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Real Cuts Prices for DRM-Restricted Music
Flint Dragon writes "A story on MSNBC details RealNetworks' next step in converting iPod users from iTunes to their own online music store. Not only can you play music downloaded from their site on your iPod now, you can, for a limited time, purchase music for 50% cheaper (.49/song, 4.99/album)! This is the price that I'm willing to pay for. Too bad it won't last..."
Bait and switch? It's called a "sale". A bait and switch ios when they're sell you sometihng more expensive than the advertised item.
Mod point free since 2001
You should really try Real 10. It's a whole lot nicer than previous versions, and not "in your face" at all. They even have a pretty good Linux client.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sure there is. Go here, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
Plays all the Real content that I have ever been interested in (which I can admit is very little.)
(Additionally there are links to a Quicktime Alternative and Media Player Classic at that site as well.)
Could you please explain to me how you can't do this with DRM'ed music?
1. YOu can back it up as many times as you like. Right now i have 1 bought DRM song on 3 different computers.
2. YOu can make compilations. iTunes even provides a nifty little playlist generator
3. iTunes lets you also burn copies of your play lists TO CD!~!!! or you can hook up your stereo out to a tape deck and go old school with mixed tapes!!!! The DRM does not prevent you from doing this.
It does prevent you from sharing the raw source of the file with your friends. Since there is no digital compilation format you can't exactly send an mp3 digital compilation to people unless it was one giant file. But who wants to do that?
You're an idiot.
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
If you ever switch to Linux, give it a try. Realplayer is actually quite stable and doesn't really nag you at all. It used to ask you for your email address, but it doesn't even do that anymore.
That said, I still don't know if I'd touch the windows version with a 10 foot pole. Mainly because I'm sick of the file extension war from various applications.
Real sells 192kbit MPEG 4 AAC encoded music now. The new encoder/player/thingy defaults to that format. Looks like they're dumping the crappy ra format, finally.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's copyright infringement, not stealing or theft or any other damn thing.
I agree that it's a crime under the current laws, but at least get your terms correct.
the Real Music store uses the same AAC audio format that iTunes uses with a different DRM wrapper on the outside. In fact, the real store uses 192kbps while iTunes uses 128kbps files.
Have you been to real.com lately? You click on one link on the main page. And it's a great big link too. And suddenly, you're downloading the free player.
Quoted from Rhapsody:
"MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Windows PC, 350 MHz, 350 MB HD Space"
A very good explination why Apple does not want Real's music on the iPod is here: http://daringfireball.net/2004/08/2004_wont_be_lik e_1984
It's legal in Russia only, since Russia copied the US copyright system and allowed compulsory licenses requiring minimal fees to the labels, and basically anyone can set up a music shop. US at some point abandoned that system due to heavy lobbying ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H need to optimize its legislature.
Thus any CD sold in Russia usually has "For sale in Russia" label on it, since technically the music is not licensed to be distributed outside of the market. Once the service becomes popular (mp3search.ru is another one), RIAA will raise hell.
Or you could just punch your favorite artist in the gut and tell him to get a day job because you're not willing to pay for his music.
It would be faster and kinder to do it directly, rather than going through Russia to do it.
(AllofMP3 is a mafia organization that doesn't have the artists' permission to represent them. It's supposed to be okay because they mail a small percentage of the pennies they charge back to artists...but they're not required to do so and artists have no recourse if they don't. By supporting it, you're supporting "legal" rights infringement via a gray market loophole. And that's FAR worse than supporting the RIAA -- at least RIAA member artists get SOME of their royalties, damnit)
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sites such as these are operated out of Russia where a loophole in copyright law allows them to treat such download sites as if they were radio stations. Artists do not receive revenues from sales.
Actually, I have done end user support. And I've had to fend off calls the other way around, mostly, where the hardware was at fault and the customer is complaining about the error being with the software because the error is on the screen.
People tend to blame the program running when it throws out an error message, in my experience.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
>The full screen option has been there as long as I remember. Definately available on the free RealOne player and above.
The Linux variant doesn't (or didn't) do fullscreen for the longest time I remember. I think it did do double sizing. Which looked like hell.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
For a more specific example, let's say they make 30 cents per 99 cent transaction with the 70 cents remaining going into care and feeding their servers, bandwidth costs, RIAA fees, etc. If they sell that same song for 49 cents, they're going to be in the hole 21 cents per transaction.
Bottom line: Twice as many songs at half the price would make them lose more money than the same number of songs at half the price.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
How about I support changing the law instead? They can't put ALL of us in jail. Remember, even prohibition lasted four years in the US. NOBODY wanted prohibition, and lots of people DIED in the violence related to that little social experiment. I think we've come a long way as a society (some notable failures do exist) towards civilized discourse since those days, and I don't see any way that the balance of power can shift back in favor of the RIAA companies for the long term. The only question is how difficult they have to make it legally for people who are obtaining free music before everyone demands widespread changes to the current state of copyright law.
Law is a pendulum. It swings in one direction, and then it goes back the other way. Earl Warren's SOCTUS went way out in left field in the 60's with supplementing the rights of the accused, e.g. Miranda and Gideon v. Wainright. In the 70s, everything went back the other way, with law enforcement gaining more freedom to investigate hippies, crooks, and revolutionaries.
The late 90's saw a surge in laws friendly to copyright holders and big business interests. I am confident that the latter half of the noughts will see a corresponding rebound that favors the interests and rights of individuals.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I've bought a couple of CDs and a few individual tracks from the iTunes music store (not to mention all the freebies I've downloaded). They sound fine, even when burned onto CDs to play on the Bose in the car. It's a bit of a pain sharing them between computers (PowerBook and PC at home and PC at work), but hey, blank CDs are cheap.
Of course, in general it's still cheaper for me to buy CDs through a service like BMG or Columbia House. I order maybe 10-20 per year from BMG and end up paying between $5 and $8 per CD. Then I can rip those myself to whatever quality I'd like and avoid the ridiculous prices that most stores charge. Sure, there's the whole shipping delay, but I'm a patient guy.
That said, if I could import music purchased from Real's music store into iTunes (and from thence to the iPod), I'd jump on the $0.49 thing in heartbeat. But I use iTunes for everything now, and I'm not about to start running multiple different media players just for the grins of saving a few bucks. That's my choice, and I'm sticking to it.
I don't know why everyone keeps saying the sound quality for Real's downloads is bad. It's actually *better* than iTunes, which is only 128Kbps. Both Real and Apple use AAC encoding (m4a, m4p). Let's ease up on the FUD, shall we?
Grudges.
What spyware now, what anoying features now? Is helix not enough, is ogg support not enough? Should Real bent over backwards for people like you? Judge a company for what they are doing now, not only for the mistakes they have made in the past.
Enough guesses. Here's a quick summary of how this Harmony stuff works so we can all be on the same page. - Real does not change any software or firmware on the iPod. - Real's store tracks get re-wrapped in FairPlay, then transferred to the iPod. There's no way for the iPod to tell the difference between an iTMS-originated track and a RealMS-originated track. They are functioally equivalent. - Just like iTunes, you can burn CDs from the tracks you download from the RealMS. -The download quality from Real is actually BETTER than iTMS - 192Kbps vs. 128Kbps. This means that when you burn the tracks to audio CD to 'clean'/(backup/share with your friends/whatever) you will end up with a better sounding audio CD because you have a more detailed (higher bitrate) source file. Nuff said. If you don't get it now, you never will.
OE is encoded from a 384 kb/s mp3.
VIP or FREE is a constant bitrate mp3 that you can't choose the encoding type.
Looks like Real revised the petition to disable comments and hide signatures:
l /
m l/
http://www.petitiononline.com/4real2/petition.htm
But some guys started a petition against the new petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/notreal/petition.ht
I've been a RealRhapsody and Napster subscriber for a while, and have gotten annoyed with having DRM even after I purchase a song to keep "forever".
Recently I bought a few CD's from AllofMp3.com, which is a Russian company that lets you buy any song, which they encode on-the-fly to any format you want. You pay them one US cent per MB. So, your 4MB MP3 costs you *four cents*, with no DRM attached. A CD, encoded in 320kbps AAC, might cost 60 cents. Theoretically, this is legal, because they're licensed by the Russian equivalent of the RIAA. In case you're wondering, no, I haven't seen any fraudulent CC charges.
I just found out about this place yesterday. I haven't bought anything from them yet, but music by the pound in nearly any damned format I want sounds good to me!
Check out the Sydney Morning Hearld article for more info. I really can't believe we here at /. missed this in April!?
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
Except their newest linux client took over gnome file associations on my computer. .wav, .MP3, and a lot more all of a sudden had a Real icon.. ugh...
John Susek
I only use Real Player when I absolutely have to
This should be never, since Real Alternative allows you to play realmedia files and doesn't come with spy/crapware.
3) Go to eMusic.com, buy music in mp3 format
4) Go to AudioLunchbox.com, buy music in mp3 format
DRM-crippled formats aren't worth my time when my favorite records are available in mp3 from convenient, legal sources.