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The Sony/MP3 Saga Continues
Renegade Lisp writes "Sony's rolling out their new line of flash-based music players to the
market these days. More stylish than ever, they surely look like a
serious attempt to regain territory lost to the iPod, and perhaps even
to create the Walkman of the 21st century. And it looks like Sony has
finally given in to consumer pressure: these new "MP3 players" can
finally play MP3 natively, not just Sony's proprietary ATRAC format.
But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to
run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated
files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you
can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever.
Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a
brave hacker. But is this really the way to create the "Network
Walkman" of the 21st century? Sony, please wake up!"
Sometimes I don't understand why companies would go to such an extent to come out with some nice products, then hopelessly find a way to ruin it.
But then again, maybe I think too much. All these gadgets are sold for brand rather than technology, most consumers really don't care whether or not they can shares songs with others using this device, they can simply lend CDs out like they've been doing with tapes.
As long as Sony has designed a good GUI that users can (1) pop in the CDs, (2) select songs, (3) transfer to the player, its technical responsibility is done.
The more important job is to make it look and feel cool so that you want one if your friend got one.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
...the iPod is great not just because it's stylish and functional, but because it's as simple as possible wrt DRM. no DRM simply isn't going to happen, but with the iPod (and its *seamless* integration with iTunes) DRM is hidden from the user in 99.9% of cases.
if this Sony DRM stuff even requires a SINGLE extra click, then imo it has failed and has no chance of making me move away from my iPod (even though the designs I've seen look very nice).
1. Cheap.
2. No proprietary formats required.
3. No "DRM."
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk.
Please, just that. And I'll buy it. No need for fancy buttons or stylishness. I'm currently using an HD Lyra 20GB--it satisfies most of those. Its damn cheap (costs under 100USD now), it uses plain old MP3s, it doesn't even support most DRM, its built like a tank, and acts like an external hard disk. However it still requires drivers, isn't very reliable, and has mediocre battery life.
The genie is already out of the bottle. He's not going back in. Give up.
Sincerely,
Everyone
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Having to use Sony's software to add songs...isn't that what you do with iPod, add songs through iTunes?
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Free MacMini
The thing that really amazes me about the competition at the low-end of the mp3 market is the way Apple's been able to compete on price! That never happens! I mean, according to Amazon Sony's price for its 1 gig and 512meg models are exactly the same as Apple's. And I don't think I need to specify which player is better integrated with the operating system, is lighter, or looks more stylish.
Crazy times.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
You are not the target audience.
I suppose for top 40 teenie boppers, that's okay. Not for me
Now you're starting to get it.
I barely tolerate the fact that my ipod is white. It's bad enough that Bono is pushing the player I own.
Ahh....you already drank the koolaid. The marketing dept's job is done.
Even someone who is an audiophile will often still have a hard time telling the difference (between 128k and higher) through the shit headphones that often come with MP3 players. :)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
- Create digital music store (should have done this before Napster taught us all that we could easily get music for free with little risk)
- Establish digital management rules within range of the "Home Use" interpretation of Fair Use (for the curious, your Fair Use rights are established in US Code under Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106 or 107, I forget which. I think it's 107, 106 is Copyright holder rights; it's worth noting here that "home use" was not originally part of the Fair Use clause, but it has since been interpretted to fall under its umbrella)
- Make use of store convenient and reliable enough to be measurably superior than scrounging p2p networks for uncorrupted files.
- Establish a cost such that the added convenience, legality, and reliability of your digital music store is worth paying for in lieu of the sort of dumpster-diving you sometimes have to do on p2p
- Include some additional benefit for buying instead of stealing, such as a "frequent flyer" type program that rewards you with the option to get ahold of preview tracks earlier than other people (granted, these all just end up on p2p so it becomes moot), discounts on concert tickets and fan merchandise, access to reserved ticketing for popular concerts, and less restrictive DRM for loyal customers
- This part is critical: respect the customer, respect his rights. Do not assume everybody who buys your music is doing so to put in on eMule. Establish that you trust your customer to be a good consumer.
The profit here may or may not be significant, but a combinaton of a revenue stream plus reduced losses from piracy might make it worth the effort.Don't bother telling me that piracy doesn't actually cost them anything, it doesn't matter whether it does or not as long as they think it does. If they think it does, and they want to reduce/eliminate it, far better than they do so by leveraging technology to our benefit than try to get their business model legislated.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Personally I want both. Only to the /. world would those seem like mutually-exclusive options.
That said, Sony is such a classic example of interesting design that completely ignores major sore points in implementation, it isn't even funny. I'd have one of their tiny upright-model camcorders right now, if they hadn't required their own special compression format for the resulting movies a couple of years ago. Ah well -- ended up with a different make, which then allowed me to make the choice to grab up a cheap and oh so handy Mac to edit on, and so on. If I'd taken the little Sony it'd have been endless compromises just to stick with their proprietary formatting.
Here we have them requiring me to bend over backwards to implement a sort of personal DRM on my music files. How much more clumsy than Apple's iTunes-purchased files is that? Major, major disincentive to buying for me. Big sore point. That's what they're not "getting." Stylish I like just fine.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
iPod is ahead because it _works_ and its _simple_ and _easy to use_ and most people don't give a shit about feature XYZ they just want to play their music.
Contrast Sony where you have to jump through hoops and have all the check-in check-out and (previously) convert to ATRAC bullzhit... Sony are frankly GONE as a player in this market (and I like their products, I'm typing this on a Vaio.)
I simply do not understand why music downloads have not been embraced by the people who own the music. They are being extremely short-sighted.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Or more precisely, Sony is famous for constantly churning out new inventions and occasionally having a few stick. It's hard to argue that they produce cool looking stuff that works great, holds together well, and is more technologically advanced than everything else on the market. However, they always want to be the market leader, and thus end up with quite a few failed products because of it.
In this case, I think Sony is probably toast. Apple is the market leader, and it is doubtful they'll give that up. Sony has produced too little too late. And their idea of making the PSP a portable movie player is probably not going to pan out either. I would like to see them do an iTunes-like movie purchase app, though. I don't know about anyone else, but I use my computer as my television. Being able to purchase movies online would mean I could finally stop visiting that *E$#$#$ Blockbuster.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
s/hip/usable/
Seriously... the usability of an iPod (in addition to it's "hipness") is what keeps people using it. Not talking about forward/back/shuffle buttons... most players do that well. I'm talking about iTunes (and sync). Ironically, Apple's hardware sells because it's software is so good. Why do people even care about the iMac? Because of OSX.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
most people don't give a shit about feature XYZ they just want to play their music.
Well, yeah. Until they've owned their iPod a few months and hear from the friends about the various aftermarket add-ons they can get.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Yeah; this reminds me of the old weirdness that Sony's 1/8-inch plugs were almost but not quite the same as the industry standard. Sometimes you could plug a Sony gadget into another brand's gadget and both channels would work; sometimes not.
This was a fairly clear case of "We don't want our customers to connect our stuff to our competitors' stuff; everyone should just by Sony stuff". Not exactly an unusual attitude among market leaders, but it does show a certain amount of contempt for what customers want.
Their munging of the MP3 standard is pretty much the same deal. "We support MP3. Well, actually, it's not quite MP3, but it's almost the same thing. We've just tweaked it a bit so our stuff won't interoperate with other MP3 stuff."
The best approach would be to tell them that you're not buying their gadget because it's not compatible with your other gadgets. While you're at it, say the same thing to Microsoft and any other company you can find that's doing this sort of thing to you. What we want is a world where everything connects to everything else, and anything you buy works anywhere that you want to use it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I bet their internal board meetings are a riot.
Actually the pity and irony is: they're more likely two distinct, separate, exclusive board meetings. One for hardware, one for music label. (and technically a third for movie studio / multimedia label.) Note: I am not speaking from experience, merely word of mouth feedback. IANASE (I am not a Sony Employee.)
Sony, the electronics manufacturer, has its own agenda. Sony Music (now officially Sony-BMG Music) has an obvious other agenda. This gets worse too, because the Japanese company doing all the real innovation in design of electronics products, etc. has next to no contact with the US / North American one. Some products trickle down, yes, but not nearly as many of the 'cool' ones they put out in Japan.
Wired had a fantastic article almost two years ago now called The Civil War Inside Sony. Definitely worth a read.
One should not confuse the two (electronics manufacturer and music label.) Just because you see the "Sony" brand on an mp3 player doesn't mean at ALL that Sony Music had anything to do with it.
If the company was really smart they would co-brand Sony electronics products with Sony music artists. That's the biggest no brainer ever and they have yet to do anything like this. (Not that I would buy a "Jennifer Lopez MP3 player" but I'm sure somebody would.)
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