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Warp Records Reject DRM, Go Bleep
DJ Phase writes "Warp Records, an independent label for electronic music (featuring artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada), has made their entire back catalog available thru Bleep, a new digital download service. Individual tracks are $1.35 for those of us in the USA, with EPs and full albums in the $4 to $10 price range. You can download Aphex Twin's rare, groundbreaking Hangable Auto Bulb EP for $4.29. To quote from the FAQ: 'We are at present the only store to offer very high quality MP3 files,' and 'Bleep music has no DRM or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals'."
I believe potential criminals should be treated like customers too.
But given the color scheme on their website, they treat all their customers as if they wear sunglasses while using a computer.
www.magnatune.com
This was even a story on here a couple months ago...
Thank goodness it is Warp Records I get to reward for avoiding DRM, and not K-Tel.
They wouldn't regularly be pirated and be resold if they weren't already pirates themselves.
I plan to buy atleast two albums from this place tomorrow when I go to work and can download them faster.
I like the genre already, and I apperciate the token respect.
Been reading about this on the IDM list .. and just when I had written Warp of as a bunch of old-timers.
Although I own most of the Warp CD back-catalog already (yes I'm trying to impress all you spotters out there) I look forward to emptying my wallet of cash on all the old vinyl tunes I never bought.
And I can listen on my Mac, my Zaurus, and my linux machine, no need to do the time-consuming DRMBULLSHIT->MP3 conversions!!!
(PS: I get a kick out of the folks who now refuse to buy MP3s because they aren't as "full sounding" as CDs. Didn't we go through this already with vinyl???? I'm happy to listen to MP3s on my shitty MP3 player and shitty headphones, thanks.)
Unencumbered, high quality digital music. With an explicit 'we choose not to treat customers like slime' policy. This is the sort of service I've been waiting for.
iTunes didn't cut it on either point, but it was moot anyway since I'm forbidden from buying from them in the first place due to geography.
Newer compression schemes may be superior to mp3, but as far as accessibility is concerned, mp3 is hard to beat. Nearly anything will play it with absolutely no hassles, including (most importantly for me) your average linux distribution and the iPod. The only thing that would make this perfect would be if there were an option for downloading the music in a lossless format, so one can recode to one's prefered compression scheme.
Now the only question is, is there anything there that I want to listen to?
You might not have heard of them, but lots of people have. Lots of people who might not be avid Slashdot readers or care much about the issues usually discussed here. And they're artists who -- until now -- haven't generally been available on other download services. For those of thus who like the stuff Warp puts out, this is a good thing.
and especially not on dance/techno/electronica/whatever the heck this stuff is, but I have only heard of two of the 'bout 100 artists they even list.
That would explain why you haven't heard of most of those artists. I couldn't name you any Country Music artists other than Garth Brooks... that doesn't mean a thing.
It was a good MP3
I have been pwned because my
Was that the last thing the server said after this article got posted on Slashdot?
I subscribe to eMusic.com which has independent artists. The use the subscription method, but you get MP3s and most are high bit rate. I also buy electronica music at WombMusic.com, they have up and coming DJs and artists and sell MP3s by the song. The bitrates range from 192 to 320 (plenty for my ears). If you want to know if you like a DJ you can listen to the song or watch them spin live at TheWomb.com. (Or I just open my office window and listen to them from accross the street.) ;)
For continuing to be groundbreaking in everything you do.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You mean *you* haven't heard of these artists. I've been listening to experimental electronic music for, hell, more than a decade, and I own most of the CDs that Warp ever put out. Warp is like the grandaddy of the "intelligent electronic listening music" (IDM, EBM, "braindance", whatever) and it's cool to see this. Some of that old vinyl goes for hundred's of $$$.
It would be cool to see this stuff on iTunes too but this is great.
Okay, so you think it's good because you've heard of it? I appreciate that there are certainly some good, popular, major label bands. But I've found lots of great bands on MagnaTune. I see no reason why Bleep can't do something similar. Non-DRM encumbered music, high quality recordings, and good music are a big draw for me. Being able to preview and play through bands and genres that I might otherwise not hear on the radio is an even bigger draw. Surfing around on MagnaTune is a FUN activity for me - it has brought back some of the joy I used to take in music that has really felt dead to me in recent years.
Nobody has ever heard of most of these artists.
Don't you mean YOU have never heard of any of these artists? Warp Records is, by far, the most influential and important electronic music label on earth. Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Plaid, Tortoise, Oval, Nightmares on Wax, are all on the top of the pile as far as really good electronic music is concerned. Just because YOU have never heard of them doesn't mean nobody else has... walk through the halls of the school I go to and you're just as likely to hear an Autechre track as you are Britney Spears.
sig.
Uhm, not exactly.
Warp was (and to some degree still is) THE pioneering label for experimental electronic music. Aphex Twin, who you might not have heard of, is definitely a major influence in a lot of music today. With the increasing use of synths in modern music, you can even hear Warp's influence in music that isn't strictly electronic.
I think it would be fair to say that Warp is the "Blue Note" of jazz music, but I admit that I don't know much at all about jazz, so that might be a dumb thing to say.
Warp records (and Brian Behlendorf, head of the Apache project!) are even responsible for the name of the genre on the label. It's called "IDM" which is short for "Intelligent Dance Music", a name that sounds incredibly stupid and pompous now, especially since much of the music categorized in that genre isn't danceable. But in a post to his new "idm" mailing list back in 1993, brian said he made up the name because of Warp's "Artificial Intelligence" compilations.
Anyway, Warp isn't a major label, but it's defintiely one of the huge, influential indies, so it's nothing to sneeze at.
Well, why bother commenting if this doesnt affect you? As an avid fan of Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and the like, I am overjoyed to hear that I am able to hear some of the rare tracks.
To say that this isn't a major breakthrough is wrong. It's a record label, maybe not a HUGE record label that wants to rake in all the money it can get its grubby hands on, but a record label none the less. They are opening up the audio archives and allowing people to hear songs that probably only a few have heard.
And on that note, this is the perfect chance for people to preview these artists. Who knows, maybe they will start to like Intelligent Dance Music?
Yeah I'm heartbroken that I can't download Brittany Spears from the service. Instead I can buy the really cool bands that I listened to as a young teenager. I can't help you if you haven't got taste. Maybe you should invest in some of the files offered on the service.
The point is that this is the way that songs should be sold on the internet - whole back catalogues offered by the labels themselves. Maybe one day we can have some API that will let companies offer many labels' music from one site, but right now the lowest-common-denominator approach taken by Apple and others will not promote competition and better deals for customers.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Simple as that. They're trying to do everything we've wanted to see in online music. Support them, and show that it CAN work.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Wow, their bands run the gamut from A to... well, B.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I really gotta hand it to the folks at Warp for knowing better... the material on their label is not pop. No, you're not going to know every act on their label, and that's the point. They release the best and most diverse electronic type music of any label.
... but Warp is one of those rare labels you can probably randomly buy something out of their catalogue and appreciate it... of course, if you like that kind of music.
Some of their acts may be more well known, like Aphex Twin and The Black Dog (The latter also makes up Plaid with two members out of Black Dog)
Wildly experimental... electronic, blips, bleeps, some dance, some not, highly remixable, highly unsual, not your typical pop formulaic stuff that is structured perfectly into a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, break, chorus to fade type list of things to include in a song. Dare I say... a lot of stuff probably would be considered the electronic equivilent of jazz music.
Highly recommended for those who actually don't mind listening to the atypical electronic stuff.
But hey... I'm excited now, Warp has shown that they're aware of who their buyers are and will treat them like they should be treated: Customers, not criminals. KUDOS!
At first glance, I guess the reason Wrap Records (and most electronic music (EM) companies/artists I imagine) and artists do not complain too much about music piracy and some what embraces it, lays on the nature of the music itself. I believe most EM artists earn their salary through live shows at clubs, festivals, radio appearances, etc, rather than cd sales. By allowing the public to get to know the artist's music, if the fans like it, the more popular this artist gets, the more people at EM events, the more money for the artists. Because EM is not as big as most other genres, in most cases there is not enough budget to manufacture an image for these artists, so talent and popularity, based on the quality of the music itself is what determines the artist's success. Unlike most mainstream music, electronic music focuses on the music itself rather than the artist's image.
:D
Then again, it might just be because most EM comes from Europe (specially Holland, Germany) which well is very open about the whole music piracy issue
[alk]
If anyone's intrigued by this idea but hasn't heard enough Warp tracks to know what's good, I would strongly recommend checking out "Come to Daddy" by Aphex Twin. It's only 8 tracks, so it should be pretty cheap.
"Selected Ambient Works" is also quite good, especially for those times when you want to listen to something subtle but your brother in law has borrowed your whale music CD. Seriously, this guy is very talented. And he drives a tank (no, it's not a joke link - just a strange domain).
Finally, I'm still waiting for the Bleep page to load up, so does anyone know if their artist's videos are alsofor sale? Squarepusher's "Come On My Selector" is my favourite video of all time.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
The catalog is a bit light on the options but there's definitely some tasty aphex twin in there and some prefuse73 and others. The sections currently are:
The check out and download was quite simple: Most of the detail below...
1. Registration was quite easy. just name email address and password.
2. they're taking paypal and mc/visa and SMS text message.
3. They report as you put things in your cart. "Total download size" of my purchase in XX.XX MB and Estimated download time (via 512K DSL/Cable)in MM:SS. The 512k DSL measure is actually accurate for my connection so I'm not sure if they are sniffing or if that is just a metric they decided to standardize on.
4. With my purchases, (indeed the old Aphex Twin stuff (good stuff BTW)) I tried to use paypal and got a " Waiting for a paypal payment report..." in the checkout pane and it kept refreshing but reporting nothing.
5. So I bit my lip and hit the back button (I'm using Mozilla 1.6b). and amazingly enough was actually back at my Paypal Credit/Debit Card option.
6. Checkout was pretty standard and very straightforward with a few unusual options I wasn't used to (I'm from the U.S. so maybe some of this stuff is normal in the U.K./Europe)
7. Interestingly theres the follow card descriptions in the dropdown. Electron Eurocard Mastercard Visa Visa Debit
8. Expiry date are xx Month and xxxx year which is nice unlike the annoying (to me anyway) spelling of the month option
9. There is also a "For Switch and Solo cards only:" Section with "Start Date:" "Issue Number:" fields
10. Strangely you then only have the option to add this information you've filled out to your profile.
11. You then loop through a more normal check out where you can select the card you want to use from a dropdown or add a new card (presumably you'd loop through what I just went through)
12. and you get "When you select 'Process Order' below your card will be debited with the total amount of $X.XX" info and are given a process order button.
13. The frame refreshes and you get "ORDER CONFIRMATION" message and "Your order has been processed succesfully." and a "DOWNLOAD YOUR ORDER" option.
14. It chugged a bit then spit back my dowloads as one big zip or as each track. with the following info below. "Click on the links above to download your tracks. PC users: You will be presented with a 'Save As...' dialog box, use this to choose the location on your local hard drive you wish to save the file too. MAC users: By default tracks will download to your Desktop, unless you have specified otherwise in your browser preferences."
15. I selected the ZIP option and the frame reloads with a bit of chugging then
"ZIPPING YOUR ORDER" "Your order is zipped and ready for download..." "Once your order has started downloading then you may continue browsing the site."and a "DOWNLOADS" button to click.
16: the Download time was respectable even with the site getting slashdotted and every IDM geek, all of which are plugged into computers incessantly (ahem... unlike myself. That's why I'm so tan... or something...), checking it out at the same time.
17: oh also, across the top nav you get the following options: LOGGED IN AS emailuser@emailaddress.tld - LOG OUT - YOUR ORDER - DOWNLOADS - PREFERENCES - FAQ - HELP - That's pretty much it. Damn well done I'd say.
Heil Sig! -Rob
...but here it goes again. there is a digital download service featuring independent artists called audiolunchbox that offers DRM free decently high quality mp3 and ogg downloads, it's great and is comparable in price to all the other services so far available. the slashdot crowd needs to pick up on this and fast, we can show the recording industry that this is what we want.
taken from the bleep.com faq section...
Q: WHY MP3 ?
A: MP3 is the most popular and universal format for digital music. It is the format that people most want, that is the easiest to play freely without any restrictions. We are also considering selling other files formats such as the second generation of lossy formats such as AAC or ogg or even lossless compressed formats such as FLAC or Monkeysaudio. If people are willing to pay a premium for the bandwidth cost they incur, then even 24bit versions of files could be sold.
I clicked on the Add to Cart link for the set (ignoring the preview streams, since honestly, I would buy it anyways), and after checking the privacy policy (nothing will be sold, bartered, sent to you, etc for any reason) I tried to create a new account. I was told my email was already in use, and found out that the old regular warprecords.com accounts were conveniently auto-generated for bleep.com, so I just signed in, passed through the normal checkout stuff, entered in my credit card, and two clicks later I had the option of downloading individual tracks or a ZIP of all the music.
I opened this ZIP and found that they were named "01.mp3; 02.mp3" and so on. Sort of annoying, that. The quality is standard 128-320 kb/sec VBR MP3. Winamp gave the MP3s the following properties:
MPEG 1.0 layer 3 (VBR)
44100Hz Joint Stereo
CRCs: No
Copyrighted: No
Original: Yes
Emphasis: None
The ID3v1+2 tags were entered in fully, and included the following description in "encoded by":
LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard
AFAIK, LAME is the best encoder out there, so Warp apparently knows what they're doing. The MP3s sound great. One caveat--when you buy a song or album, you are buying *that download*. Downloads did not remain in any way accessible after the initial post-purchase links were accessed, so you had better hope the download doesn't get broken or lost.
The Good
--Quality encoding, even if it is VBR.
--No DRM (obviously)
--Fast download
--Easy to use store and site navigation
--ID3 Tags fully filled out
--Album prices are great
The Bad
--Generic filenames
--Downloads aren't held as permissions on the site for redownload later
--Single download prices could be better (blame UK conversion)
All in all, I liked Warp before and that might influence how useful this site is to me, but I was satisfied with only a few very small problems, and am looking forward to more downloads.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's very impressive, as long as they don't insist on gouging customers for bandwidth. It shouldn't cost more than $2 tops to transfer a full 24-bit album uncompressed.
This is the future of digital music downloads, at least for real music enthusiasts and hardcore fans: get the original masters, higher quality than CDs. I can't stress enough that this is a good thing.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
...why is Drukqs a corrupt "copy protected" CD in Germany? Was it re-mastered by another company beyond Warp's control or something?
Quack, quack.
for non-commercial use, and non-commercial sharing.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
By that I mean, for a start:
- No. Flash-intros I have to click "skip" to even see the site are not cute, nor do they "brand" you as anything but an annoyance.
- It's perfectly acceptable to have text be text. You don't actually have to make all your text-links in the form of small gifs with text on them.
- We don't actually *need* a "unique" navigation-system on every site. A menu across the top, or along the left border will do fine thank you.
- Not everyone has the same font-size configured. If your design looks fucked in anything but the size you use (i.e. elements come out ontop of eachother) your design sucks.
Look at the Really successful sites. It's no accident that they all follow all of these rules, more or less. You can fully utilize Yahoo, Ebay, Slashdot and Etrade without being forced to deal with any of this crap.I will even - and lean in close here, peckerheads - pay for stuff that I already downloaded for free just to get the aforementioned nice ID tags and bitrate quality I want, not to mention knowing the artists get their due. Yup. And seeing as I would have paid for those tracks I'm not about to go throwing them on a P2P - they're mine.
Also, I'm not in the continental United States but last time I checked my currency converts into USD just fine but you won't take it (I'm talking to you, iTunes). So here I've been, out in the cold, clutching a fistful of dollars, my nose pressed up against the glass of Apple's spiffy new online music store unable to get in. Then along comes Bleep. Not only do they have stuff I couldn't find on iTunes (Boards Of Canada) but - get this - they will actually sell it to me. So I bought, and I'll keep on buying. I bought songs I had already downloaded for free. While looking for those songs I found more stuff I didn't even know I wanted and I bought those too. Hell, while downloading the big-ass zipfile I went back, had another look and now I have TWO big-ass zipfiles to download.
So in closing let me sum up: treat P2P like what it really is - free advertising and marketing info - embrace it then make the damned music available to buy at high quality and DRM free. Do you really think the success of iTunes is because it has DRM?? Do you know what would happen to sales if the tracks on iTunes suddenly went DRM free? Sales would remain constant, and would even pick up as the word got out to ornery pricks like me who just won't touch anything with DRM in it.
But you won't do any of it and Apple and other non-luddites will eat your lunch.
Bite my balls Dinosaurs,
Angry of Sydney
In many cases, the criminals are better off than the customers. Of course, in these cases the criminals are also known as "executives"
I guess that artists are more than happy with such a system.
Want to know how much iTunes gives ?
Let's overcome our weakness.
Okay, I just went there for the first time. Now, their artist selection is small. Probably too small to go anywhere. However, from a technical standpoint, they are *spot* on. Besides offering music in the format folks want, they even provide a free Internet radio station that you can listen to. If you hear something that you like, you can zip over to their web site and buy it. That's a damned intelligent system.
If I were them, I'd put out a patch for Shoutcast/Icecast in xmms and talk to the Nullsoft folks about doing the same for WinAMP to stream a "buy it" (or at least "for more information on this song") link along with each song. When a song's getting streamed, the user can just click to bring up a page in their web browser to let them buy the song (or album containing the song, or whatnot). That'd make it ideal for folks who want to sell these things. I think you'd see a lot more try-before-you-buy Internet radio stations.
May we never see th
Okay, I just signed up and downloaded EP7 by Autechre. Very cheap (as a full album purchase), very fast, certainly good enough quality for me and my iPod. I'll be using this service a lot and I hope they really clean up.
For information, payment is either standard cards or Paypal, and after purchase your tracks are made available for a standard browser-based download, either individually or in a zip file. Transfer is very fast (depending on your own connection, natch.)
There are a few oddities with prices - Sabres of Paradise's Wilmot EP is 2.99 complete, which is 1 more than the two tracks bought individually. There are also a lot of small tracks (such as the 'bolts' on Black Dog's Spanners album) that cost 99p for 20 seconds or so. But those kind of tracks you'd only really want as part of the full album, where the average price per track would be far less...
However, given that the selection of tracks and albums is very comprehensive, a few glitches are to be expected, and are easily worked around.
I urge anyone who's interested in online music and hasn't heard of Warp to give the site a try - all the files are available as previews (with fade-outs) and you'll find some wonderful stuff there. Warp's an electronica label, but a very eclectic one. If you don't get on with Aphex Twin, try Mira Calix. If you can't gel with Autechre, check out Sabres of Paradise. If Boards of Canada don't blow your kilt up, listen to The Gentle People. All unique, all worthwhile, all available.
Audiophiles note (because the 'what-no-Ogg' crowd are already in effect, I see) that the FAQ states that Warp are considering offering other codecs, including FLAC, and maybe offering higher bitrates for a higher price. Early days, though - the first thing they need is support. And here's someone who really, truly deserves it for a change.
Magnatune is a social experiment of sorts which may or may not have good music. I don't know. However, the fact I don't know whether they have any good music does say something.
Warp Records, meanwhile, was for quite awhile the most important and progressive group in electronic music, and while I haven't been paying enough attention as of late to know if they still hold this label, I know for certain they continue to push the boundaries of the art.
Perhaps they are not "first" at this particular thing, but they have been offering significant amounts of downloads as samples of parts of their albums for years.
And if you do want to get into a pissing contest of which label "got it" first, my nomination would be Astralwerks. They had, in like 1995 or some shit, I don't even remember, back around the time Dig Your Own Hole was released, before MPEG Layer III even *EXISTED* and when MPEG Layer II was a format almost no one used, realaudio offerings of absolutely huge swaths of their catalog. For most of their releases about that time, you could listen to about half the album without buying it. They also ran a web newsletter letting people know when they'd put up more music, and they'd periodically do one day events where you could listen streaming to entire albums on the day they were released. This was essentially my introduction to electronic music, and I seriously think it helped them-- it led to me buying a decent amount of Astralwerks stuff even though I had to do a decent amount of searching for it at the time...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts