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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!"
We don't want something hip and stylish. We want something that works well.
Oh yeah, I've never personally been able to understand the whole hooplah over the Ipod shuffle, or even the Ipod mini? 1 gigabyte? 5 gigabytes? Do you have ANY idea how old the songs get on your mp3 player if you keep hearing stuff over and over again like a radio station?
I suppose for top 40 teenie boppers, that's okay. Not for me.
20 gig and 40 gig are good sizes, respectfully. The more, the better.
Sony's designs are ugly, too. I barely tolerate the fact that my ipod is white. It's bad enough that Bono is pushing the player I own. Now, Sony comes out with Grape, Cherry and Orange flavors. Ugh!
Why can't they make an mp3 player that's like Nyquil. In the words of Denis Leary, that "original green death fucking flavor, but it doesn't matter..." If an mp3 player is green-death nyquil colored, but has a great interface, and does all I want in regards to playability and reliability, that's all I need.
I'm sure everyone else's priorities will be similar after they buy an orange mp3 player, and throw it against the wall in rage when it doesn't do what they want it to do.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Distributed Labels of Reporting Companies Sony Classical Sony Discos Sony Japan Sony Labels Sony Music Sony Music US (Latin) Sony Wonder
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Their CD based MP3 players require no such obfuscation scheme.
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.
Because they always are incompatible in some annoying little way.
I was actually comparison shopping for an MP3 player this week, and I ruled out the Sony 'network walkman' because I don't trust them to play nicely.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...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.
Just furthers the case that DRM is bad for everybody. Bad for companies, bad for consumers, bad for artists. Don't get me wrong there is a good motivation behind not wanting free copying of copyrighted media but requiring somebody to encrypt something to listen to it when they have it locally unencrypted on there computer serves no end but to make people less interested in the product. The best way to prevent large scale piracy is to offer a value added product. Pay the money and get good quality music on a CD, rip it yourself and get to keep the pretty pictures. Its all about making something that people WANT to purchase and make it worth the money to do so.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Not sure how much anyone here cares about the styling of their music player, but I think Sony has leapfrogged Apple in terms of design. The pictures on Sony's site don't do them justice. For one thing, the OLED display is embedded under the surface of the player, so you don't see the display unless it's on (and glowing through the metallic surface). It actually looks futuristic, instead of the chinsy pseudo-futuristic look sony has been selling us for years now.
Sony's PSP plays MP3 files right off the memory stick. Just plug the PSP into a USB2 port, copy your MP3 files to it, then listen and enjoy. Of course, I've only got a 1G memory stick, which holds enough MP3 files for my listening pleasure.
You can't re-use code, if you can't find it.
- 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
You ignore the cases where the manufacturer / service provider ceases to exist (or ceases doing business with you, a la BitMover) and you lose access to the content (either slowly as hardware dies and software succumbs to entropy, or quickly if something like Steam goes away)
Open content formats are the only way to be sure you can access your content, period. Anything else requires trust, and I don't trust corporations because our interests are always in conflict.
Doesn't seem odd to me to want to be sure you can access your content, so it seems reasonable to demand open formats.
"Illegal Activity" is a red herring, and something of the Godwin's Law of copyright arguments.
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.
What a great idea!
Sincerely,
NASA
I personally have a Rio MP3 player. Called the Rio Karma. It's small, functional and does something most MP3 players don't. Supports the Open Source OGG format. When comparison shopping OGG was a requirement, since I didn't want to re-rip most of my music collection. iPod, Sony, RCA, and Creative MP3 players don't support OGG/Vorbis, Rio and iRiver do, and Rio has more features on the player, such as the DJ which can play your favorite (most played) songs from any Genre you want. Or have it select songs for you from all genres. It even *Attempts* to go from heavy music, to slightly "lighter" music and then build back up so you're not going from Slayer to Goo Goo Dolls back to back.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
The minimum price for one of these is 69 GBP tax included ($130 US). That's for the lowend 256MB version. The high end 1GB model with FM tuner is $300. The iPod shuffle 512MB and 1GB are $99 and $149 respectively before tax.
I wouldn't say that these were any more affordable.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Please renember that the people who pay your salaries do not work for and do represent the music industry. And also, please renember that your consumer division makes way more that your music division. And also, please renember companies like IBM and Apple who royally screwed themselves out of the PC revolution while Miscrsoft made billions because they simply could not hold themselves accountable to the economic forces and realities that drive the bottom line. And also, please renember that while Sony Corp is a multi billion dollar corporation, they are not bigger than the global economy that puts out well over a trillion per month - and will simply beat you to a bloody pulp if you try to force your misguided will on the market rather than obey what the market is trying to tell you. Finally, please renember you are putting faith in a business strategy that requires the ability to restrict the free flow of information at a time when it's never been more free flowing since the birth of human existence. Translation - you are a guaranteed looser.
Sincerely
Consumer and common sense
PS: good riddance and good luck, you'll need it
1. Cheap.
The shuffle starts at 99 bucks.
2. No proprietary formats required.
All ipods play wav, mp3, and (un drmd) aac.
3. No "DRM."
Play any mp3 you want.
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life.
I get around 12 hours out of my 4th gen 20gig ipod.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk.
Not sure what os you are using, but (obviously) ipods are seamless with X, and act as a lovely external firewire (or usb2) drive.
you obviously dont get it as you say. the ipod shuffle is designed to look and feel like it has infintie capacity.
that is to say I would challenge you to a turing test to see if you cold tell the difference between an ipod shuffle and a 80 gig ipod just by listineing to it in shuffle mode.
I'm not kidding, here are the ground rules. A shuffle holds 150 to 300 songs randmoly selected from the 80gigs on your hard drive. You listen to it for a day or so, and have not listened to all 200 songs. then you jack it in to recharge it and while that is going on the shuffle gets refilled. Then you listen the next day. and repeat.
From your point of view it would be no different than listening to your 80 gig drive drive or a 40 gig ipod. you could not tell the difference by listening.
You see the thing you are not understanding is that the software, itunes, makes this transparent. If you had some piece of shit software like win amp and had to drag files by hand onto the device or run them through a sony deobfuscator then you would not be constantly refilling it. But with itunes, CHARGING = REFILLING. since you can just barely play all the songs on a single charge this basically means that in any practical usage you are constantly refreshing the songs before you hear them twice.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Don't forget in the head to head, that apple also 'Obfuscates' - I mean it's an easily broken obfuscation, and the iTunes platform has become so prolific that hacks to every aspect of it have been everywhere for years now and several parties have duplicated their DAAP protocol - easly the best LAN netradio scheme out there, and others have built clients to undermine it for p2p purposes...
But they do obfuscate.
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.
Yes, but the Sony model has an FM Radio--which most people won't use, but will complain about being absent on the iPod--so that makes it a better value!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
What I don't get is how anyone could listen to their entire collection on shuffle. Perhaps my collection is more eclectic than most, but I have audio books, Xmas music, weird classical, Jim Morrison reading poetry, and a million other things that don't necessarily play well together with the pop, rock and jazz that make up the majority of my collection.
...No matter, the combo of the Karma and Predixis software is still vastly superior to iTunes and an iPod, when it comes to manipulating a large body of audio.
I love MusicMagic Mixer from Predixis, which uses computer analysis of each audio file to determine which songs play well together. Pick one song, or ten songs, and tell it to make a mix that sounds similar. If only it worked with my Rio Karma. I have to create playlists with Predixis and then load them into the Karma through the awful Rio Music Manager...
From the Sony website: "The players' storage is incomparable: thanks to ATRAC3plus, the 256MB NW-E503, the 512MB NW-E505 and the 1GB NW-E507 can store up to 45 CDs' worth of music, which is almost 700 tracks (when using high quality sound ATRAC3plus audio compression technology)" Corect me if I'm wrong but that's around 60 minutes worth of music per 22mb. Doesn't seam right to me.
The really sad part is that as the only combination audio hardware/music label corporation, Sony had the chance to totally own the digital music universe. Imagine buying an album of non-DRM mp3s on a memory stick, and playing it in your Sony mp3 player. Sony would have made money both ways -- by selling hardware, and by selling music -- and by the way, they would have made a much bigger cut on the music than Apple currently does as a music middleman, which means they could have shrugged off the paranoia that causes DRM.
And they could have done this in 1999, long before Apple got rolling with iTunes. Sony, you screwed up big time.
Illegal activity?
Hardly. I own close to 5,000 legally purchased CD's. I don't copy purchased CD's except to create personal copies for the car and the beach (cuz CD's are hardly indestructable, and catalogs don't stay in print forever).
The copy protection means I can't play Sony CDs at work (because loading their software violates corporate policy against loading unapproved software).
So then maybe I decide to put a copy on an iPod so I can listen that way. But wait, if you have a PC you can't do that either. But they insist someday this will work once they figure out the kinks.
And of course certain DRM'ed CD's wont play on certain CD players at all. How swell is that?
DRM is a pathetic failure at stopping pirates - making a copy is merely inconvenient.
ALL DRM does is angers law abiding consumers by making their purchase less valuable to them.
Buy indie. Tell Sony where they can stuff it...
While it pains me I've stopped buying their stuff. This hurts artists I like, but I've got enough records that passing on a few artists from the Sony family of labels is a small price to pay.
Thats an incredibly obtuse way of looking at DRM. Fraunhofer's patent does not dictate what you, the end user, can do with your mp3s.
Although it would be nice if Apple supported ogg...
Let's make a difference
Fraunhofer's patent does not dictate what you, the end user, can do with your mp3s.
Bands can't sell MP3 files without paying 2.0% of related revenue to Thomson.
Not really. From the article, Sony actually re-writes the MP3 files with a bunch of header crap and strips out some of the ID frames inside the body of the MP3. What Apple has done is a file naming scheme (probably for file system performance) with an index file. The actual MP3 files are untouched.
Other tech companies that aren't creating content don't give a rats ass about Sony's video and music divisions. however, the people who run sony are composed of all these competing groups and their interests naturally conflict, because the hardware group has to compete against other tech companies that, as I noted, don't give a fat rats ass about Sony's special IP interests.
As a consequence, in order to placate the Music and Video divisions, the engineers had to come up with a way to allow people to move mp3s to their MP3 player while, at the same time, preventing people fro musing the Player as a transference device for sharing. If it's proprietary, all te better to placate the PHBs in hardware who never saw a proprietary system they disliked (viz Minidisk, beta, ATRAK, etc.)
The good thing about this is: Sony's gear will always be hobbled by having to drag the retards in the Music and Video divisions along, which allows other companies to come in and fill the void without having the 3,000 lb sony gorilla pooping all over the market.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Now excuse me while load *.OGG files onto my Rio Karma via SHH from a remote SAMBA server...
:-)
I found that when I used the SHH protocol to transfer files, the sound volume was adversely affected. Now I use SSH and it sound much better
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
This article talks about the demotion of the hardware guy Ken Kutaragi. People thought he might be the next CEO. Instead he was demoted (lost his seat on the board) and one of the reasons is he had the gall to say "Sony also has been hurt by its insistence on making its content proprietary"
More links to same story
Very very sad. Explains what happened to the MD which could have been a great format...
I'd like to plug, for instance, eMusic, a subscription service for non-DRM mp3s ($10 fer 40 downloads per month). Their catalog isn't too bad, although it is heavy on the stuff that, um, doesn't sell well otherwise. But if you like Jazz, or bands like Big Star or Yo La Tengo, it's fantastic.
Most of the stuff comes from small labels, of course.
Now if I could just play it on a decent non-DRM HD based player, with a great user interface, that's also a portable data drive, Earth would be the best planet ever. Hey! That's like something Sony would've made, in the old days...
Something is very very wrong with Sony these days.
I for one read the bit about the obfuscation and immediately dismissed their devices as useless e.g. "here we go again.. more of their idiot DRM crapfuscation".
Sony just don't get it do they ? They've simply lost the plot. People just want to play/copy etc. what they want when they want. That's what will sell. The original Sony Walkman was great precisely because you just taped something (either from a record, a CD, the radio or a microphone) you popped the cassette it your walkman and you played it. No fucking about with computer formats/DRM or other unecessary shite.
Sony get your heads round this simple idea "The customer should control the device". The device should not attempt to control the customer. If you try this your device will fail.
Mp3 is the "format de jour" of portable devices. People have collections of mp3 files. I for one just want to "copy them to my portable device and go" (something I can do with my cheap "no name" mp3 player). Sorry but I'm not putting up with anything that gets in the way of that. Not one thing. If I have to I'll just go back to a portable CD player with home burned CDs. And I bet I'm not the only one.
On a simiar note a mate of mine has a Sony DVD player that cost him over £ 200 (uk) It's fussy as hell about the discs you put in it and rejects most "home burned" CD and DVDRs - and it should be said here these DVDRs are mostly of home video footage (of his bloody kids and holidays too... arrghh !!!!)
One of my other mates has a Ronin 215 which cost her £ 23 (uk). In contrast to the Sony it will have a go at anything you put in it and so far she's not found a single disc that won't play in it - even some of the ones her 4 year old son has scratched to bits (another good reason for making backups of your DVD collection)
So we got the players together for a "super test" and when they do both manage to play the same disc can you tell the difference in quality ? Only just but it's very, very close (although we didn't test them on a terribly expensive television)
Moral of the story ? My first mate now has a Ronin 215 as well and it's put us off buying any expensive consumer "media playback" equipment for life.
Sorry, Sony have completely lost it big time and are simply not worth considering for portable audio players.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
I promptly returned the device to the dealer. And I got so angry about it that I submitted a Slashdot story. It got accepted. And rightly so!
You might be the last remaining person on Earth with a working Rio Karma!! I gave up after #4 died and bought an iPod. Techie-loyalty be damned.
I guess one possibility would be to make a player that uses interchangable XD or SD cards, however with the ever-increasing density of flash chips and the shrinking size of the players there's no need for a removable card. The iPod shuffle isn't much bigger than a minidisc (not the minidisc player but the disc itself)
I often use my MD player to record live DJ sets of myself and friends when we play out. Does anyone make a portable flash recorder that has line inputs? I know my Creative Muvo records, but only through the microphone at terrible quality. Many friends of mine who are also DJs now just bring along a tiny laptop and record continuously to the HD.
Coincidentally, Sony and Apple were two of the leaders of the Firewire/iLink push even though the 1394 market was less obvious than the digital music market, which puts both adversaries in the same boat. Nobody can rationally doubt that Apple has beaten it's 1394 partner this time around since Sony is poorly playing catchup in a market that Apple has defined. I also have to say that FP guy is going a bit overboard on his judgment of the iPod. For one, the iPod shuffle has an auto-fill option that does exactly what it says, removing any replay action. And even if you don't have an iPod shuffle with its auto-fill trick there are plenty of ways to make up for it using smart playlists which happen to be database queries based against the iTunes Music Database. (You didn't think iTunes and the iPod were simply music players did you?) There is even a site dedicated to techniques for effective smart-playlist usage (though that's no surprise since there are sites for anything) which directly correlates to heightened iPod enjoyability since you have the ability to sync certain playlists to your iPod automatically. The iPod is a very good front-end to a music databasing system which is robust, easy to use, and works well for the majority of people who want to listen to their music and who do not have esoteric or clandestine old-school technology fetishes or a passionate desire for a dumb (as in feature-poor), manual-update drag-and-drop music player. Even though Sony and Apple pioneered 1394 together it looks as though Sony is only partially (not at all?) clued in as to what makes a whole Digital Music Player solution. It's not just the player.