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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!"
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.
Sony is notorious for coming up with useful, and often superior technology, while at the same time ignoring the actual markets demands that they are targeting.
See betamax and minidiscs
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
yeah, this isn't what I want. I want a disc that is belt buckle size (cowboy, not clubbing) with a screen entirely on one side.. navigation alla wrist watch with small buttons on the horizontal lower edges, placed like a game controller - sd card storage.. it should come with 2 x 1 gig cards, britney spears video in the trash bin on the tiny os which would allow me to surf open wifi channels with a firefox mini browser. It should have a small wireless earpiece with option to have wireless tooth-microphone adapter for local networked chat (like on a bus with all the other owners of said device).
It should also do the dishes and fetch beer.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
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.
Master Shake, is that you?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
And if Joel says it, it must be so! He's got a web site, after all!
I bought an iPod because it has the best user interface in the business. I don't care if it's hip and/or trendy. I've never been hip or trendy in my life, I'm hardly going to start now.
More functions!=more usability.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
No, fellow goat you're missing the point. No geek wants to see his new toy hanging off the belts of the likes of Paris Hilton and Bono. Thats why I personally hate all things Apple. Technology should not be cutting edge and also fashionable. I pine for the days of laptops that look and feel like cinder blocks evacuated by albino elephants. We as geeks have had to endure childhoods of bullying and female rejection, the one high point is that we've always had the coolest toys, now people like Apple want to come along and make it all cute and accessible. Blasphemy I say.
Now excuse me while load *.OGG files onto my Rio Karma via SHH from a remote SAMBA server...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
An audiophile will be too busy twitching because the circuitry inside the MP3 player isn't made from hand rolled silver anointed with the sweat of Honduran virgins. Then they'll be gnawing on the arms of their chair because the interconnects aren't made from gold ingots mined from the deepest darkest mines of Central Kenya by underage workers (because they're small, and they can get to the best gold!)
I am so, so glad I'm not an audiophile.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
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!