MP3tunes Offers Music Service Without DRM

ThinSkin writes "Former MP3.com chief and Lindows CEO Michael Robertson will reenter the music world next week with MP3tunes, a service that promises music without DRM restrictions. MP3tunes hopes to attract users who are fed up with restrictions on copying music from sites that use digital-rights-management techniques, such as iTunes."

Comments

Cool... but success depends on the labels

[Gob Blesh It]

Robertson said he's not worried about the record labels and their requirements for rights-management technology. ... "I think the labels are interested in one thing: selling," he said. "If you build the audience they will come.

I think he's probably right, but I wonder if the bigwigs at the record labels are willing (or even care) to listen to his argument. It's not as if Apple didn't try:

When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. ...

And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions.

I think the general consensus is that even though Jobs and his "Ph.D.s" knew DRM is always crackable, Apple still needed to implement some form of DRM in order to convince the record labels to open their catalogs. For the record companies in April of 2003, ever chary of the Internet, DRM was non-negotiable.

My question is: what's changed since then that would cause them to reconsider? After all, iTunes has shown that a service offering DRM tracks can be wildly successful. So why would the record labels want to open their catalogs to a DRM-free solution from some dude who made his name pawning a Linux desktop?

Anyway, this is definitely something to watch. I sincerely wish him luck. I just hope he can get the labels to open their catalogs.

Re:Cool... but success depends on the labels

[mboverload]

However, I am audiophile and require high kbps music, which Apple for some reason doesn't do.

Already Available

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a new concept. It's already alive and well over at emusic.com. The selection is not great, but you get 50 to 80 high-quality MP3's with NO DRM for a flat monthly fee.

Actually, in Soviet Russia, the music frees you!

[MarkWPiper]

AllOfMP3 uses DRM-free files for all of their content. Moreover, many files support online encoding, in nearly every useful format that exists, at your choice of bitrate.

I wish more music services would follow this example.

Of course, I also wish every music site out there used their pay by the megabyte approach, at ridiculously low rates. I actually end up spending much more on music, because I'm not afraid to waste a dollar getting a few new albums. It's proof that cheap, DRM-free online distribution can work.

Re:OGG/Vorbis support

[mboverload]

Why would you do that? Transcoding reduces quality by an incredible amount.

You have an MP3 player, so use it to play MP3s.

Nothing New

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as though emusic.com didn't already do this...

Re:This just in...

[enosys]

That method sucks. It is slow and labour-intensive and you end up compressing the music for a 2nd time and making the quality worse.

Re:This just in...

[tepples]

If DRM upsets you that much, you can get a wav/mp3 writer plugin for your audio player and roll your own DRMless copy. If this isn't possible with your media player

And it isn't. The Secure Audio Path in Windows ME and Windows XP provides a way for a restrictions-managed WMA stream to play only on drivers signed by Microsoft WHQL, and Microsoft WHQL will sign a driver only if it doesn't mix the Secure Audio Path into cleartext digital outputs. For recordings that require Secure Audio Path, you'll need to run line-out to line-in, but with external USB 2.0 sound cards, there shouldn't be too much degradation compared to what lossy codecs do to your file. Thankfully, there aren't many recordings that require Secure Audio Path because there is still a significant install base of Windows 2000 machines, which do not support Secure Audio Path.

I'm sure there are special drivers and tools out there (you know, like Windows Sound Recorder).

Sndrec32 keeps only the first minute of what you record, as it was made before the era of affordable hard drives large enough to support a bedroom recording studio. Switch to Audacity to make extended recordings.

Apple is doing a great thing, but people will always find something to complain about.

Monopoly is dangerous even if the monopolist is not Microsoft.

Seen it, Done it

[poptones]

It's called magnatune and I've been shopping there for months.

How long until Michael offers us "mp3 lockers" so he doesn't even have to pay his own artists for downloads anymore?

Re:Hope he's proved right

[thryllkill]

Because we all know there are no drm free music services around that offer legitimate and legal in America music downloads.

Re:MP3Beamer?

[timmyf2371]

It's not difficult at all.

1. Go to local music store or online equivalent
2. Purchase CD
3. Convert CD tracks to 320kbps MP3s using your favourite encoder
4. Listen to said MP3s

What a clueless industry.

I would actually say "what a clueless poster" for not realising that you can still get your MP3 file rather easily.

Re:MP3Beamer?

[mboverload]

How about this:

I don't want to drive to the music store. The whole point of an online marketplace is to give an EQUIVILENT product at a faster and easier speed.

iTunes missed the clue train.

Re:Saying so doesn't make it so.

[David Rolfe]

gp: To tread up the slippery slope aways, how would you feel about the guy who throws a large house party and plays CDs he owns for everyone to hear? He's probably breaking the letter of the law. Is he immoral too?

you: No, he's not, because he's not breaking the law. 1.) This actually IS what we call "fair use", which the downloading crowd is trying to bastardize to consider every person on earth a "friend" that they're "sharing" with...

Sorry I have to jump into this heated debate... but NO, that is not Fair Use. You cannot 'share' anything with friends and family and call it Fair Use. I can't believe I'm going to look up the code instead of telling you to Google it, but here goes:

107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

So there you have it. Parties for your friends (I guess unless it's a musicology party, and you aren't playing the works in whole) and sharing with your family ARE NOT FAIR USE. Please to enjoy reading the whole code one time: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

Re:Saying so doesn't make it so.

[cpt kangarooski]

That's incorrect:

Per 17 USC 501, copyright infringement is an infringement of an exclusive right of the copyright holder under section 106, taking into account sections 602 and 107 through 122.

While you may be thinking of 18 USC 2319, it does not define infringement as theft, and in fact since only some infringements actually qualify under 17 USC 506, and therefore under section 2319, this leaves a large number of actionable infringements from 501 outside of the realm of any crime.

You shouldn't treat the title of an act as meaning anything. The reason they used the word 'theft' was in order to have the acronym 'NET.' That's it.

Brilliant site

[Zhe Mappel]

Downhillbattle.org makes the case quite well: iTunes is a GUI for the music industry, which didn't become any less corrupt simply because Apple digitally harnessed it.

Now, we all love our iPods, etc. etc. But keep this in mind:

Apple says iTunes is "better than free" because it's "fair to the artists and record labels." That's simply not true. First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing.

The artists are still being screwed, even if it's behind a lickable interface.

Re:Features?

[fireshipjohn]

magnatune! http://www.magnatune.com/