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BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM
hype7 writes "BusinessWeek is running a very interesting story on Apple's foray into music, with a different bent to everyone else's. BW suggests that, instead of opening the iPod up to the world, Apple should instead license its DRM - 'Fairplay' - to anyone who wants to start up a music store. The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous; Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold); and, it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format. As the iTunes Music Store isn't running at a profit (or forecast to make a big one), having the Music Store clones eat into Apple's existing market share wouldn't be a problem; all these stores would be doing is building a bigger potential market for the iPod."
For the nth time, AAC is not "Apple's DRM technology." It is part of the MPEG-4 specifications. More info here.. To quote:
AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia--companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital). The AAC codec in QuickTime 6 builds upon new, state-of-the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
...that is a novel (and arguably appealling) tact for Apple to take, it certainly would not be true to their typical behavior (at least not while Steve Jobs is at the helm). Apple likes the 'go it alone' route, regardless of any benefits to other routes.
And of course, one has to wonder if 'ubiquity' would actually happen regardless...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I agree with this article. Adding WMA to the iPod is ludicrous (as is Rob Glaser's plea to add other support....Real.....get real!). However, licensing the DRM to AAC that Apple uses would nothing but grow the iPod marketshare because no one could complain that the iTMS is the only place to buy music for the iPod.
However,.......based on Steve's stubborness and protectiveness of Apple, I am not going to hold my breath on this one. Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.
Here's to hoping.....
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
On the other hand, Microsoft's WMA is proprietary no matter how you slice it.
The only reason iTunes has DRM in the first place is because the major labels insist on it: they like their paying customers to have more restrictions than the folks that are getting it for free, makes sense right?
Every fumbling attempt the record companies make to control and restrict music blows up in their face. Case in point, the new, bannedmusic.org which is using a BitTorrent installer packaged with a specific torrent to spread music that's run afoul of the current copyright regime. They could have made money licensing this stuff, but now there ain't nothin they can do about it.
You're wrong. AAC is an open format. http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/stan dard.html
The obvious problem is that what incentive is there for someone to open a music store with encrypted songs that are only playable on the iPod?
Musicians already have ways of submitting their music to the iTMS.
Any large conglomerate opening a music store online is generally stupid or on the "music store" bandwagon, or both. Apple pretty clearly does it because it's a selling point for iPods, and with their early appearance on the scene, they have a good chance to dominate the market until such time as it does become profitable.
So what earthly good does licensing FairPlay do for anyone?
It doesnt say that AAC is Apples DRM.. it says that Apples DRM is called 'Fairplay' and licensing that to others would increase usage of the AAC FORMAT.
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
I know apple probbaly wont agree, but looking at the sucess of OSS, doesnt it make sense for them to simply open iPod and release its source code, so anyone with lots of time to spare can write interseting and useless plugins.
These will ultimately result in the iPod becoming more popular
An apple a day keeps MS away
That's not Apple's decision to make, since they aren't the owners of AAC. And they're apparently smart enough at least to know that, unlike, say, you.
This is wise-wise-wise advice. However, why stop there? Why not make the entire DRM system a sub-set of QuickTime and get acceptance for other non-audio formats as well? QuickTime is the high-end standard and with the new Pixlet format apple already has a HD leg-up on other folks.
-_-
AAC is NOT an Apple format. It is an open standard that Apple happens to use. Apple can't license AAC. it doesn't own it.
I fail to see what Apple stands to gain from a ubiquity for the AAC format. 1 cent royalties are all well and good but won't mean anything if no one's buying from the mom&pop iTune shops of the internet. Unless these lessees can provide content that I want that I can't get anywhere else (say from iTunes), I won't be buying from them.
And if you're thinking that they would offer songs for a lower price, I doubt that would be possible. Apple isn't making anything selling them for $0.99, a smaller business can't hope to sell anything for less than that. I'd wager that they would actually charge MORE for their content.
DRM is essential to the iTunes music store. the RIAA wouldnt agree to it without some DRM. apples DRM is only mildly restricting and it is the iTunes music store that is helping to move their (already sex) iPods. being able to get music for your iPod from multiple sources should encourage more people to buy one (apple makes money) and the dont loose money becase of the compitition since their music store isnt going to make a whole lot.
hell eventualy they could back out of selling music all together if other people will do it for them.
also, you can use an iPod for data storage. as for your sexuality, youll have to talk to an expert, i have no advice on this matter
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
You're a little defensive about your manliness there buddy, I don't have to choose a certain electronics device to reassure myself that people will think I'm straight.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Check his view. Even THE Apple geek loathes Apple for their lock-in and DRM crap, and so should anyone. Just because it'S Apple doesn't mean "their" DRM is fine, while "other's" is bad.
An online store that wants to sell to iPod users merely has to provide the music in MP3 or unprotected AAC, since the iPod will accept both of those as well as Fairplay-protected AAC. You'd probably have to provide your own client to buy the music, and then use the scripting interface for iTunes to load it onto the iPod.
How would licensing FairPlay to other hardware manufacturers sell more iPods? Oh it wouldn't? Oh then I guess that's not gonna happen.
AAC can be the next audio standard, but FairPlay will not be the DRM standard. An industry DRM standard will have to be devised and then every digital music seller and player must support it. Then iTunes and iPod can continue to simply be the best digital music experience around.
Apple owns the DRM, but they certainly don't own AAC.
The only advantage (to Apple) would be that it would require QuickTime to be installed on every computer that used Fairplay. This may or may not be advantageous to Apple, depending on just how little money they're making on the iTunes Music Store.
The obvious disadvantages would be potentially fewer iPod sales and losing more money if indeed ITMS is a loss-leader.
It's probably a good option in the future if iPod sales start cracking. I wouldn't be surprised if they're looking into it.
AAC is proprietary. You must purchase patent licensing if you want to legally use the format.
Cheatsheet for this article:
AAC -- must licence from MPEG
WMA -- must licence from Microsoft.
MS DRM -- must licence from Microsoft.
Apple FairPlay -- can't licence from anyone.
So, please, let's quit pissing-n-moaning about "proprietary" -- this is all business.
That's basically why QuickTime gets installed with iTunes, although most users never notice it until after the fact.
I'm almost tempted to believe that iTunes is a trojan horse for QuickTime, allowing Apple to sneak it onto everyone's computer. Very smart idea.
I think that Jobs has his own plan in mind, though I hope he's included "flexibility".
Option 1: Stay Alone
This basically has the iPod and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) working only together. So far, this situation has proven to be the case, and it's working pretty well: the iPod is the #1 selling MP3 player out there, it's making Apple a butt load of cash (and when you try to carry money in your butt you'll know what I mean), and iTMS is the #1 online music sales system by far - 50 million songs sold compared to Roxio's 5 million. Even comaring apples to , er, apples, just within the 6 months since Napster has been out Apple has made 5 to 1 sales.
If this continues, then eventually Jobs can force out all of the "for profit" music shops out there, and boil it down to just the "for advertising" places, like Wal-Mart, Coke, and Microsoft (which would really be looking to make Windows Media Audio the default standard).
From this, Apple makes AAC the next MP3, and their DRM becomes the "de facto standard" - even though nobody else can use it. Apple makes all the money, and they like it.
This will only come true, however, if Apple keeps a huge lead. What happens when Microsoft (MS) unveals their own online music store (didn't originally they tell folks like Napster that they wouldn't? Well, nevermind that....), sells songs for $0.50 each, takes a hit on profits, and basically acts like they did with Internet Explorer. (Ignoring any antitrust issues - not that Microsoft ever has had to in the past.)
So that goes to Option 2: License the DRM
I have the feeling that Jobs will release this if and only if iTMS and iPod sales start taking a dive. It's his "ace in the hole" to keep iPod sales alive. All it will take is him going to the other stores, making an offer, and then everybody can use the iPod with any service. Sure, it could hurt iTMS removing the one thing that makes it different from everybody else - but Apple is about the hardware.
But what happens if someone like Dell or Gateway come out with their own MP3 player that starts to make the iPod look like yesterday's bulky cell phone? That's when option 3 kicks in:
Option 3: License WMV for the iPod
This one only happens when things are dire and Apple feels they finally have to put in their chips.
The question is, how likely is either option to be? I can see Option 2 and 3 as "someday, maybe" futures. But as of right now, iTMS and the iPod rules the roost, and as long as Apple keeps that up for another 12-24 months, everybody else just in it to "make money selling music" will be so marginalized it won't matter. We're more likely to see Pepsi style promotions than anything else - though Apple had already keep an eye on possible cracks in their popularity: McDonald's may have dumped a iTMS deal in favor of a Sony Online Music one already, though of course nothing is official yet.
2 years I think the dust will be settled. Until then, I'll keep saving up to buy my wife an iPod mini. Hey, if nothing else, they're cute. And she still buys lots of CD's.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's a pain in the ass, let's the RIAA and it's member dictate what you can and can't do on a per song basis. Fairplay gives every song the same Rights. Metallica doesn't want their latest album burnable to cd, no probelm MS will stop you cold. Fairplay is Fairplay for theend users. MS doesn't know what fairplay means.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Apart from the debate regarding switching one proprietary format for another, Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme is still the most lenient which is a good reason for people to support its wider use, especially in comparison to Microsoft's alternative.
> Make it so players can use the codec for FREE.
I guess you're referring to Apple's Fairplay DRM part. But AAC is a patented format, to implement it even without DRM, you also need to pay a share to Dolby. I doubt Apple is going to pay other developers their license fees.
Anyone with some cash and negotiating skills can create an online music store - and many companies have. There's no techological lock-in, exclusivity or leverage that Apple has that they can exploit, and most of the music they offer is also offered by others.
Microsoft, on the other hand, *can*, "*has* and likely *will continue to* leverage their OS monopoly to exclude others for playing in the media space. We'll see what happens when they open their music store.
When will the ipod support ogg... never?
yeah, but a light pink iPod mini won't be helping your situation any ;)
kiddding! it's not the size that matters, it's the way you groove!
They want to win with iPod.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
Just so you all know, Winamp, being the awesomely versatile player it is, CAN play AAC songs with Fairplay DRM attached, with this convenient plug-in. Of course, there are many limitations still, but that's proprietary DRM for you.
You can chart and discuss the plug-in's progress here. The older, "officially released" version of the plug-in with brief descriptions and reviews is here.
BTW, Winamp 5.03 is already out, in case you weren't informed.
If you send an email to iTunes Support, and ask them nicely, they will de-authorize all the computers on your account automatically. Just tell them you no longer have the computers you authorized and cannot de-authorize them the normal way.
Worked for me.
This makes too much business sense...Therefore Jobs will not go for it. This has been Apple's history.
Followed by:
go after people selling legitimate apple ROMs just because they weren't running on Apple's computers (Emulators and such - go Amiga).
Remind me again which company is doing better? Seems to me Apple chose the options that make business sense.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I wouldn't really call that a smart decision - but nice try.
From what I understand, iTMS was not put together for a profit - margins are too low to really make much of a profit, it's there simply to boost iPod sales, which it has been quite successful at doing. Making the iTMS a non-iPod-only store, kind of kills the purpose. Now, the idea is that if they offer the best store around, which they do, people will want to purchase an iPod so they can use iTMS store - rather than purchasing *insert iPod ripoff here* so they can use *insert iTMS ripoff here*. It's just another bonus of buying iPod.
Also, think about return customers. If your iPod dies and you've been buying AAC formated files for the past year - do you want to buy an MP3 player that doesn't support AAC?
Most albums with more than 10 songs on them are $10.
"So we help youj and Prince HumperGates suffers?"
"Humiliations galore!"
"Let's go!"
(yes, I know these aren't the exact words... work with me here)
*snerk* Yeah, Apple sure has suffered lately under their boneheaded, non-visionary leadership.
Hell, if they get any worse, their competitors are going to have to start going out of business just to keep from humiliating Apple...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I hope Apple doesn't do this, because it will make it much harder for them to drop DRM in the future. Instead of doing as they should by pressuring the RIAA members to allow DRM-free downloads, Apple would implicitly support DRM to protect their new revenue stream. The RIAA needs to realize that DRM doesn't work, and that those who purchase the music generally don't infringe anyway.
I'm going to guess that Apple probably legally can't license the Fairplay technology. I imagine that the RIAA probably has Apple locked into some super restrictive contract that makes it so only Apple can use Fairplay, even though they made it.
After all, (outside of Apple being Apple), why wouldn't they have done it already?
Somebody needs to tell Corey that the three authorizations aren't so that he can give one or two away. If he wanted his mom to have an iTunes account, he should have set her up on a separate account.
"Who cares about fancy colors or buttons."
There are these people called women I suggest you do some research on.
-_-
Dude what?! Yeah Apple was like haha lets stick it to these punks by adding DRM for no reason. And lets charge high prices for the tracks even though we could charge a lot less. Do you not realize that both the DRM and the price were dictated by the greedy record labels as a condition for coming on board with the iTunes Music Store? Do you have any clue at all?
And so you also think that if people get used to buying music online, they are no longer going to download free music from small bands? I would think that most people were not used to getting legitimate music online, but now that they are being introduced to it, they will be MORE likely to seek out music on the web. Especially FREE music!
And on that note what about the idea of smaller bands suddenly being able to distribute their music through iTunes? You know bands that can't get their CDs into huge record stores? They work hard and now they COULD get paid! Did you think of that? Then more people will go see them live. You won't be the only one at the show! WOW!
Apple has sold about 30 million songs through the iTunes music store. All told, if they had licensed their FairPlay technology and let someone else open a store and sell those 30 million songs, they would have raked in a cool $300,000 dollars at a penny per song.
Apple is already losing money through the store, and while outsourcing it would have staved off costs, they'd still be very much in the red. Imagine if they now started operating their money-losing store in competition with another money-losing store. Gee, lots of winners there, aren't there?
What it comes down to is they need every penny they can from their own store, and competing with someone else for a crowd they now have a monopoly on won't work -- even if it does sell more iPods, it's going to chip away at their image of being a simple, single source. One application, one portable player, one store, one sign-on, etc. etc.
Perhaps the issue isnt' with control, but with teh fact that Microsoft has shown time and again they will use that control to make your life hell. Apple has not.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
boo frickin hoo.
why aren't they on his iPod?
He can afford to buy a new Powerbook every 10 months but can't afford an iPod?
OK, now that I've said all that, it IS an interesting perspective on DRM as a whole, if Cory - as a literate, knowledgeable computer user- can screw things up, so can all the regular jamokes who are pretty clueless.
I like microcars
All hail FatWallet:
Here are some legal (in Russia!) MP3 download sites - most flat fee:
allofmp3.com
This site is locally legit and songs can be downloaded for as little as $0.01 per MB. That's around 3 cents per song.
DELit
Unusual emphasis on hard rock and metal acts (east European and Russian youth apparently worship metal acts)
3MP3.ru
$4.55 per month for unlimited downloads.
And you are not stuck with the typical iTMS low-quality 128Kbit file. Most of the Russian sites let you choose your quality and give you the option to do "online encoding" where you can select the settings you want. When the pop up screen shows up you can hit switch to advanced mode toward the bottm and you get the following options:
You can choose between the LAME or BLADE codec and 128, 160, 192, 256, and 320 kbps for each (constant bitrate). Or you can choose LAME variable bitrate at 128, 160, 192, or 256.
If you enjoy these services, 3MP3 should be your first stop to see if you can find what you are looking for at the lowest price. Then I'd move to allofmp3, followed by clubmp3.ru, and then DELit.
Cue the "In SOVIET RUSSIA" trolls now...
Da Blog
I don't think the article meant to open the iTMS to other players. What they meant was to allow other stores to sell FairPlay DRM'd files. Apple could license the FairPlay wrapper for media files, and not the decoder for players. This would have the effect of making the iPod compatible with all music stores, thus increasing sales of the iPod.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Point of fact... I had a motherboard die on me unexpectedly, and after replacing it with a similar-but-not-identical mobo (without changing ANY software on the harddrive,) my existing iTunes installation complained that my computer was no longer authorized. (It was almost as though the iTunes software keys its authorization to a particular hardware profile.)
I did exactly what you suggest. In their response, Apple indicated that they don't usually honor deauthorization requests, and that it is YOUR responsibility to remember to de-auth before selling or upgrading hardware. Fortunately, they were made an exception in my case, since I obviously never had an opportunity to de-auth prior to the mobo swap.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
"Is it just me or has companies like Apple managed to sneak DRM in under our noses while at the same time tricking us into thinking they're cool?"
I don't think the DRM is the real issue but the licensing of the songs with the music industry. Apple has a license that no other company has gotten. The other DRMs could do the same thing the Apple one does but they don't have the same license agreement. Even if Apple gives the DRM out the compeditors would still have to get a license agreement like apples to do what they do.
Evolution or ID?
What does Apple really win by making iTMS clones ubiquitous? Right now, they control the entire experience and dynamics of one of the most popular (non-p2p) music systems available. People buy iPods in order to use iTMS. What do open iTMS clones do but dilute the brand, experience, and goodwill they've already built?
Otherwise he never would have said this:
I like microcars
I dunno, if I saw someone with a Dell Jukebox, I would question their sexuality too.
:P
Insecure about your manhood?
GPL Deconstructed
"What really bothers me about this is how it floods the entire market and drowns out any independant artists who are actually giving away mp3's for free, while trying to make money by actually playing music. That's what most of us really want to see anyway -- the actual live band."
So go see them. Nobody's stopping you.
So, you're mad at the RIAA and not MS. MS is simply providing what their customers ask for. If Metallica doesn't want their latest album burnable to CD, it probably won't show up at the iTMS with fairplay. It will show up on a WMA based store. So basically you are saying MS is evil because they are willing to implement stricter DRM in order to try to provide you some content, and you are happy with apple because they simply don't provide you the content. It seems to me your anger is missplaced. DRM in itself is not evil. Blame the people requiring it.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
You're saying that people buy the iPod because they want to use the iTMS. I think people use the iTMS because they have an iPod.
The choice of codec isn't part of the sales pitch. Nobody buys an MP3 player for the AAC/FairPlay codec/DRM -- it's far more likely that people would AVOID buying an iPod BECAUSE it doesn't play WMA, which is available nearly everywhere BUT the iTMS. iPods limit your online purchasing choices.
WalMart and other places are cheaper, some have more songs, some are as well laid out or better. But if you have an iPod, you NEED to avoid Windows Media. Thus iTMS. And opening their tech to other players will draw more people into the iTMS, and thus the iTMS might even become profitable.
But the iPod sells for its coolness and harsware specs, not its AAC. To me, at least.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Yeah, I guess they only make exceptions when you don't have the opportunity to de-authorize the computer. In my case, my iBook died and they refused to fix it (later turned out to be a loose cable, but that's another story for another day).
Um, no. AAC is a lossy format. If you burn it to CD, then rip it and re-AAC it, you get something not quite as good as the original.
The problem with this is that any music store that wants to offer major label music won't be allowed to. With all the uproar over file sharing, do you really think that the labels are going to allow non-DRM protected music to be sold?
...but what would the fees be? Out of the reach of the small indie shops, or reasonable?
Poor talentless underdogs, my heart bleeds. If they can't afford DRM, they either shouldn't use it or they should start sucking less so they actually turn a profit. The iPod plays DRM-FREE MP3 files just fine.
Then again, why bother with DRM at all? My Dell Jukebox cost me less per GB, has a longer battery life, doesn't have any DRM, at least none that I'm aware of,
So it can play WMA but has no DRM support? That's like Satanism without the evil, it's totally pointless.
I don't get my sexuality questioned every time someone sees me use it.
Haven't had that problem... Considering the iPod has the majority of the portable audio marketshare, I highly doubt it comes into play as a factor in determining someone's sexuality. Now buying a pink mini and loading it with Ricky Martin's complete discography probably wouldn't help your case, but I digress.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I guess this is why AAC was just recently chosen by the DVD consortium to be the standard for audio in the ROM portion of DVD-Audio disks. (That's been one of my major gripes with DVD-Audio -- you can't rip the songs to your computer currently, because there's no software out there designed to do this.)
Yeah, right, AAC is dead. Never mind that the latest iTunes rips into AAC by default. (You have to go into preferences to switch audio import to use MP3 instead.) Never mind that the iTunes Music Store outperforms all other legitimate digital music distribution methods, and their format of choice is AAC with FairPlay.
I guess that's why Quicktime is doing just fine? Seriously, talk about a reality distortion field -- yours seems to be worse than Steve Jobs'. Xvid and DiVX are still the purview of the 133t, although there are more DVD players on the market now that will play videos encoded in these formats. So they are gaining traction and mainstream acceptance; but most players that support these formats are cheapies from China, where video piracy is rampant, and the build quality leaves something to be desired.
Incidentally, AAC and Quicktime are linked inextricably with MPEG4, which is a current and future video standard. DiVX/Xvid leverage the MPEG4 standard.
Quicktime is not just a niche format. It's everywhere. Most sites that serve up movie trailers do so in Quicktime format. Quicktime is almost always offered as an option for sites that support multiple video formats. And AAC wasn't "created" by Apple -- it's an open standard that they adopted.
So what you're saying is that your entire post is really just an excuse to slam Jobs and Apple, and has nothing to do with anything else. Obviously. Since real facts don't bear your arguments out.
Funny, you sound like the Troll in this case. Pity I used up my moderator points a couple days ago.
And really, 99c for a song isn't even that great of a deal. That makes a 15 song cd = $15.
When you visit iTMS you will see that most albums having more than 10 tracks have prices capped at $9.99. Yes, there are counterexamples (Kitaro's "An Ancient Journey" is $18.81, the aggregate cost of the individual tracks), but they strike me as quite rare. I noticed a few albums are actually less than $9.99, and those have 9 or fewer tracks.
So, FYI, your blanket statement "That makes a 15 song CD = $15" is far more often incorrect than correct.
Every rule has an exception (except this one).
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
*bzzzt*
Incorrect. WMA is not free to build into your device: WMA Licensing
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Your entire post would make a lot of sense if it weren't for the fact that Apple doesn't own nor control AAC. They have no choice in deciding the license terms for AAC, so it's not their call to make. I don't see what their opportunity is when they don't call the shots.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
this can be easily fixed. contact apple and they'll de-authorize all computers on the account.
Screw Trollkore, check out Trogdor
#|
You do if you're a photographer.
Then I guess that all software should be free.
Oh wait...
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
Who says I don't?
What you don't seem to understand is that there are a number of struggling artists who don't get the exposure they deserve because the MTV-music-in-a-can crowd drowns them out. I have friends in this situation.
It's not that they're not good enough, they just can't get the exposure they need. You need people to buy tickets to make money on a concert.
I did the same thing just the other day--I'd had a loaner laptop that I forgot to deauthorize before returning it. A quick note to Apple (using the form on this page), and they simply removed all of my authorized computers. A short time later, I had to reauthorize my laptop.
This led to a question, though...
There was a period of a few hours when iTunes said that I had 0 authorized computers, but my laptop was still able to play my purchased music (without me reauthorizing it). When I tried to play a song a few hours later, though, I got prompted with a message to authorize the computer.
Does the iTunes program periodically "phone home" to make sure that a computer is still authorized? My impression was that there was just some token that was stored on my computer once it was authorized. (If it had to phone home to check every time I wanted to play a song, then I wouldn't be able to play without a network connection, which isn't the case.)
However, since my computer "knew" that it was not authorized after a few hours, it must have checked with Apple at some point.
When I first realized this, I thought to myself "A-ha! Here's a way around the restrictions. I'll authorize a computer, get the token, and then block iTunes from connecting to the internet. Then, I'll get Apple to deauthorize my computers. Then, I can authorize three new computers. That means I can play my music on FOUR computers! I'll show them!"
Then I realized that the DRM that Apple uses is flexible enough for me. I can play my music on my mini, my laptop, my partner's iPod, his desktop, and his laptop. There really isn't much of a need for me to get around this DRM.
I expect some indie store to pop up one of these days that offers non-DRM'd indie music. I'll bet it even happens within the year.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Apple owns neither AAC or fairplay. They license both. Don't people actually look for the facts any more?
Also, from the article: "There isn't a single type of electronic device that hasn't suffered from shockingly rapid price devaluations."
Except of course for Apple's hardware.
So the slashdot summary is just plain wrong, and the article is yet another "How Apple should really be run." Same old garbage. Move along, nothing to see here.
And as everyone has discovered who uses the service, iTMS isn't for buying albums. It's for buying singles. This way you get the one song you wanted on the album for $0.99 instead of $15, and that *is* a hell of a discount. Even if you find CD singles, they're much more than $0.99.
So for the majority of the world that (by definition) buys pop, iTMS makes sense. My wife just got 12 songs for $12 that would have cost over $100 in a store. I don't use it because I like older rock where 90% of an album didn't suck, but the service helps a large segment of the population.
You forgot: MP3 - must license from MPEG
I never said it was dead, you are taking what I said out of context and twisting to get that out of my comment.
AAC HAS the ability to become the defacto standard but only if industry get's behind it and removes the barriers to widespread adoption.
If AAC is left as a obscure itunes and ipod format then yes it will die a horrible miserable screaming death Only by widespread adoption will it become the foreruunner... and keeping it a closed format will only serve to keep the adoption rate slow.
maybe next time you will finish reading my post before you decide to put words in my mouth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Call me crazy, but most alternative/rock/pop music I don't want to hear live. Not because I don't like it, but because they play so damn loud. It's completely insane the volume levels that most bands seem to strive for. It's so loud you can barely hear the music. I often do play music (CD, iPod or otherwise) pretty loud, but I'm in control of the volume and can set it really loud for songs I want to hear that way, and not so loud for others and all the while retain most of my hearing. Convince the damn bands to play quieter and I'll go to more concerts. Short of that, little money is to be made from me at concerts, the money is all in recorded music.
--- What?
They've left a tantalizing hint - if you look inside the iTunes application bundle, you'll see an icon for ogg files. It looks like they were at least considering supporting it enough to provide artwork. It's possible it supported it internally, but the feature might have been removed before shipping for some reason.
I'm almost tempted to believe that iTunes is a trojan horse for QuickTime
In those terms Windows is a Trojan cavalry.
I've noticed a shift on /. in very recent days. You no longer automatically get flamed for posting anything anti-Mac.
When I used to work at Apple, it amazed me that DURING COMPANY MEETINGS, Apple people would open their powerbooks and start flaming anti-Mac folks on /. while Jobs was talking (on a Giant TV screen, too. Just like the 1984 ads portray IBM.)
For some reason, the tide has turned, and Apple Computer's goon squad can no longer overpower the voice of reason on /.
When I was forced to use a powerbook, I was EMBARRASSED to use it in public for fear that some Mac zealot would come by and start talking to me. Airports were the worst.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Really? So you can boot your Windows machine off of your Dell DJ, and troubleshoot your computer? Can you also transfer music and charge it at the same time off of one cord?
But you know what the real beauty of the iPod design is? It anin't much bigger than a cassette. How much longer before someone comes out with a car stereo that accepts your iPod like a tape? They're gonna get my money.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
Nope. How about you let me handle this:
Note1: as you can see, Alex Salkelver at Business Week clearly didn't do his homework before writing that article.
Note2: the folks at Veridisc are astonishingly incompetent at e-business: they own neither veridisc.com (unrenewed, squatted, not work-safe) nor fairplay.com (unowned, parked)
I have friends in the exact same situation. You can get plenty of exposure in a restricted area by promoting to the same people and being DAMN GOOD.
They haven't? So they didn't cancel the Newton? They support all the hardware they promised with OSX? Rhapsody was released? YellowBox is supported?
Apple has broken more promises to developers then any other company I've ever delt with. I stopped developing for them just after they told me that all the hardware they had previously told me to buy inorder to develop for their next gen OS would be incapable of even running it.
I have no love of Microsoft or Apple, but at least Microsoft is consistent and predictable in their evil.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
ogg/vorbis...Yeah, whatever.
You don't really think that Apple would have ever gotten the recording industry to buy into no DRM, unlimited use, and free trading, do you?
It's about the money, it's always about the money. Technical excellence is for geeks (look at Betamax); ease of use is for consumers (look at Windows). Consumers don't care, they want it when they want it and will accept fair restrictions in lieu of no restrictions, when the latter is not easy or not available.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Except that you typically get price breaks on the iTunes Music Store for buying entire albums. Albums typically sell for $9.99 on the store, which is way cheaper than buying each track individually if there are more than 10 tracks on the album. Also, some tracks are not available for individual download; one might argue that this is a ploy to force customers to buy the album, but typically such tracks are either bonus material or songs that probably wouldn't sell individually.
The latest trend on the iTunes Music Store is to give price breaks on buying an entire EP as well. In those cases, the cost of the EP is even cheaper than a full album, and often cheaper than buying the songs individually off the EP.
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a (satisfied) iTunes Music Store customer. However, I buy most music on CD and rip it the traditional way still.
The Amiga failed because Commodore didn't understand marketing. It was a superior machine in every aspect. In '93 I was running a 7 line bulletin board system off of a used A3000 I picked up for $1500, and I could have hosted 20+ lines on the same box. By contrast, my $3500 top of the line 486 couldn't even run 2 lines without serious slowdowns, neither under Windows nor Desqview.
If Commodore would have had even the slightest marketing sense, we'd all be using Amigas today.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
However, since my computer "knew" that it was not authorized after a few hours, it must have checked with Apple at some point.
Why aren't people up in arms about this? This seems to me to be a serious privacy violation.
There are also icons in the application for SD2, NVF, Movie, and... wait for it... WMA!
So, if we're to expect Apple to build out the rest of the application to fit the included icons, then that would mean we could some down download movies through iTunes into our (still just rumored) VideoPods. And it would also mean Windows Media playback.
It boggles the mind.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
The iPod doesn't "have DRM" any more than your Dell thing does.
The inability to copy songs off the iPod without 3rd party software is a form of DRM.
"My Dell Jukebox... doesn't have any DRM, at least none that I'm aware of"
Give the guy a break. He is clearly clueless. He bought a DJ for God's sake!!
I bet it's already happened.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Make it so players can use the codec for FREE. this will make the AAC format as common as Mp3 and take over the world like a wildstorm.
Take that up with the MPEG consortium; you know, the people who actually control AAC (also known as the MPEG 4 audio layer format). You may have heard of one of their other products: the MPEG 1 layer 3 audio format, aka mp3.
Let's see...Apple puts only what you call an ineffective lock on the music you download, yet this is the reason you haven't signed up for iTunes?
What, are you waiting for a store to come out with *effective* protection which gives you even less of what you want? "Federal take-it-up-the-@$$" protection?
Apple has to put some kind of protection on their downloads to reassure the labels. You claim that it is only a token effort. Isn't that the best you can hope for? Sounds like Apple is slying doing you a favor, as opposed to the draconian measures they could be taking.
I quoted almost your entire post, and thus, I read the entire thing. I'm not taking anything out of context. How could I? I quoted you in your entirety.
You wrote "AAC is doomed to be less popular than..." (I'm not going to finish the sentence, as I already quoted it elsewhere, in its entirety.) I interpret this to be just like every other "foo is doomed" statement you read around Slashdot -- that is to say, someone's trying to proclaim a standard to be dead before it actually is. Then again, you don't seem to be very good at detecting sarcasm, and there was more than a little sarcasm implicit (and explicit!) in what I wrote.
In short, I'm not the one with the reading skills deficit.
There's nothing obscure about AAC -- iTunes and the iPod are market leaders now. Your statements and arguments make no sense. They have no internal logic.
There's nothing "closed" about AAC. Anyone is free to license the format. It's a part of MPEG4. Apple has nothing to do with that. FairPlay can be licensed, too, but nobody in the industry wants to bother, and every other manufacturer wants to rely on WMA and its far-more-restrictive DRM technology. This isn't what consumers want. That's why consumers have voted with their wallets and are buying songs from the iTunes Music Store, and why consumers are buying iPods.
So please, quit your whining about how I'm twisting your words. I understand perfectly well what you're saying. I just disagree with your thesis, such as it is.
Yes, clearly, it's all the customer's fault that the manufacturer's equipment has failed.
In point of fact, I have an iPod. I have a Powerbook. I listen to them at different times. But you *can't* synch an iPod with another PowerBook -- IOW, if I wanted to keep my iPod up to date with the machine I was using while my PowerBook was in the shop, I would have to allow iTunes to delete all the music on the iPod, including my bought-and-paid-for iTMS singles, and replace it with only those files that could be played on my spare CPU (i.e., my MP3s and not my AACs).
I went to some lengths to ensure that my data was available to me while it was in the shop: in particular, I have a rotating backup to two different external drives, and a spare Powerbook I use if mine goes in for service.
My files were there, online and accessible, in a machine with the same OS, applications and versions. They were there, in my music player. The files that I bought and I paid for and went to great lengths to preserve, on hand, online and ready to go.
And they wouldn't play. Not because of any lack of foresight on my part. Not because I lacked the right equipment. But because Apple has deliberately reduced the functionality of its equipment, devoting engineering dollars and introducing new failure modes into a technology that not a one of its customers desires: none of us woke up this morning and said, "Shit, I wish there was a file format just like MP3 except b0rked in some really spectacular and inconvenient ways."
I'm as big an Apple apologist as you'll ever meet, but it's ridiculous to blame the user for the manufacturer's deliberate introduction of flaws into its technology.
Interesting. However, I notice that there is also an iTunes-wma.icns, as well as the iTunes-ogg.icns you mention, and I don't think adding WMA support to the iPod is very likely...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Is it just me or has companies like Apple managed to sneak DRM in under our noses while at the same time tricking us into thinking they're cool?
And really, 99c for a song isn't even that great of a deal. That makes a 15 song cd = $15.... Which essencially is the same price it was before. Not only that but you end up with an inflexible lossy-encoded file.
If by "sneak" you mean "implement because without it the major labels would never have agreed to let Apple distribute any of their songs" and "trick" you mean "tell you up front that their files are 'protected' by the weakest/most flexible DRM available from any online store that carries works from the major labels", and if by "$15 per cd" you mean "$9.99 for the majority of the albums", then yes, you're absolutely correct.
I definitely think that Apple should license FairPlay to other online music stores, but not other hardware or software players just yet. Why? It's a matter of perception. I'm sure there are people out there who won't buy an iPod because they learn that it can only play iTMS songs (out of all the other legal download stores, ignoring any MP3 stores). If Wal*Mart and any other "me too" store also sold FairPlay music, all of a sudden this wouldn't be a problem--iPod users could buy online music from any number of places. iPod users would have a choice.
Now, would Apple lose some iTMS revenue? Probably, but big deal. iTMS is a loss-leader for selling iPod, which has been pointed out many times here before. I bet, though, that Apple would continue to be the industry leader in terms of selling songs to iPod users because they have such a clean, easy-to-use interface and seamless interoperability between the player, the store, and the iPod.This is something the standalone FairPlay licensee stores would not be able to offer. They could compete on price, or selection, which Apple competes based on ease-of-use and style (which would not be Mac vs. PC all over again because Apple would still control the iPod hardware).
So it would be win-win. Apple would have more stores selling music for its iPod, which would make consumers more comfortable in committing to iPods, and Apple would be able to maintain the near-excellent user experience for customers who stick with the iTMS.
Your favorite sig sucks
What if Apple not only licensed the DRM, (= more music = more iPods = more $) but also sold it in bundled with Xserve technology?
Make it so an Indy music producer just has to copy songs to a "publisher" program which encodes and makes available on-line.
They could spec a Xserve Music Server that an Indy music producer could buy (Xserve RAID etc) all pre-configured and easily managed (even sell remote management support so Apple supports the thing). They customize the variety of e-Commerce templates and copy music to a program that will encode it and add it to the library.
Now Apple can support Indys AND keep their own music library "clean".
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Umm, I didn't realize that ...
... is 3rd party software. IMO, any trick that's weaker than ROT13 doesn't count as DRM.
p.s. also reachable by the "Go to Folder" command in Finder (cmd-shift-G), and by various other methodsDisclaimer: Yes, I am a (satisfied) iTunes Music Store customer. However, I buy most music on CD and rip it the traditional way still.
Same here, and it might be worth a little wondering why.
iTMS is great for sampling music from the convenience of my home. The samples are of a goodly length and, more often than not, taken from an interesting and representative portion of the track. A lot of care seems to go into their selections.
But when it comes to buying an album (I rarely purchase single tracks), I just can't seem to push that button, at least not very often. I don't think I care about the lossy codec; I rip my CDs using that anyway, and can't tell the difference. There's something about the original pressed CD, the original printed inserts, that still has value to me. The full album price (typically $9.99) isn't cheap enough compared to the kind of discounted prices I can get on "real" pressed CDs to make up for that perhaps silly desire to "own the original".
So, I've made far fewer iTMS purchases than I had anticipated I would.
I wonder if it makes sense for Apple to consider teaming up with Amazon (or similar) and provide a "buy pressed CD" option. You use iTMS to select the album and, if desired, have Amazon ship it to you (usually free of tax and shipping, at least for me). Apple gets a cut, Amazon gets a sale, I get to cut out the middle step of switching to my browser.
The only issue is whether there are a sufficient number of traditionalists that for whatever reason, still want the pressed CD and packaging...
Every rule has an exception (except this one).
The problem with MS DRM is that I don't want to pay Microsoft money for every song that I purchase just to use their format. I am willing to pay a portion to the distributor of the music, but we should not be subsidizing MS by listening to music. With AAC and whatever DRM you use with it (Fairplay, or Real's, or whatever else they might think up) keeps my music budget out of the hands of MS. Is that too much to ask?
Well marketing is part of business, therefore:
Apple business sense > Amiga Business sense
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
There's also the trivial exercise of using iTunes to burn a CD then re-ripping the music. Of course the music has then been lossily encoded twice, with different encoders, so it's sorta like listening to a copy of a tape of a FM broadcast.
You haven't done this before, have you? The sound quality is lower, but it's not *that bad*. I would compare the original to CD quality and the re-ripped / twice-encoded version to FM radio quality (and really, no worse than most of the less common pirated MP3s floating around in cyberspace).
Here's what I noticed about the quality difference:
I started off with a song bought via iTunes... sounds great via my iPod and via the stereo connected to my PC. I burnt a playlist of my songs to CD. I then ripped the songs back into iTunes, encoding as 192kbps AAC. Playing back the song, it sounded just as good as the original... or so it seemed to me at first. I then played the original.... a-hah!... in a back-to-back comparison, the original sounds much better... but its not something you will really notice otherwise.
Not so sure about that... Consider it this way: If a start-up or niche indie company wants to get their music out there, but can't get past the DRM hurdle...?
It may not be a question of them "sucking", IOW. Also, one can turn a profit but still be too small to afford a fat DRM licensing fee.
As for Dell and the rest of it, yours was the only intelligent and witty response thus far, esp. once one gets done reading the overly-sensitive among us, clutching their i-pods 'til their knucles turn white and and shrieking in semi-coherent anger. You OTH have skillfully avoided the barbs quite well, which was cool indeed. :)
This may sound bad, and I'll prolly get modded down even further because of it, but in a way, IMHO it was well worth the Karma-point loss to see the zealots rise to the baited portions of the post so damned easily.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
How so?
I always figured iTunes phoned home either every time I started it up, and it never bothered me.
The only thing that would bother me is if it wouldn't run without being able to phone home, since I spend a lot of time at my cottage without the internet (the horror!), but it still works fine after going a couple weeks without connecting.
What, you mean like the new one from Alpine?
;)
Or something like what I'm working on with my Beetle . I'm integrating the dock into the dashboard
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I agree that hating everything that is born out of Microsoft is "player hating", but as the owner of a couple of Apple and PC boxes (Powerbook, G5, and two self-made PCs), I can honestly say that until you really use a Mac day in and day out, you may not find the value in the bundled software and the (overall) quality of the hardware.
Also, Apple has one major advantage over Microsoft in my eyes -- they aren't a monopoly. I do worry about having the media and the operating system that organizes & plays it under the same company's control.
I was a huge fan of Emusic when it was unlimited. I understand why that business model couldn't last, but I don't like the subscription model with limits.
I would have stuck around had they just switched to a $0.25 per song, or at least let you carry over unused songs from one month to the next. I used to "binge" download from Emusic. I wouldn't grab anything for 6 to 8 weeks, then I would download 10 - 15 CDs.
And Apple also licenses the MPEG-4 file format, which is based on their own QuickTime file format.
My video compression blog
To emulate the _Simpsons_' "comic book guy".
And also so dreadfully inconsistent with Apple's corporate approach (they're a hardware company). It's almost like all the endless idiots who want Apple to "commoditize its OS for x86 machines"... ain't gonna happen.
Buy Text Processing in Python
The second artivcle in this post worthy of a +1 informative!
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
they obviously don't understand modern business principles. What you are suppose to do is let people use it for free, then when it is used by everyone, start charging them at that time.
I like microcars
Like Apple's DRM is worth a shit. It's as effective at protecting songs as my goldfish is at protecting my house. When anyone can defeat it by burning & reripping, what's the point? Really, why even bother?
this is actually a point Steve Jobs made to the music industry execs (according to an interview with Jobs online somewhere, I forget where). He told them that any DRM is basically useless, anything that can be encoded can be cracked. they told him to piss off, a year or so later he came back when all their drm schemes were cracked and he said "See?!" Then they listened.
so apple put in a bare minimum protection scheme, but more importantly made the terms so loose that nobody really wants to or needs to crack it. the restrictions are pretty insignificant (can't burn the same playlist more than 10x.... but change it slightly and keep going. But who's going to burn the same playlist that many times anyway?). the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks.
the real protection here is the easy terms that don't stop you from doing what you want to. iTMS is excellent competition to Kazaa & crew: faster, better, more reliable, decently tagged, good catalog, cheap. Apple got tired of waiting for the industry to figure out how to do it right, and did it for them.
so what exactly is your problem with iTunes?
Even if licensing out the iTMS format to other online music stores would theoretically drive more people to buy iPods, there's one factor that everyone's forgetting: user experience.
Apple doesn't want just any joe schmoe with a smelly t-shirt selling songs for the iPod because Apple wants to maintain a level of quality with the entire user experience, from the purchase of songs on iTMS to the browsing of their songs on iTunes to the uploading and management to the seamless integration between the store and iTunes.
Thx in advance,
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Well, there are counterexamples. A lot of big albums are missing tracks -- and you can't buy a partial album for $10.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Your computer must be authorized using iTunes and you must have iTunes installed.
But in any event, many of the iTMS tracks are encoded from 24 bit sources. Burning to a CD gives you 16 bit audio. You already have lost some of the original's dynamic range.
Try it sometime, AC. Take a m4a file and turn it into a AIFF, then re-m4a it. You won't get the same file. Promise.
Geez people, how stupid are you? This is just Microsoft paying off journalists to allow them to "Embrace and Extend" Apple's technology. So say apple opens up fairplay, allows Microsoft to start it's own music store, then Microsoft decides, "you know what we'll sell WMA files alongside the entire Apple library" blammo, apple might try to sue (years later - de facto standard so who cares?), in the meantime Microsoft has coopted Apple's own service and they drop AAC support.
Joseph Elwell.
Slightly misunderstood.
you are right DRM is not totally evil, I wish we didn't need it but people do pirate music. In your world if MS added a feature that metallica wanted that automatically deducted a $1 from your bank account every time you listened to the music it would be acceptable? That is what the RIAA and a number of musicians want. They want to charge you to listening to a song you already listen to for free. If they could charge you to listen to radio do you think they would? MS is an enabler in this case.
Fairplay is just that, the customer gets to choose how and when the music plays, with wma and MS the artists does. Which one do you go for.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Uh, the fact that Apple would dictate what you could and couldn't do with said license, and would be within rights to deny one to whoever they liked, could be seen as a preventative measure.
Anyhow, there's a good chance they'll do this eventually. There are a number of lucrative markets that Apple would never touch but where playback of iTMS audio files could be useful. Muzak? Radio? DJing? High end jukeboxes? Marine audio? What about audiobook devices for the blind? If apple will license their player to HP, I'm sure they'd license similar tech for these other applications as soon as somebody proposes a fair enough deal.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Yeah, and really, playing live is what real bands actually enjoy. HOWEVER, rock and its subets of punk, metal, etc, doesn't tour to make money. The tour promoters and venue owners make the money from tours, not bands. From a money perspective, the tour is nothing more than a glorified info-mercial.
FACT: Bands make their money on CD and Merchandise sales.
A good book to read on the subject is "True Confessions of a Record Producer."
Yes, I am sure that Paul and Ringo are pissed off at the similarity between the names "Apple Records" and "iTunes Music Store." I mean, I can hardly tell the difference!
They're just waiting for apple to roll out its new slogans, "Happiness is a warm iPod" and "Everybody's got something to hide (Except me and my iTunes Library)."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
According to Forbes, Apple developed it themselves:
Admittedly a non-technical description.
I think it's far more likely that Apple simply bought ought this "VeriDisc" company. Going by their web site (now accessable via IP address only) they haven't done anything since 2001...
I'm highly suspect of anyone who claims that Apple "licensed" FairPlay from a company which now no longer seems to exist...
He dows present a potential problem, but not many people buy a new computer every 10 months. Most people don't even use the feature to stream between machines because they only have 1 machine. It is only geeks like us that push the limits and like to try out all of the features that find these potential problems.
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
Yes and no - you can certainly see all the song files, but to get back the title and artist organisation, you need to read the iPod's proprietary data file format. That has so far only been possible with reverse-engineered third-party software.
I don't relish finding the particular track I want to retrieve out of the thousands on my iPod by trial and error.
The interesting question is whether they did this as pure obfuscation to placate the RIAA, or in order to work around filesystem weakness (especially with FAT filesystems), or simply because the author of the iPod firmware they purchased chose to do it that way.
The incentive is that the songs would play on other devices... The drm would be open, the songs could be on any device, or software audio player that supported the drm.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
another moron who does not know that AAC is a better encoder than MP3
You're calling me a moron? Why don't you prove to me that 128Kbps AAC sounds "better" than ~192Kbps Lame VBR MP3. Otherwise you're just talking smack.
Da Blog
Like Apple's DRM is worth a shit. It's as effective at protecting songs as my goldfish is at protecting my house. When anyone can defeat it by burning & reripping, what's the point?
Actually, it is probably about as effective as your front door is in protecting your house. Anybody who is really determined to rip you off can kick it in or break a window, but it deters the most casual thieves, and puts people on notice that they aren't entitled to just walk in.
Oh yeah, AAC won the listening test over here too : http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9217
/. at great length. If you look at the "winners", you will see that none of them "won" by a greater margin than their inherent error bars or confidence measures. Therefore it is incorrect and unsupported to say that any particular codec "won". Have you ever taken elementary stats?
You know these particular "results" were discussed recently in
Da Blog
Now, let's get this straight. IBM's openness was do to the fact they built the PC with off-the-shelf parts to get it to market quickly. Not really because they wanted to be open (ask them about what they thought of Compaq clones in the late 80s). Bill came along and saw this stupidity and raped IBM.
Apple is playing smart (with Bill breathing down its neck).
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
That would be acceptable to me. I simply would choose not to buy/listen to that music. If MS's implementation of DRM required a $1 deduction everytime I listened to any song, then I'd be a bit upset. However, MS's DRM simply allows the content provider to be as lax or draconian as they want and leaves it up to me to decide what content I want to buy. In my case, I don't want any content with any DRM. But I still don't fault MS for their implementation. MS isn't forcing anyone to use super strict DRM.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Would it be fair to say, then, "AAC is at least as good as the others, and therefore good enough?"
GPL Deconstructed
Nah, I'd just question their intelligence.
my slightly "not equal in size" nuts
You mean "small" and "smaller"?
Is that the best you can say? I related a TRUE STORY about my experience working at Apple, and all you do is refer to me as a slang term for the female pudendum
Best Buy can have you arrested
Good marketing=high sales, poor marketing=low sales. Historically Apple have only had good sales while the competition is playing catch up. Once their first mover advantage is over they consistantly fail to hold market share. If you're not winning market share how the hell can you be good at marketing, ESPECIALLY when your engineers consistanly produce the best products in that market?
They just aren't targetting what you think they should.
Yeah: people.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format
I'm reminded of what one Linus Torvalds once said in the same vein:
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.
You license AAC from Via Licensing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dolby Lab.
The quality of its product aside, Dolby is the Microsoft of its industry. It is good in that it creates a 'standard', bad in the sense that it makes other audio formats (DTS) hard to compete.
"the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks."
More to the point, DRM is like a "club" for your car's steering wheel, or copy protection on PC software. It won't stop the people who are really determined to pirate music or software, or steal your car, but it stops the casual folks. If it can reduce much of the piracy, but not all of it, it's still worthwhile. The music industry's lawsuits have the same aim: if they can scare the masses away from piracy, they're better off even though the Slashdot crowd is simply moving to transfer mediums that are off the RIAA's radar or otherwise untouchable.
As an aside, I think Apple's DRM is fine. I can burn extra CDs for my friends and move tracks from PC to PC. It would not let me simply copy the tracks to my Kazaa share directory, which is fine, as that would be illegal anyway. The "artists have too many rights" crowd who see any sort of DRM as an affront to everything that is good and true and right in the world should check themselves.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
>So go see them. Nobody's stopping you.
I'm a brain in a jar, you insensitive clod.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Microsoft may be the prime example, but when I think Vendor Lock-in, I think Apple.
One of the biggest fallacies of the computer world is this: license your IP, so you can become like Microsoft.
This is just dumb. Name 5 vendors that decided to license their core technology to the competition and are successful. I can think of one: Intel. Intel licences x86, mainly to prevent anti-trust issues.
One example on the unsucessful side is Palm. Palm survives, but is far from successful. It's PalmOS license caused massive cannibalization in its core hardware business, and became so bad that it basically bought its licensee/competitor. Doh!
Why should Apple open up the iPod or iTunes? To me, it sounds like industry executives are playing politics - Apple is bad, because they won't share. In other words, Apple is kicking our butts, and we're trying to change the game.
Why don't those vendors just convert their stuff to MP3? Audible.com has no problems selling content to iPod owners and non-iPod owners. WTF?
the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks.
No.
A deadbolt protects your house by making it physically difficult for the bad guys to break in. That's true.
But a "beware of dog" sign also protects your house. How? By deterring those who would otherwise walk right in and take your stuff. It doesn't do anything to stop a determined thief... but how many determined thieves are there out there, compared to the number of "thieves of opportunity?"
Fairplay protects music because it deters "thieves of opportunity." Because it's inconvenient to pirate Fairplay-protected music, paired with the fact that it's so darned easy to get it legally, Fairplay effectively protects music.
It's not a fig leaf. It's real.
Yes I do have the numbers. I'll dig out my copy of TCoaRP (see parent) when I get home. to quote the example. Also, I may have been a little vague. Bands do get some money from the tour and may even turn a small profit, but monitarily sucessful tour breaks even--not counting CDs and merchandise sold while on tour.
Well, I'm glad I do not live in your alternate "reality"! Over here in the mainline Apple is doing pretty well with iTMS. Perhaps you should slide over, we don't even have arachnid overlords that demand sacrifices every other fortnight.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This will only come true, however, if Apple keeps a huge lead. What happens when Microsoft (MS) unveals their own online music store (didn't originally they tell folks like Napster that they wouldn't? Well, nevermind that....), sells songs for $0.50 each, takes a hit on profits
[...]
So that goes to Option 2: License the DRM
I have the feeling that Jobs will release this if and only if iTMS and iPod sales start taking a dive. It's his "ace in the hole" to keep iPod sales alive. All it will take is him going to the other stores, making an offer, and then everybody can use the iPod with any service.
[...]
I think you can tie these two ideas together quite nicely to predict a path - Apple is waiting for Microsoft to release it's own music store. Then when Napster and friends realize they've been had and are doomed, Apple can step in and say "you can licence Fairplay and use AAC or be consumed by MS".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you are right that they want to maintain a level of quality - but I think that could be handled in licence negotiation, where they would mandate songs would have to be at least such and such a bitrate or else the licence to distribute Fairplay songs would be revoked. The nice thing is the users could still keep using the songs they bought...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
mod this AC up... there's finally another person here who gets it!!
It seems likley to me it's the same, but why no press releases mentioning Apple, or indeed any mention of Apple at all anywhere?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What happens to your DRMed music collection if and when the server goes to the Big Junk Pile, like the Circuit City DIVX server did? Even if existing computer authorizations didn't immediately expire, eventually people would be unable to play the DRMed files on replacement computers for lack of a Big Brother machine to approve the replacement computer.
Burning Red Book Audio CDs of iTMS purchases is only a partial answer because the resulting AACs will have lower fidelity than the purchased AACs.
My problem is that I don't have an interface to it. I'd love to see Apple release an iTunes for Linux. Short of that, I'd like to see a web interface to iTunes that supported Mozilla well. Short of that, I'd like to see someone license iTMS and build a third-party web interface to iTMS.
Doug Alcorn
I suppose they could use any compression scheme, but I imagine that they intended to stick to the mainstream - that is closer to MPEG - simply because it was the sort of thing with which people were familiar. If they had adopted something that seemed less familiar in name, people, including the tech writers, would have been less enthusiastic.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Also... Magnatune.com
It makes me incredibly sad that Apple hasn't already done this. I'm not sure whether Apple is just following their already debunked closed-products strategy as they always have, or if they have actively been trying to get companies like Walmart on board. It doesn't really matter now. The cat is out of the bag. ALL other legal music download services run by major brands are using Microsoft technology.
I feel like I'm watching the betamax debaucle in deja vu. You cannot bet against the likes of Walmart. You just can't. People want, expect and deserve a choice of music stores.
Apple owns over 50% of the legal download market, but fencing its customers in has made it too easy on Microsoft.
If Apple has been courting the other music stores, it might not be too late. iPod has enormous momentum and they could leverage that. A year down the road though, when these two incompatible standards are confusing and annoying customers, it will definitely be too late.
Just like with Betamax VHS, there will only be room for one general standard. The other standard will have to focus on nice markets like professionals or tech elitists.
What's sad is Apple may be letting too much ride on the HP deal. The HP deal doesn't change the fact that FairPlay and the iPod are closed. I really hope we see more deals soon. Deals may be more important, for the company, than products right now.
Ultimately, iPod should be opened, but I'm not expecting Apple to move all to quickly. It took them 4 generations of iPods to make one that will play paid-for songs on both a registered Mac and a registered PC. In the short term just getting Fairplay into the other music stores MIGHT be enough.
If they don't they may actually compromise FairPlay as a trustworthy Digital Rights Management System. If enough people feel like they are forced to break the DRM by re-ripping their paid songs into an unprotected format, it could compromise Apple's relationships with music companies.
Let's hope the iPod phenomenon buys them enough time to do the right thing: take a leadership role and make Fairplay into the standard that the market needs.
Mac Reality Check
Any analysis and suggested direction for Apple is likely to be fatally flawed if it only looks at music and iPod Sales. Apple's strategic decisions must take their entire business into account. The folks at Business Week act as if they've forgotten that Apple also sells Macs! In bringing Windows users iTMS, iTunes and the iPod, Apple is showcasing its abilities. The level of care in Apple designs is reflected in many subtle things that cannot be appreciated by reading specs. I'm certain that Apple appreciates the value of giving Windows users some direct postive experience with Apple products.
Aside from leading some users down a path bypassing an Apple-favorable experience, some or perhaps all of these competing music stores will likely provide poor Mac platform support, or none at all! That not only doesn't promote Mac sales, it discourages them. To overlook these factors and say that Apple should actually support these stores puts the Business Week analysis in the league of April Fools' Day material.
The flawed analysis reminds me of what's wrong with many of the products and services that compete with Apple. They generally meet key specifications, yet they feel like they were made by people who didn't look at the whole picture.
It's also in the Windows iTunes.exe, though it looks a little different from the other file type icons. As another person mentioned, there's a WMA icon as well.
± 29 dB
AAC 128 is not low-quality, it's far superior to MP3 128. It's more like 192 mp3
Really? Prove it. Or are you basing this on your own perceptions? Personally, I couldn't say what 192 Kbps CBR was like because I usually do ~200 Kbps VBR Lame MP3s or ~180 Kbps Oggs. However, if you are happy with 128 Kbits then more power to you - I simple prefer the higher "resonance" I can hear with around ~200 Kbps VBR losssy compression.
Da Blog
Bill didn't come along and see the stupidity. IBM handed it to him on a silver platter. IBM went to Bill to ask him to write DOS after DR turned them down (in what has got to be one of the stupidest decisions of the 20th century).
Bill bought DOS from a small Seattle software company for $50k and licensed DOS to IBM with decent terms, but since it was only licensed, he could turn around and make a killing licensing it to the clonemakers.
New news forum for Canadians - CanadaSpeaks
Yes, I know the story. I just gave the very abridged version for sake of brevity.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
Quicktime gets installed with iTunes because, at least under OSX, the functions which handle the encryption and decryption are in the file /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickTime.framework/Ver sions/Current/QuickTime (which is a shared library.) Try "nm QuickTime | grep DRM" and you'll see the functions there.
This allows not only iTunes, but the Quicktime player and any other application which uses the Quicktime API (like Toast, with their "Save as AIFF" button, hint hint) to decrypt these protected files, in order to play them or to burn them to a CD.
Isn't that the best you can hope for?
Nope, the best I can hope for is no restrictions at all. DRM = no sale.
I play my music on a variety of devices. Various computers with various operating systems, portable devices, standalone & networked MP3 players, etc. Fairplay makes the music worthless to me because I'm not going to be able to play it freely on some of these devices. Which means to actually enjoy the music I've legally purchased I have to burn and rerip every song.
Screw that. I'm not paying for the "privilege" of jumping through hoops like this - not to mention further degrading the quality of the music. Give it to me as a raw MP3 and I'll be happy to hand over my hard earned cash. Until then I'll buy CDs I like and download singles from any random P2P service.
Which brings me to another point: All of the music on iTunes is also freely available elsewhere. The fact that a customer purchases the music legally instead of just downloading it, doesn't that tell you something about that customer? Perhaps that he wants to do things the legal why? Why in the hell would you inconvenience him and treat him like a pirate by using DRM? He's proven his intention to not pirate music by actually buying it. What are they worried about? That he's going to put it up on P2P services? Too late, it's already there. That he's going to share it with a friend? Too late, the friend can download it anywhere else just the same. So what's the point? I always hear, "It keeps people honest." No, it doesn't: Those people were kept honest in the first place by purchasing the damn song when there was ample opportunity to pirate it.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
so what exactly is your problem with iTunes?
I replied with further detail here.
Suffice it to say, my music listening works as follows:
1. Big stash of music on a mirrored array.
2. Accessed from a variety of computers in my house, running various operating systems.
2a. One Windows box sends music throughout a whole-house audio system.
2b. I also listen on my Linux workstation.
2c. My wife listens on her computer.
2d. I have networked hardware players that pull from the same collection (for instance, one streams to speakers in my garage).
2e. I listen on my iPod.
2f. I plug my iPod into my computer at work and play the tunes directly off the iPod with Winamp (much more convenient than the iPod's interface).
2g. When my kids are a little older, they'll have their own computers to listen to our music collection with.
See the problem yet? I can only authorize three devices to play my music - and Linux isn't one of them, and I doubt my hardware players are either. Sort of destroys the whole idea of having digital music for me. I like the fact that I can pull up a playlist from whatever device is convenient for me at that given point in time. I also like the fact that I can listen to my playlist while my wife listens to her's while the kids listen to their's and none of them interfere with the others. I'm not going to screw with authorizing/deauthorizing/calling Apple support all of the time. I shouldn't have to.
Then there's the whole point of treating a paying customer like a thief...
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
You could also hold out for a completely personalized telepathic link that would beam exactly the music you want to hear directly to your aural cortex on demand.
Or, you could choose to live in the real world, where we have intellectual property laws, for better or worse, and realize that DRM just ain't going away, and weak DRM is better for you than strong DRM.
As for iTunes, perhaps the customer wants music organized in a single location, with nifty features like Celebrity Playlists and a relatively sane browsing interface, without having to wade through whatever crap a random teenager thought would be great to share over P2P, regardless of actual sound/ripping quality, accuracy in labelling, musical quality, or server bandwidth. Or is that just me?
I know this, since I've been tracking iTunes since its inception. Before that, I was a SoundJam MP user. (SoundJam MP was the application that became iTunes; Apple bought the rights to the software, and hired the main developer behind SoundJam.) When I'm ripping a CD, I have to make a conscious decision now whether I want to use AAC, which sounds better at lower bit-rates, or whether I want to use MP3, which I can burn to mix CDs for use on certain players that support MP3 CDs but not AAC files thrown into the mix.
But my post was already pretty long, and I didn't feel like digging through release notes to figure out exactly when Apple added AAC support to iTunes. So yes, you're right, but my omission was due to laziness, not ignorance.
Incidentally, one feature of SoundJam MP which I miss in iTunes is the ability to skin the application. SoundJam had some nice skins, including a bonus "jukebox" skin (made to look like a 50's jukebox, complete with cheezy bubble effects) that they made available to paying customers. But I guess Apple's very anti-themeable-interface these days.
Actually, there was no mention of DRM being applied to the files stored in the ROM portion of DVD-Audio discs. The files will be in AAC format, but no mention has been made of Apple's FairPlay DRM wrapper. Indeed, FairPlay encodes information about the purchaser and locks the file to that person's account; thus, FairPlay-wrapped AAC files wouldn't make sense for inclusion in a read-only optical disc.
Yes, the AAC files will be lossy, but making them available is better than making nothing available to the purchaser of the DVD-Audio disc. Besides, the vast majority of people wanting to "rip" tracks from a music disc (DVD-A or CD or whatever) are going to encode those tracks using one of several lossy formats -- MP3, AAC, or WMA. Making pre-encoded versions of these tracks available in AAC just cuts one step out of the process. (It also eliminates choice, but when space is at a premium, you want to go with something reasonable and cross-platform.)
Which is why the DVD consortium is now suggesting that discs be pressed with a ROM portion containing AAC-encoded versions of the music tracks. Of course, the ROM session is optional, but... hopefully, more record labels will include this. As for SACD, you're right -- there are currently no tools available to rip from SACD, and most DVD drives won't be able to even read the high definition layer of a SACD disc. On the other hand, many SACD titles ship as hybrid discs that contain a layer of Red Book compatible CD audio, playable on a conventional CD player; assuming that the firmware on your CD/DVD-ROM drive is smart enough to ignore the SACD-specific stuff, you can rip from the CDDA layer just as you would from a normal CD.
As for iTunes, perhaps the customer wants music organized in a single location, with nifty features like Celebrity Playlists and a relatively sane browsing interface, without having to wade through whatever crap a random teenager thought would be great to share over P2P, regardless of actual sound/ripping quality, accuracy in labelling, musical quality, or server bandwidth. Or is that just me?
Hey, I agree with you. No argument here. iTunes is great for all of the reasons you describe and I'd be happy to use it if not for the whole "You can only do with your music what we say you can do" bullshit. I don't buy copy protected CDs for the same reason. Anyone who thinks they can sell me information and then further dictate how I use it can piss off. I'll simply get the information I want another way, legal or not. Shut down these other ways and I'll simply do without.
I'll tell you what I think is hilarious around here: This whole forum went from "DRM = NO SALE!" to lopping up iTunes like a thirsty dog at a water bowl. Who would have thought in a million years that someone would be moderated down on Slashdot for saying "DRM is crap and I'm not going to buy it."
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Apple leases a lot of its technologies, but largely for peripherals. I don't know for certain, but I would guess that the things Jobs feels most protective of are those that he makes the most money off of, I.E. the boxes and the laptops. Without that reliable base profit, and considering Apple's small market share, bankruptcy would be right around the corner. Apple does what it has to do to stay in business in a Windows world. -B
hey man,
if you can afford the extensive equipment necessary to maintain that lifestyle, you can afford to hire some lackey to cart you around in a see-through backpack.