call, flexibility or value?
Oh, and if you're one of these cats who goes online to find JUST the radio song and never even really listens to the rest of the album...maybe you should step back and ask yourself what you're really looking for out of music. There's more to sound than just pop hooks and clever choruses, you know, and if there weren't we would still be playing Bluegrass.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Even though it's not nearly as good a deal now as it once was, $9.99 for 40 tracks is still 25 cents per track, compared with 99. And emusic has artists I actually want to hear, like Belle and Sebastion, Apples in Stereo, The Pixies, etc. I don't care if Apple is the only one to have The Eagles, because The Eagles suck large, moss-covered rocks, and I don't love the RIAA much either.
The files only come as VBR MP3s, but that's OK with me since I have a hardware MP3 player (CD-based) that I probably won't be upgrading until it breaks.
Oh, and there's the matter of it actually working (officially!) with Linux, though I assume that's probably x86 Linux only. But still, that's much better than other sites that inanely restrict you to IE on Windows. It also says that "Other operating systems may work...", but they won't provide support for them.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
BMG is now selling CDs for $6.99 apiece with free shipping. All of you that have been saying that you'll stop pirating music when it's reasonably priced, here's your chance to live up to those words.
Of course, now I expect the answer will be that $6.99 is still a rip off for a piece of plastic that costs pennies to manufacture.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
you forgot mailboat records.
the have attracted many Big named pissed off at the RIAA bands and are attracting more every day.
you may not like Jimmy's Music, but you have to love his record label.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've been using iTunes, but it's shuffle doesn't seem to work right. Out of a 200 song playlist, it keeps playing the same 25 or so songs. This is driving me nuts.
Am I missing something? I really do like shuffle, and I don't want to have to go back to winamp.
Fellowship 9/11
... and? If you like a song, you like a song. It doesn't matter if you think everything else someone has done is crap. The fact of the matter is that you LIKE THAT SONG. Downloadable music for $0.99/track a) avoids paying $12-17 for a whole album, b) gets you the song you actually like, and c) is legal.
For instance, as a general rule, I loath hip-hop/rap/r&b/etc. but every once in a while (like, say, every 5 years) a song comes along that I really like. Now I can pay $0.99 for it an go merrily on my way.
Try spending less time in your sheltered little black and white world. There's a wealth of shades of gray out here!
And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.
That's because you're an Apple zealot.
All DRM-locked forms of music distribution are a waste of money. What do you do in in the year 2030 when nobody makes players for your multi-gigabyte collection of AAC files? I guess it'll be a good thing that you burned all those CDs. Oh wait, I guess they rotted didn't they?
Or what do you do when you switch to a new OS and Apple/Microsoft doesn't support it? Shit outta luck huh?
Once you buy it, you should be able to do whatever you want with the file. Any service that doesn't adhere to that simple principle is giving you an inevitably worthless product.
Yes, let's punish all the artists and boycott the very services that have a chance to change things because the RIAA is involved in a portion of those services.
Hint: The RIAA makes up only a portion of the lables in the iTMS. Why don't you buy from the independent lables and thus show the RIAA that you are willing to buy music, but not at the expense of the artist.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Besides, Jobs wouldn't try and sell something like the iShit because Gates already did that and called it Windows ME.
No, you are getting it confused. You're thinking of Microsoft Bob. Compared to BOB, ME was a high point of software engineering.
BOB was a product so bad that the Smiley Face had to go into witness protection and now can only get a job at Wal-Mart.
Sad really.
but yes the iPod non-support is a bit of a annoyance, It would be nice if someone hacked the firmware to allow it to support it (and maybe DRM .wav files ) but until that time its only really usefull on your computer and the one or two players that actually play them.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
> I've also heard you can just delete the playlist and create a new one, but I'm
> not sure if that works or not.
Yes, it works.
The 'limit' is only there so you cant script automated mass-burns and pay a monkey $1/hr to just swap cds out. Takes a bit more work.
If you burn one cd, and then just dupe that cd, its no longer itunes software that is doing the disc copy, so they dont have to worry about it legally.
I'm sorry, I just don't have the stamina to not buy records. I enjoy music too much to blame the record industry for trying to protect their ability to make CDs, no matter how callous their methods may seem.
After all, we don't boycott businesses that prosecute shoplifters. We even respect it...after all, shoplifters drive up the price for everybody else. And since copyright "theft" is really just infringment, which is a civil matter, all the RIAA can possibly do is sue people.
The other option is to ignore copyright violations in file sharing, cd copying, mix making, etc...and that is the same as saying it's okay. If there is any truth at all to the claim that this kind of infringing activity, then even if no real cash comes out of this round of lawsuits, the RIAA has posted a BIG "Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted" sign on digital audio. Which is good for me, because it's this desire to punish downloaders that led to the AWESOME iTune music store. Which is my new addiction.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
what's to stop one from say , burning a cd and using an app like exact audio copy (EAC) to make an almost perfect dub of the cd ? wouldnt the 10 rule seem rather silly at that point ?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Until the next Microsoft monthly patch which will intentionally break it in some manner.
OK, maybe it will take a couple of months.
To the astroturfing moderator that marked this troll the first time...
This was not a troll. It's a fact. So waste some more mod points again. Go ahead, make my day.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
AeroPlayer actually supported Ogg Vorbis before it supported MP3.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
But when it happens that an artist (And I use that term loosely here) puts out one track you like on a otherwise horrbile album, chances are you'll hear it enough times to thuroughly tire of it soon. That's what happens to me. If I find that I don't like the album something is on, I don't think it's worth my investment. Sure cry me a river is a decent song, but I gurantee I won't feel the need to listen to it a month from now. Would you ask to just buy one scene of a DVD and expect a discount?
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Driver Heads:
How hard would it be to create a fake CDR drive that serves both as the output for any music ripping application and as the input for CDex? I know such ghost drives have been used for years for playing games without the original disks, but they have far less interaction with the program. How hard is it to fake a CD write?
The ______ Agenda
I just found out that sub pop and matador safe... suprising as they're just about the biggest indie there are.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
RIAA makes up only a portion of the lables in the iTMS.
Nice way to put it, but do you care to put that portion into a percentage? 95-97%? I really do not know myself but your arguement would be more justified with some numbers or estimates. Buying songs from them and buying an IPOD to play those songs is a big investment to have legal access to ~3-5% of their total non RIAA songs.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Too bad he left out buymusic.com and rhapsody, although rhapsody loses until it gets rid of the monthly fee.u nny how he thought musicmatch was the slow one, I found itunes sucked a lot of cpu browsing-wise!
I have been doing a technical based comparison, and my own thought is that you'll go where the music is available, and if tied, the best sound quality. My (starting) chart is at http://www.techolio.com/onlinemusic/index.html
F
rick
"What do you do in in the year 2030 when nobody makes players for your multi-gigabyte collection of AAC files?"
Hmm - 27 years in the future. All the 45s I had from 27 years ago, I could play them if I still had them, and if I still had a record player, oh and if I still listened to the same music.
What was your point again?
Mix. Burn. Rip.
The ______ Agenda
Bought an album from them and couldn't burn it even once. Their Customer Dis-service basically said that was my problem. So I can listen to it on my scritchy little PC speakers but not my (modest) audiophile-type system. In my opinion they took my money and delivered nothing, they are aware of that, and are quite happy with that outcome.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
How does iTunes' DRM handle a full OS re-install? Or a hardware migration? What does Apple recommending doing when, in 2 years, our hardware is outdated and needs to be replaced? Or in 3 months when XP has an irrecoverable crash and we have to reinstall everything from scratch?
Restricted file formats are a frustrating thing. But restricted file formats tied to a piece of hardware that is replaced on average every 3 years is foolish.
And buying restricted files once you realize this failing is just plain stupid.
BTW, thanks for the Magnatune link!
The ______ Agenda
Right now most new releases at Best Buy are $9.99. Most if not all of these CD's have at least 10 songs on them. So for .99 (or less) a song I get a full CD with a jewel case and album art work etc. & I can rip it to my hard drive or MP3 or Ogg or IPod.
.99 for a song that has worse sound quality, will only play where they tell it to, comes with no liner notes or art and can not be converted to use on most of the audio devices I have?
.50
So why would I pay
Let me know when I can download the CD Audio file for
http://www.kubuntu.org/
If you're going to get a PowerBook and start getting into all the Apple press and BBSes out there, you'll find there are LOTS of Apple Zealots who absolutely HATE most of what Jobs has been doing. Most are OS 9/Quark 5 hold-outs or people who refuse to give up their 680x0 machines from 10 years ago or so, but you'll find lots of folk who hate Brushed Metal, hate Aqua, hate Column Views, hate that command-N gives you a new Finder Window and not a new Folder, ad infinitum ad nauseum.
Sure, there are those of us who line up at Little Stevie's Kool-Aid Stand ($129 for a cup of Kool-Aid? I'll take three!!!) but just wait for the screams when most Mac Zealots find what's been done to Finder in 10.3....
why are there soo many reviews and comparisons of napster to itunes, while napster is in beta? ever heard of a fair shake?
The kicker to me is that they don't have The Polyphonic Spree, a band that is featured in the iPod/VW commerical!
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
What I'm curious about is whether the export restriction is still in effect. One truly NASTY bit in the contract people discovered was that if you move outside of the US, as soon as Apple finds out (the next time you log into the service) it nukes every one of your files, and no refund. If you haven't burned them, you're screwed. A couple guys lost hundreds of dollars in music because of that.
And that's another reason I strenuously object to any kind of DRM-based "licensing" of music that doesn't give me full Fair Use rights. It means the copyright owner has the right (or at the very least, the power) to take away the license at any time, because they feel like it, and I can't do anything but buy the White Album yet again.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Or maybe just go buy a greatest hits CD instead.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
It is impossible to copy protect a CD and still have it play in a regular CD player. My CD player has SPDIF out... my computer has SPDIF in... if it plays I can make a digital copy. Copy protecting a regular CD is never going to work.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
"And since copyright "theft" is really just infringment, which is a civil matter, all the RIAA can possibly do is sue people."
A common misperception. Here's the portion of copyright law which deals with criminal infringement.
Additionally, Googling on "criminal copyright infringement" will deliver links to data on criminal cases where copyright infringers have done jail time.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Would you ask to just buy one scene of a DVD and expect a discount?
Isn't that what porn is? One scene cut from a terrible movie to save you the torture and get right to the good part? =)
Dang, I just killed my own argument!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
The solution to this is easy. By music from artists who care enough to put out a quality album. They're not hard to find if you look.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Yeah, your record player is a physical device. WTF are you going to run WinAmp on in 30 years, retard?
Call me old fashioned, but I get a kick out of whole porn movies too :) I love the movie Latex!
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
By refusing to buy music from any source, you are simply fueling their fire.
Not all artists are RIAA members. There is no reason to boycott a third party who has nothing to do with this or who may not be a member because the RIAA disgusts them just as much as it disgusts you.
Only on
Uhh - same thing I run WinAMP on now. I don't.
Do you really think WinAMP is going to be around in 27 years? C'mon think about it. AAC, OGG and WMA will all be antiquated and replaced by better things in 10 years, never mind 27. Technology moves too quickly.
Hard media lasts a bit longer (Records, CDs, etc) because of the investment users make in hardware. Software (especially when the media players are cheap or free) can be swapped out quite rapidly and there are often upgrade paths to take your existing media with you.
Oh, and unless WinAmp runs in the ether, it also runs on a physical device. Nice use of the word retard - 5 points to you.
"How does iTunes' DRM handle a full OS re-install? Or a hardware migration? What does Apple recommending doing when, in 2 years, our hardware is outdated and needs to be replaced? Or in 3 months when XP has an irrecoverable crash and we have to reinstall everything from scratch?"
I do this all the time (buy at home, copy to work, etc.). You copy your music to the new machine and click play. If you haven't played your music on that machin before, iTunes asks for your username and password, and you enter it. The music plays.
You can authorize up to three computers at once. So you should deauthorize the old machine if you're upgrading.
OS upgrades and re-installs on MacOS X don't affect user data, so there's no issue with iTunes DRM. On the PC, I have only been running iTunes for a few days, so I haven't done a re-install of the OS yet, but the worst case would be re-entering your username and password.
"Restricted file formats are a frustrating thing. But restricted file formats tied to a piece of hardware that is replaced on average every 3 years is foolish."
Yes, this is a problem with Microsoft's DRM. Apple's DRM is tied to a username & password, not hardware. The authorization is stored on your computer for convenience, of course, but you can authorize any other computer easily. And multiple people's music can be authorized on the same computer. Cool, eh?
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Yes, this is a problem with Microsoft's DRM. Apple's DRM is tied to a username & password, not hardware. The authorization is stored on your computer for convenience, of course, but you can authorize any other computer easily. And multiple people's music can be authorized on the same computer. Cool, eh?
Very cool. Points to Apple for having thought this through.
The ______ Agenda
While I certainly agree that iTunes is the best PC music service, MusicMatch's new system (launched a few weeks ago) is also surprisingly good. It's less polished, but it makes the generally annoying WMA format fairly usable, which is quite a feat.
OK, that's not much of a recommendation. But to put it in perspective, check out BuyMusic.com, where EVERY SINGLE TRACK can have different pricing and usage rules. Hideous.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
In thirty years, the patents on currently popular audio codecs will expire, and through the miracle of free software, XMMS and Zinf will be able to play every format that Winamp can now play. XMMS and Zinf will run on any POSIX conforming system, and even if the computer industry moves beyond POSIX to some incompatible native API, there will probably still be a way to emulate POSIX behavior on whatever's popular (as we have now with Cygwin for Windows).
Or just run Winamp in a Bochs. This is emulation. Likewise, there exist laser based devices that emulate a stereo phonograph.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Thank you, sir, for making this point. For the longest time, all I saw around Slashdot were complaints that you have to buy an entire CD to get the one or two songs you wanted, but that if there were a legal means of getting burned CD's for $1.00 per track, people would be all over it, like white on rice. Now that said legal means is available, people are complaining that it's easier/more effective to buy the CD's and rip their own tracks. If, for one, fully intend to get myself ITunes, once I can get some broadband action going. I might even buy an IPod to take full advantage of it.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Most JPEG implementations use a constant quantizer matrix for a given "image quality" setting. Given a constant quantizer matrix, JPEG image compression uses the same step function for repeated compression and decompression of the same image. JPEG also works with each DCT block as it finds it and doesn't overlap them; a change to one block won't affect the others. Therefore, if you always use the same quality setting, you can edit small portions of a JPEG image without damaging the rest.
MP3 and Vorbis, on the other hand, changes quantizers based on the observed characteristics of the audio after the frequencies have been convolved with a masking function. This can subtly change some frequency bands' step functions on repeated compression. In addition, MP3 and Vorbis process using an MDCT, which processes overlapping blocks of signal, and an error can spread from block to block on repeated recompression. Heck, MP3 codecs don't even seem to have a consistent idea of the encoder's delay, so blocks may not be aligned from one save to the next.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I keep hearing about this "signing of indies" but I've yet to see much. Industrial Music is virtually non-existent. And like you state... 80's music is weak. They have the entire Ramones and Talking Heads collection... yet no Cars. WTF?
And way too much "Greatest Hits" albums. And the "partial album"... that is just plain annoying. Why can't they offer the entire album!?!
It's not even worth arguing which one is better, because all of these new music services are unacceptable for several reasons:
1. They all largely support RIAA music
2. Each has its own stupid DRM scheme, even if a weak one, that is a hastle for consumers
3. They are all platform limited and not Open Source (after all, you can't have DRM otherwise)
4. Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports.
The characteristics of a good online music service would be:
1.) Only non-RIAA affiliated labels or independent artists
2.) No DRM whatsoever, besides charging your account for the initial download
3.) Option to download in a lossless compressed format (such as FLAC)
4.) Contract with all artists that the music published via this service shall enter a non-restrictive Creative Commons license in at most 5-10 years (or after a sales target is reached) or else go public domain. This would re-introduce the concept of actually "supporting the arts and the public good"
5.) A free-downloads section for artists who realize it makes more sense to use recordings as a marketing tool for their live performances. Other artists services may be available in complement.
6.) All clients are open source and based on standard, open protocols.
7.) Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive.
That would be a service I would love to use. Let us not accept anything less!
"What I'm curious about is whether the export restriction is still in effect. One truly NASTY bit in the contract people discovered was that if you move outside of the US, as soon as Apple finds out (the next time you log into the service) it nukes every one of your files, and no refund. If you haven't burned them, you're screwed. A couple guys lost hundreds of dollars in music because of that."
Minor correction -- Apple won't "nuke" your files (and doesn't appear to check anything except when you authorize a machine, when you enter your username and password into iTunes), but if you change your billing address to be outside of the US they won't re-authorize your music. In the case that got some press a few months ago, the guy had his machine crash, did a full reinstall, and then couldn't re-authorize his music because his billing address wasn't in the US, so Apple couldn't legally sell him music. I think that he ended up getting taken care of by customer service.
The cause of this regional issue is that music is licensed by country or region, so the company that has the right to distribute a song in the US (and thus licensed music to iTMS for sale in the) US may not have the right to distribute it in, say, England. This means that to launch iTMS in each country, Apple has to renegotiate the licenses to the music. Kinda sucks.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Many "more talented artists" don't have the finance to promote their recordings on commercial radio (FM, XM, Sirius), which is the only broadcast medium that can be received in moving vehicles. Without promotion that reaches vehicles, how can I learn of "more talented artists" if I don't have time to listen to much music other than in the car (i.e. no time for iRATE)?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't know how realistic this parody is, but someone's got their 2 cents about artist's share posted here:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/index.html
JGG
Or maybe just go buy a greatest hits CD instead.
Hanson, Haddaway, 4 Non Blondes, The Wonders, Right Said Fred, and Deadeye Dick. What do they have in common? Their "greatest hits CD" is a single. Best Buy doesn't have a lot of singles.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If an artist can't put together a good album, they're not worth listening to. Unless you just like listening to an endless parade of one-hit wonders instead of quality music.
If it's worth listening to, it'll be better as an album: good albums are not just a collection of random tracks thrown together.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Don't know about these, but Emusic works fine on Linux.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
My CD player has SPDIF out
Good for you, but the cheap CD players that most CD buyers already have do not have SPDIF out, and the cheap sound cards that most PC owners already have do not have SPDIF in. I'm guessing that most PC owners are not willing to spend $$$ extra for a new CD player and a new sound card. And what happens when the recording industry finally ditches CD in favor of DVD Audio for the most part just like it ditched vinyl in favor of CD for the most part?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I use almost nothing but smart playlists, for two reasons. First, it can automatically create playlists based on ID3 tags, so I can listen to 1960's music, or high bitrate jazz, etc. Second, I have a 5 GB iPod and almost 30 GB of music, so I can use playlists to magically collect a subset to carry with me.
Some examples:
- 1 GB of My favorite music, based on how I rate it.
- 1 GB of Most played music, which iTunes counts automatically.
- 1 GB of most recently added music.
- all of my Purchased Music.
- all of my Audible audiobooks that are 'checked'. I can un-check them in iTunes once I've heard them, and they disappear from my iPod the next time I synch.
- 1 GB of Random Music, so that I hear a few things I haven't heard in a while.
Of course, you can still access the music by genre, etc., -- the playlists are a way to force those tracks into the iPod. I listen to 'favorites' and 'recently added' playlists all the time, though.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
PocketOGG or Winampaq on a PocketPC work great. Prices are down to $200 now for low end models (or less for refurb). A CF or SD card will be about $50-70 for 256MB. $250 is getting up to iPod territory so value for your money isn't the best, but you do get a PDA too.
Also gone: playing any 33 1/3 album at 45 for that Chipmunks sound
Two words: 59535 Hz. Use any audio editor (or heck, even a hex editor) to change the wav file's sample rate from 44100 Hz to 59535 Hz, and you have your 45 RPM effect. Incidentally, the "Hampsterdance" wav is a 45 RPM record played at 78 RPM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Send cash to their fan mail address. Anonymous and easy.
What, we like Walter Mossberg this week because he gave the thumbs up to iTunes?
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Artists don't get a penny, not a single one, from everything sold at BMG. They negotiate flat fees with the lables directly for the use of their catalog, and thats the extent of it.
A user downloading 10 gig of music over WinMX, finding two CDs they like and going out and buying those on a whim gets more money to the artists than buying $1000 worth of CDs from BMG.
Does someone at Apple actually sit down and listen to all the songs that are available for download. I've ripped songs of my own and sometimes a file will have a *blip* in it. How does Apple make sure every song is error free when they add it to iTMS.
possible better than CD quality format
You probably won't hear the higher precision of a format that claims to have higher precision than Compact Disc Digital Audio. A CD, encoded in 16/44 PCM with a decent noise-shaped dither, already pushes quantization noise far below the noise floor that the human ear can pick up. The "better quality of 24/96" is most likely just the generally better quality of more expensive stereo equipment as opposed to mass-market Philips stereo sold for $200 at Best Buy or Circuit City. The "analog warmth" is actually a gentle treble rolloff plus a bit of pleasing harmonic distortion.
Will I retire or break 10K?
They're not hard to find if you look.
Unfortunately, Clear Channel makes it really easy to find crappy artists and hard to find good artists in the car. Clear Channel often has a monopoly or near-monopoly on broadcasting recordings to a moving vehicle.
Will I retire or break 10K?
a) You don't have to buy an iPod
b) Apple says they have over 100,000 songs from independent artists and lables. And claim over 400,000 songs total. So you could figure on roughly 25% of their songs being independent. That's a fairly large number and it's likely to go up.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
is here.
Windows Media Audio with digital restrictions management encoding is encrypted, and it's decrypted, decompressed, and output through a Secure Audio Path (explanation). But because these services do in fact allow recording audio to a CD-RW disc, the limitation of no direct transcoding to MP3 is only a minor hurdle.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does it fix the "issue" where iTunes dictatorally modifies the entire directory structure to impose its own idea of how my music files should be stored? No? Until then, iTunes stays off my PC. It will take me days if not longer to get my files back to how they were before iTunes was installed.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
My understanding is that iTunes will RIP and play any format supported by QuickTime. QuickTime is extensible, so there are Ogg Vorbis and DivX codec's packaged for QT, for example.
Of course, you still can't play Ogg Vorbis on the iPod. But perhaps some day...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
"All DRM-locked forms of music distribution are a waste of money."
...
.doc files have lasted longer than 5.25" floppy disks. :-)
While I'm not a fan of DRM for many of the reasons you mentioned, realistically you could burn your music to CD's, at which point it's as "eternal" as any other CD's. Which is to sat that you'll have to copy them onto whatever format replaces CD's, the way we went through LP's, 8-tracks, cassettes, MiniDisks, 45's,
It's entirely possible that AAC+FairPlay, as pure software, might be a longer lasting format than the CD medium. I know that
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Update: What's New: iTunes 4.1.1 includes improved performance when using your iPod, addresses an incompatibility with Windows 2000 and older third-party CD burning software, and improves support for non-standard mp3 files. Also, the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" preference is now turned off by default.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Oh no! You mean the script writer would have to take ten more minutes and code in a routine to drop/recreate the playlist every 10 burns? Argh, the horror!
Many insightful and helpful observations (except from the low-life RIAA STAFF TROLLS).
Here's what will get me back into the music market:
A) An "RIAA FREE" sticker on cds in the record store. I ain't haulin' a list with me every time I go shopping. Agreed, the indy labels and independants would have to join an anti-RIAA org that could eventually become just as evil.
b) A download service that only offers "RIAA FREE" content.
Bingo. Problem Solved. Business Model Idea(TM) here worth millions, just for the taking.
.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
I'm sure it seems silly to anyone that knows computers, maybe even Apple for that matter. But that's not the name of the game. Keep in mind, Apple is not necessarily a friend to the RIAA, but it has to work with the (corrupt) organization. So if the limitation of 10 burns seems silly, it's just a way to keep the RIAA happy. Its a compromise in which I'm sure the RIAA doesn't realize what's truly possible. Too bad for them. Yay for Apple -- and us.
You're right, I should have reserved the word "retard" for this response. I didn't realize your logic was going to get even muddier.
No - WinAmp won't exist in 30 years. That's my point. You said you can still play 30-year-old records on your 30-year-old turntable. My point was that digital formats are different. You have to have archaic software that runs on the available hardware. Unfortunately for iTunes users, nobody is going to be making "AAC Player" for MacOS XXVII.
You Apple fanboys don't seem to see anything wrong with the AAC DRM. I'll lay it out for you one more time:
Apple is going to eventually stop supporting AAC and, since you're technically prohibited from copying it to another format, you'll be up shit creek when they do. How are you going to listen to all your AAC songs when Apple has moved on and you were never allowed to copy them to another format? Maybe this won't happen for 30 years, maybe it will happen in 5. Who knows.
Magnatune does most of that.
Litigious bastards
I jumped on the iTunes bandwagon last night and downloaded an album. The music I purchased is filled with rich guitar and a wealth of higher frequency sounds. It sounded ok playing from my PC, so I burned it to CD and listened to it on the way to work.
It sucked. To me, it sounded just slightly better than a 128 kbps mp3. Cymbals would sound washed out at times and the rich guitar that was supposed to be there just didn't cut it. Also, the volume level was extremely low.
I'm guessing there are some settings I can tweak, but I have some doubt as to the quality aspect. Anyone else have a similar experience?
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
You can't? It's not automatic but it's not hard to script. Here's a AppleScript script that I whipped up that could burn as many CDs as you want from a playlist, it just rotates the songs around. I haven't tested it or debugged it but it should be close.Well I have no clue on how to get HTML entities to appear properly here so just replace "& # 172;" with option-return when you are typing this into the Script Editor. Replace "& # 171;" with option-\ and "& # 187;" with shift-option-\
The point I'm making here is that this sort of copy protection on Apple's part is really just a speed bump designed to make the record labels comfortable with selling songs electronically. It's really not much of a barrier to doing what you want with the music.
Sapere aude!
And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.
You wouldn't call two completely pointless steps laborious?? Now it takes three steps to burn your songs instead of one. How is that NOT laborious????
No Neu!? Come on!
I beleive your theory is based on a novel goal, but when placed in the context of reality, is completley absurd and the rationalizations reduce to ignorance.
Copyright law protects a multitude of professions, but I want to consider two specifically: musicians and authors.
In both cases, there is a great deal of pride that goes into a creative work of art. Copyright protects their ownerships of this and ensures that no one else can take the work and claim it as their own. I don't know if you've ever done any creative work, like songs, poetry, etc., but I have, and I would be very pissed if someone else were to take credit for my creation. This protection has noting to do with money, but of due credit. This is very important.
Secondly, there is the money issue. Your ideals seem to disregard this, but it is important. What incentive is their for people to create creative works, if they will not be compensated. There is an argument to be made about musicians, and making money from concerts, but this is not my main point. Look at it from an authors standpoint. It takes a tremendous amount of time to write and edit a novel. If their was no copyright, there would be no reason to publish the book, as anyone could reproduce and redistribute the work for free. Why then would anyone invest their time in writing? There is very little value available to an author other than revenue generated for books. Sure, you can do book signings and lectures, but generally these things are not very lucrative and done only for book promotional reasons. Your donation concept only goes so far. If creative works are seen as a charity, the value in them will decrease exponentially. If the book is available for free, I'm not likely to donate once I have a copy of it. Purchasing the copy ensures the value of the material to both the author and the consumer.
I've had discussions here on Slashdot on one other occasion, but you fail to prevent any credible logic to back up your ideals. I would really like to see you think though your theory, analyze the consequences (both good and bad), and present a logical argument, but you constantly spout rhetoric.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
And again, just as a matter of principle, if you have the music (or video or whatever) in a hard copy, then any power they have to kill the files is gone.
Now, a more interesting question is, you download files. You burn them to CD. You move to Taiwan or someplace. Apple (or whoever) says, you're being naughty, you can't use those files anymore, and revokes your license to use them.
Are the files on your CD rendered illegal copies?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
But with a CD, I have to go to the store buy it, return home, and rip it. Or wait until it gets delivered to me if purchased online.
Poor little baby, wants his music now can't be bothered to have to FUCKING WAIT a little bit, or put EFFORT into something. Got to have that INSTANT FUCKING GRATIFICATION!
Grow up.
Or better yet, just blow your brains out with a glock. We need less people like you.
"Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports."
And a sizeable chunk of it goes to the record company, which invested tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CD's production.
Lots of people's hard work goes into the production of a typical CD of music. I'm not just referring to suits, but creative, talented people who sweated over an instrument, a mixing board, or a Mac and a Wacom tablet because they love music. In most cases, the artist did not front all of the substantial amount of money required to produce the CD. That's the record company's job, and the record company stays in business by recouping expenses when the music is sold.
"Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive."
So 75% goes to the artist (for your sake I'll include compulsories and mechanicals here, which are normally not calculated as part of an artist's compensation), another 6% goes to the credit card company for the transaction processing, and let's say 9% goes to Apple to cover the software development, bandwidth, technical support, and so on. This leaves ten cents per track for the record company.
If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce (remember, studio time can be upwards of $500,000.00 for an entire album nowadays), this means that the track would have to be downloaded a half a million times just to break even. That's half a million paid downloads, not counting Kazaa's share, for which the artist and the record company get nothing. While the superstars might expect half a million paid downloads over a reasonable amount of time, most artists -- those ones who are just getting by -- just aren't going to see that traffic in any decent period of time.
By the way, I run my own online business. I call the shots, and I've put a lot of work into it. The business wouldn't be around were it not for the software I've written myself. I don't deal with hard goods and my expenses are low. Yet I don't make anything close to the 75% net margin that you say that musicians should get. Most people don't. Your expectation that musicians should get 75% net margin is unrealistic.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce
Then it's time to get your fucking costs under control.
High recording costs are a function of the high price of recorded music not the other way round. High quality recordings can be, and are, made for a fraction of that cost. The price of recording equipment has never been cheaper than it is today.
These inflated costs are nothing more than a means for the recording industry to distribute the money amongst a select few, and justify the small pecentage they pay the artist. They are a con bordering on fraud.
Well, really it takes one step to burn. Three steps to convert protected AAC into an unprotected MP3/OGG/Whatever. That is, unless you just hijack the audiostream and put it straight into a WAV or whatever. Which is ultimately the problem with DRM anyways. If you can actually listen to the music, then it will be possible to copy it to some unprotected format and distribute it.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
touche'
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
Costs can vary widely. Bruce Springsteen once recorded an entire album in his kitchen on a Tascam Portastudio. Yet union session musicians can cost several hundreds of dollars a day, as can a good producer and a good engineer. Studio rental costs can vary widely, as well, depending on type and quality of the equipment, the area in which it's located, and the skills and experience of the staff.
It's a free market economy, and generally speaking, you get what you pay for. If you know the secret to charging $100 a day and delivering the same start-to-finish quality as a studio that charges $2,000.00 a day, then that's what you should be doing. "Just stop charging so much for studio time" and other simple bromides are not the solution.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
agh...yeah...you got me. The main point ..kinda.. remains.
Too little, too late.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Here's an email I sent to iTunes yesterday and then the reply from iTunes:
.....more blah blah about backing up your music
>
I think I lost the files that I downloaded on my last purchase. I
thought that I could download them again, but after reading the FAQ it seem like
that doesn't seem to be the case. I was wondering why iTunes chose not to allow
people to download multiple times. If bandwidth is your concern, then you could
limit downloads to once a month, or come up with a similar solution. I don't
plan to buy any more songs from iTunes if this policy stays the same.
thanks for your concern, have a nice day.
(please forward this email to the appropriate person if it's not your topic,
thanks)
>
Dear Alkas,
Thank you for contacting iTunes Music Store Customer Service.
The Music Store Team has carefully considered your request for a new download.
As a gesture of goodwill, we have re-granted your download access for your order
history.
Please note that this is a one-time exception to the iTunes Music Store's Terms
of Service, which clearly states that you will be responsible for backing up
your own system. In the interest of fairness to all customers, the Music Store
Team will be unable to make additional exceptions for you. To download again,
open iTunes 4 and select Check for Purchased Music from the Advanced menu.
I predict you will be waiting a very long time for your uber music service. The idea of not wanting to buy from a store that does business with the RIAA is laughable. Your concept of paying the artists 75% of the costs is another nice one, too; tell me, how many items that sell for under a dollar have margins of less than 25%? I suppose that you would also require that the independent labels pay for all costs of producing the record and are limited in the return that they make.
Anyways, good luck waiting for this service. I doubt you could raise enough capital to run the server farms, as it looks like a terrible business proposition.
And honestly, enough complaining about the "evil" record labels and the angelic recording artists. No one is forced to sign a record label contract with a gun to their head. THe artists that go the major label route have obviously done the calculation and decided that's what they want to do. Many of the these artists are every bit as greedy as the record label execs (who, despite their consistent ability to ignore their contracts and steal from their performers, are only marginally profitable), and many record label employeers do it more out of love for music than money.
Until then, go ahead and stick with your RIAA-free music. I'm sure there are hundreds of labels that put out great music, and I bet most of these guys sell their stuff direct. But unless the artists pays for the album production out of their own pockets, they'll never see anywhere close to 75% of the retail cost going straight back to them.
OK then I'll give you a studio budget of $10,000 dollars per day, to cover a few session musicians, studio time, engineer and producer. That's a good budget, I know of very high prouction quality albums that have been put together for that sort of total budget. Now if it costs you $50,000 to produce a single track that means you've spent five days in the studio to produce that track. If it takes you that long to produce one track then you weren't ready to go into the studio in the first place, and your costs are out of control.
You're also correct that many ten-song CDs have been completed in just a couple of weeks. Then there are CDs like Dark Side of the Moon which took considerably longer. "Just start taking less time to make CDs" is also over-simplifying it.
With the vast variation in musical genres, speeds at which people work, and many other variables, I don't think there's a universal standard to which everybody should be held lest they be labelled "out of control." It may just so happen that the sort of music you prefer is the type that can be produced in a short amount of time and with minimal expense, and that's perfectly fine, but at the same time, you'll recognize that it's not everybody's preference. Music costs what it costs to make, and I don't think there are any rights or wrongs here.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
OK, the issue is one of the following:
1. You are not a native english speaker. I recommend you don't insult people when you don't understand what they are saying. It makes you look like an idiot.
2. You are a native english speaker. You are an idiot.
My comparison to 45 RPM records (those were small, round platters of black material used to contain music, if you aren't familiar with them) was that technology from 30 years ago isn't even relevant anymore. The records I used to listen to, I no longer have. The player I used to utilize to play those records I no longer have. The tastes I had in music 30 years ago, I no longer have.
The concern that these AAC files will be a waste because you won't have an AAC player in 30 years, or 10 years is silly since, even with a player, the likelihood that you will still want to use them is slim. You can always store them on CD for long term storage (just buy CDs rated for long term storage). The music you know you will want for a long time - music that stands the test of time can still be purchased on *real* media (Basie, Beatles, Bach)
This is not unlike current media distribution on CD - the CD may have higher quality sound, but the majority of music on these CDs is horrible.
So Apple and others are giving you the chance to purchase just the songs you want, albeit at a lesser quality level (but still high enough for *most* listeners).
So yes, I don't see anything wrong with DRM (Apple's or otherwise). Right now the music industry has the right to control how their product is distributed. If their DRM efforts results in them losing money due to fan backlash, then they will either change or die. That's the way the market works. So far, based on the numbers of people buying this stuff, you anti-DRM fanboys are pretty much in the minority.
Personally, I don't buy music online and am unlikely to. I am old fashioned enough that, if I want something, I don't want to have my only copy in an ephemeral state (bits on a fragile hard drive). I'd rather buy the CD and rip a copy for conveniently listening on my MP3 player.
You also seem to forget that most kids buying this stuff have been brought up on instant gratification. They know nothing about saving for the future or recognizing these transient desires. They just gotta have it now. Apple, et al are feeding a market - it is what they are in business to do. Good for them.
Then there are CDs like Dark Side of the Moon which took considerably longer. "Just start taking less time to make CDs" is also over-simplifying it.
Pink Floyd could afford a lot of studio time, by the time they made Dark Side of the Moon they were an established act with a massive following. They could afford big costs, and they could afford to be inneficient. Most acts can't afford such a luxury. The big record companies complain that they make a loss on most CD's, and that a few big sellers subsidize the majority of acts losses.
Music costs what it costs to make
Now that is an over simplification. An efficient operation can undercut an inefficient one. The big record companies can afford to be inneficient because they rely on cross subsidies, and the artist bears the biggest brunt of any losses.
It may just so happen that the sort of music you prefer is the type that can be produced in a short amount of time and with minimal expense, and that's perfectly fine, but at the same time, you'll recognize that it's not everybody's preference.
Actually my taste in music is broad and varied. But since you brought up Dark Side of the Moon, here's a link to an album that more than matches it for production quality, and complexity. I couldn't tell you off hand what it cost, (next time I bump into one of the guys involved I'll ask), but i can guarantee it wont have cost anything like $50,000. In music, like software, there is little correlation between cost and quality.
1) You can buy the one track you like for $.99; saves you $8.99!
... it's been mentioned here a million times.
2) AAC at 128 sounds great to me.
3) You do get the cover art.
4) Of course you can convert the AAC to MP3
to write 1400 words when a small table would do nicely
...
i do.
i can't get cds where i live so i download them off the internet. i have bought about half my cd collection as a direct result of downloading music off of napster, kazaa, winmx, edonkey, overnet.
so they have made musicians money. they've cost musicians money too. but some people don't suck.
i mean me. --*I*-- don't suck.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Let's draw an analogy to physical CD's. If you buy them in the US, you can then move abroad and play them. But you can't (legally) buy any more US-only CD's. Of course, with physical products the usual answer is to buy from a US mail order company, paying with a US credit card, then shipping abroad. It's a hassle, but not exactly a new issue. Try ordering (from the US) from amazon.co.uk and you run into the same issue.
:-)
If it makes you feel better, Apple did in fact allow they guy who complained about losing access to his music after moving to Canada to re-authorize his music. He can't buy any more from iTMS (darned contracts) but he didn't lose access to anything, other than for the time it took to wrestle with customer support, which I recall was a few days.
You make a good point, that DRM gives some degree control over stuff you've bought to the content owner (or store, etc.). In Apple's case, they only have control at the instant when you authorize your computer, so once you've got your music they'll leave you alone. Except apparently that if you move to a new machine you need to authorize it against an account with a US credit card. But they don't check permissions every time you play, or every time you boot, etc., which is what could allow them to revoce someone's license" so it's a fairly benign DRM scheme. Of course, if you're really concerned, burn everything to an audio CD after you buy it, and it's yours as long as you keep the disk. CD-R's are cheap.
Apple's also said that once you buy music it's yours, and that if you move, etc., they're not going to disable it. Pragmatically speaking, once your computer is authorized for your music, Apple never hears from it again, so there's no way that they could disable it. Even when you buy music, it doesn't affect the DRM, though they could decide that they can't sell you more music if you've moved to where they can't legally sell you music. But they can't disable your music (AFAIK) once it plays.
This is in contrast to some more "enthusiastic" DRM schemes (pretty much all of them) which check permissions on a per-file use, and can limit what actions you can take with your music. I've seen systems where you _can_ disable files on your computer whenever the content author wants. That's seriously creepy. So I agree with your basic point. I just don't think that Apple's DRM is a good example of that risk. Admittedly, Apple could modify their DRM software to be more intrusive, but so far they've acted with the consumer's interests in mind more than any other DRM vendor, so they don't worry me as much as others...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
It's Apple's fault that it reorganized an entire partition on my hard drive without any advance notice.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
The iTunes Music Store uses AAC files that most players can't play. But you can transfer mp3s to a variety of other players using iTunes. I have an iPod and at old Rio 500 that both work perfectly with iTunes
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
And a sizeable chunk of it goes to the record company, which invested tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CD's production. ...
If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce (remember, studio time can be upwards of $500,000.00 for an entire album nowadays)
This argument is 100% BS. I personally know people in the music biz who have built fully-equipped, acoustically optimized home studios for less than $50,000 and the recordings they produce are every bit as good as those that come out of Nashville. In fact, I've heard recordings of cover songs that sound better than the originals simply because they were better musicians and had more time to relax and do things right.
By the way, I run my own online business. I call the shots, and I've put a lot of work into it. The business wouldn't be around were it not for the software I've written myself. I don't deal with hard goods and my expenses are low. Yet I don't make anything close to the 75% net margin that you say that musicians should get. Most people don't. Your expectation that musicians should get 75% net margin is unrealistic.
The net margin a musician makes depends on their own costs. They do the recording. They do the touring. (And touring is far more profitable than recording anyhow) All the online service does is provide a mechanism to easily distribute to a very wide audience. Their overhead is very minimal so they don't need to charge much for their services. That 75% actually gives a very large margin to the online service. Reportedly indie artists using Apple's store can get around 90%. Competition will make this a driving factor.
The idea of not wanting to buy from a store that does business with the RIAA is laughable.
People said the same thing about other "unstoppable" monopolies... IBM, Standard Oil, etc.
Your concept of paying the artists 75% of the costs is another nice one, too; tell me, how many items that sell for under a dollar have margins of less than 25%? I suppose that you would also require that the independent labels pay for all costs of producing the record and are limited in the return that they make.
The cost of producing albums, besides time to write the music itself, is negligible today. And I never said that 75% wouldn't be shared with people who help put the band together. Any smart musician today starts their own "label" (aka. personal business), so it's kinda the same thing anyhow. And equally, any smart musician realizes that the big money is in touring, not recording. That's how most RIAA artists even exist, since they typically don't even see any royalties unless they're in the top 10%. Ergo, if an album is now negligibly cheap to produce, why even bother trying to limit its popularity by charging money for it? That just limits the advertising for your performances! Sure, that doesn't work for everyone, but more no-name folks need to give it a shot.
And honestly, enough complaining about the "evil" record labels and the angelic recording artists. No one is forced to sign a record label contract with a gun to their head. THe artists that go the major label route have obviously done the calculation and decided that's what they want to do.
Just like people willingly choose Microsoft products because they're the best around, meet all their needs perfectly, never break, and are really cheap too! You don't need a gun to force people; you just need a monopoly. Before the Internet, the RIAA was the only game in town. All things change.
Okay, so we all agree that the point I was making all along is correct: DRM results in an ultimately disposable product.
As soon as Apple decides it's had enough of the music biz, media player support for AAC files is going to wane, and shortly thereafter all these downloaded files become worthless.
Your other points are irrelevant. Yes - you can burn and rerip, but that's a lot of work for 1500 AAC files. Yes - you probably won't want to hear Justin Timberlake in 30 years. But the point remains - someday all your AAC files are going to be worth $0.
Uh.... HUH? There aren't export restrictions on CDs. And the only restrictions on DVDs are those which the DVD Consortium artificially imposed. Which is technically in massive breech of a number of international free-trade treaties.
But you're right about everything else. Perhaps Apple is a bad example, since they're at least trying to be the Good Guys here. But just as a matter of principle, I won't buy music which the copyright holder can suddenly decide to take away from me. Like those suckers who bought into MusicMatch (I think that's who), who later discovered that if they don't continue paying a monthly fee, all their paid-for music goes away.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
"Uh.... HUH? There aren't export restrictions on CDs. And the only restrictions on DVDs are those which the DVD Consortium artificially imposed. Which is technically in massive breech of a number of international free-trade treaties."
If you live in the US and you try to buy a CD from amazon.co.uk they'll tell you that they can't sell it to you. This isn't due to an export restriction, but because they're selling products that they're only licensed to sell in the UK. You have to go to amazon.com to buy in the US.
This is because (for example) the same album may be licensed to different companies to sell in the US and UK, and those companies have exclusive contracts. So if you have the exclusive license to sell an album in the US, you'll complain if a company in the UK is selling into the US (and costing you money).
It's not a matter of export restrictions, but of licensing contracts.
I agree, though, that the region coding on DVD's is pretty miserable. Companies can control where they allow their products to be sold, but once they're sold they shouldn't be able to control where they're used. Good thing region free DVD players are becoming so common (outside the US).
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Huh? Because you know somebody who's completed a track for less than $50K, my argument is "100% BS?" It was an example, folks, and despite anecdotal examples of spending more or less, the fact remains that many albums have cost tens or hundreds of thousands to produce. This isn't a fact that you or I can change.
Do you have a citation for the report that iTMS pays indie artists 90%? If so, that's great news.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
$1 is far too much for an audio track in a lossy format, not to mention including annoying restrictions on playback. I'd pay at most 25c for lossy audio. I'd pay $1, including dowload costs (at the very least 25c per track).
It is a great way to check out music.
Real artists do what they do because they love to, have an uncontrollable need to create. Earning a living from it happens to be a bonus.
As a musician I wouldn't want to have to make money off live performances. There is nothing worse than having to run from place to place playing live. We can make money from selling our music, if we can cut out the current criminal syndicates that control music distribution.
everything will eventually be worthless those cd's will get lost, scratched, records scratched, lost, or in one interesting case melted... I don't see your point still. I guess some things will last longer then others but it still loses value over time. mmmmm.entropy.....
...and if you like Billy Corgan, you sometimes get 7 (different) sings on the CD single, and it only costs 3.99 or whatever :-)
Stick Men
You do realize there were many books before the first copyright laws were passed in 1708.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park