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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.
...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.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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.