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Dealing with Digital Music and Vendor Lock-In?
rahuja asks: "Buying and using digital music is a far from easy decision today - there are various competing and incompatible formats, stores and players out there in the market, primarily Apple (AAC + iTunes + iPod), Windows (WMA + various stores + WMA-compatible players), and Sony (Atrac3 + Connect.com + Walkman). How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"
"Burning to audio CD and ripping back is always possible, but it is a painfully slow process and all tag information (song, album, artiste) is lost in the process.
In the past, I've used Sony Connect [Ed: IE 5.5+ only] (thanks to a $10 card I got with a Sony CD Walkman), which locks you in to Sony-only devices, and later, WMA with MSN Music and a Creative Muvo Micro N200. My player just died, and I'm too scared to lock myself into a new player/format/store now. iPod doesn't have an FM tuner yet, and my WMA tracks will be useless if next year I switch to Mac once the new x86 Powerbooks come out. I'm not sure how real Real's Harmony is, and JHymn doesn't support iTunes 6 yet.
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music, or at least a universal, compatible format.
How are you dealing with this issue? Or is it just me?"
In the past, I've used Sony Connect [Ed: IE 5.5+ only] (thanks to a $10 card I got with a Sony CD Walkman), which locks you in to Sony-only devices, and later, WMA with MSN Music and a Creative Muvo Micro N200. My player just died, and I'm too scared to lock myself into a new player/format/store now. iPod doesn't have an FM tuner yet, and my WMA tracks will be useless if next year I switch to Mac once the new x86 Powerbooks come out. I'm not sure how real Real's Harmony is, and JHymn doesn't support iTunes 6 yet.
In an ideal world we'd all have OGG-based players with FM tuner, and access to DRM-less music, or at least a universal, compatible format.
How are you dealing with this issue? Or is it just me?"
I burn an audio CD out of iTunes and voilà?
No worry there.
solution provided.
2 1337 4 u!
WMA won't be useless under OS X. There's always window media player for OS X, and if you don't mind some chance of quality loss, you can convert WMA to MP3 using free tools.
Just buy a digital audio player that supports mp3 or ogg, and don't buy from the vendors that lock you in.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Unless you keep everything as a mp3 or some other format without DRM, you are doomed.
You want it easy(iTunes, DRM whatever) you get locked in. Eventually, things will go south and you will lose that investment.
I have hundreds of CDs that I should be able to rip again and again. Maybe someday I will upgrade to 256k rips, or maybe I lose my HDs and have to re-rip... Either way, I own the CD and it is mine to do with as I please.
Five copies and you can't move it again? WTF? Crazy that you even bought into that stuff.
I don't steal music, but I don't buy it either.
It's my way of sticking it to the RIAA.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Similar here - MP3 and iPod. Just rip the CDs to high-bitrate MP3 and forget the details. Sure, I eat it a bit when it comes to compression efficiency, but it saves trouble - my wife uses a Nano while I have various pieces of equipment that play CDs of MP3s, so MP3s are the universal standard. Just use a mainstream, standard encoder and avoid the esoteric options and your MP3s will work on anything.
you pirate
companies exist to serve the consumer, not visa versa
until companies figure that out, you don't use them
you pirate until the companies figure out that trying to own you is a turn off
and if they never figure that out, then fine, they die
the point is: you are the consumer, you are king
don't agree to any arrangement that makes you subject to something proprietary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a simple solution really, don't buy into any of the 3's "unique" solutions schemes. If you absolutely must have that one hit wonder song and don't need the rest of the cd then after you have given over your $.99 to the devil then simply convert the song to a more open file type and move on.
I simply just stay away from DRM.
As a consumer I claim the right to re-formatting for personal use. DRM tries to prevent that.... stay away from DRM products.
It's as simple as that.
I just say no to DRM, it doesn't get any simpler.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
I think your real question is not about why you can't convert music from DRM format to non-DRM format. Honestly the fact that DRM music exists is what makes the only online music purchase possible. Did you expect the recrod companies to publish the music in any other way in our changing world. I forsee a time when CDs are phased out, because they can be copied easier than DRM music downloaded from an online store. Originially CDs and albums weren't that easy to copy when they were first introduced.
I guess your real question is why isn't there an open standard for DRM? Beats me. I think it is ultimately very self defeating for companies to maintain closed standards.
I work in the field of live pro audio, and there standards are openly published and manufacturers readily adopt them because a) it is a selling point by itself and b)in that industry its widely assumed that your company doesn't make the best product of everything an end user needs. In other words, they know that you are going to be using ABCs product together with XYZs or Blah company's product. Therefore they must adopt open standards in order to even be a consideration.
I guess in the computer industry that attitude doesn't exist and everyone thinks that their product is the shit or whatever. Frankly that needs to change, and what its going to take to execute such a change, I do not know.
-Mikey P
If it's that difficult to play in iTunes, then just download some software for which it's easy.
Vorbis is not dead, just not well supported. I've seen generic music players that support it, but if you insisted that it was essential you'd be restricting yourself quite a bit.
In the future, I think we might see players being more customisable (i.e. open source firmware). For now, you'd have to install Linux on your iPod.
I've done the same thing. Started when I got my Neuros (an ogg-compatible player). I still think that Vorbis support is something that'll eventually be standard in devices. Because it takes more CPU to play an ogg (very hard without a floating-point CPU, I understand), vendors still have to go through hoops to support it.
As various devices become more powerful, I think we'll see vorbis support become more prevalent, even if it's so the vendors can tout that their product supports another format. Once you've got the processing power, there are really no barriers for them: the codec is free, the xiph code is free, so they don't have to license anything from anybody or pay any exhorbitant fees to support it.
I guess all of this is to say that I'm trying to be patient. Right now, you can find a handful of players out there that support it, and that's enough for me (though I'd love it if my car CD player supported oggs as it does mp3s).
They pay the fee for the music. The police in Russia checked their licenses in response to an RIAA complaint and they're all in order.
Globalisation doesn't just work for corporations importing cheap shoes, it works for you too.
I buy CD's. Period. I must have hi quality source to listen to on my >$1000 Hi-Fi set-up when I feel in the mood for a serious listening session.
I have generated PC back up of every one of my 300+ CD's for use with portable playback devices, MP3 is acceptable in this situation as the sound quality form portable devices using ear-phones is far worse than on home hi-fi solution with speakers.
I use an MP3 encoder on my PC at VBR level 1. I am up to approx. 40 Gb of used space. Or $10 of storage space in present Hard Drive Gb/$ rates (after rebate of course).
I have two further backups in other PC's in my house, so another ~$20 or so of storage space.
I have an offsite backup as well.
Why such a high bit rate, why so many copies? Because it took me several months to get all the CD's ripped and I don't want to do it again because I decided I didn't encode them at a high enough quality or a Hard Drive crashes.
Now, if an MP3 player or portable device I want to use does not support MP3 (VBR) I do not buy it. So Laptops, PocketPC's and Sony Ericsson S710a phones are all acceptable, iPods are not (I want plug-n-play Mass USB storage device or Bluetooth File Transfer or network SAMBA support, not some Software Kludge of a third part program I have ot install on every PC/device I want to transfer music too/from).
Now I am up-to-date on my ending, when I buy music CD's and only have a handful to encode at any time.
I buy CDs, but I would NEVER throw them away. Why? Because I like the ability to go back in a few years and re-rip everything at higher sampling rates as storage space increases. Why get locked into a 128/160/192kbps version when you may find yourself with room for 256/320kbps later? Or heck, when storage gets cheap enough that you can rip CD's in straight-up WAV format? Only when every single bit of data is copied off the CD would I ever consider actually getting rid of them.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Personally, I own hundreds of CDs and all my iPod music is 100% legally ripped from them. Many of the CDs are used, many are greatest hits compilations, both of which save money, and I've purchased them over many years. I also buy my ipods when the new version comes out and the old version drops in price so I get a good deal.
If you want to "pirate" to "make a point" the only caveat is this: any time you commit civil disobedience (breaking the law to embarrass the legislature into changing it) you have to be willing to face the consequences of breaking that law (fines and jail) in order to make your point. Remember, Gandhi insisted on being jailed (I think it was for making his own salt) in order to embarrass the government. In Canada, Mortgentaler went to jail repeatedly to uphold the right of women to abortion. In your own country, Doctor Death did the same.
Otherwise you're not a crusader, you're just another whiny punk who wants everything for free immediately. Considering you could do what I do, there's an obvious alternative to pirating to avoid DRM.
There's only two real choices nowadays: WMA or AAC. Microsoft or Apple. That's pretty much it, really. Each has advantages and disadvantages...
With Microsoft, you have the whole enforced compatibility thing with their "Plays For Sure" initiative.
-Pros: Yes, this stuff does actually work, and fairly well at that. There's a few minor functional problems, but they're really minor. The integration with Media Center PC's is nice, as is the complete XBox integration if you have one of those. As long as you stick to Microsoft products, and Plays For Sure compatible player devices, you won't have any problems.
-Cons: You cannot use anything that isn't Plays For Sure compatible, not with the online stores or subscription services. Want to play those Napster downloaded songs on an iPod? No dice. Microsoft is very vocal about blaming Apple, but the fault is not Apple's, it's Microsoft's *incredibly* restrictive Janus DRM licensing. Not only would Apple have to implement WMA, but they'd have to implement a secure methodology such that the files cannot be copied back off the the player *at all*, and an expiration methodology such that if you failed to sync the player to the computer for a time period, the files would expire and/or delete themselves. Apple's not willing to go there, and frankly the hardware design of the iPod precludes some of that capability anyway. Oh, and Microsoft's DRM has yet to be cracked in a good way/
Or you can bite into the Apple for your music. They have the iTunes Music Store and the most popular music player devices.
-Pros: High quality AAC music support (AAC is much better than WMA, anyway). A pretty lightweight DRM that's easy to work with and somewhat easy to work around if needed. MPEG 4 support becoming very standardized. Apple is (mostly) sticking to open standards, basically, which is always nice.
-Cons: Drink the Apple cool-aid only. iTunes works with iPod's, but not with anything else. iPod's do have lots of other support though, from Real and many free and/or pay programs. Even the XBox 360 will support them, in a sense. You also pay the Apple tax, as everything Apple is a bit pricier than the competition. But this stuff is popular for a reason, you know.
In the long run, it seems more likely to me that Apple will win this war. They've been awfully stingy with licensing their FairPlay DRM, making it difficult for vendors to add support for iTunes Purchased Music, but that hasn't stopped them from being the only music store to show a profit. The subscription model (ala Napster) doesn't seem to be picking up a lot of adherents in the long term. People bought CD's at stores and didn't much like CD clubs either. Same principle, really. Not to mention that the evilness of the Microsoft Janus DRM is readily appearant if you make the mistake of buying into it and using it for a while. And vendors seem to be falling all over themselves to add iPod and iTunes support to their gear, even if they can't play iTMS purchased music. MPEG 4 is also the wave of the future, as the standard becomes better defined. Divx and Xvid and other variants will eventually fall off the map, as Apple has a fairly solid base system going there, and everybody is going to be rushing to be compatible with it. I expect a device more dedicated to video than the iPod Video is to be introduced by Apple within a year. Maybe they'll partner with Sony for video support on the PSP. Dunno.
But WMA is dying a slow death, and with the death of Microsoft and Blu-Ray, they're being left behind, really. WMA might be the format used on the next new disc format somehow, or Microsoft might have a hand in it, but Apple is getting into the digital distribution business over the internet in a big way and ignoring the business of data on physical medium. Apple's moves seem smarter to me.
Oh yeah, there's also the Sony option, where you buy nothing but Sony equipment because all Sony's stuff *only* works with other Sony equipment, but frankly that option has no pros to speak of, so it's just best avoided.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
http://www.allofmp3.com/ lets you buy DRM-free music and instead of paying per song, you pay per bandwidth... you choose your format that you want and you choose the compression rate. It's pretty sweet. It's based out of Russia and is legal to buy from.
But digital _IS_ different. The promise of digital data of all sorts is that you should be able to keep it around forever. You might have to transfer it to your new holographic 20 terabyte drive at some point, but that should just copying files over, which is trivial provided you do it before your obsolete hardware fails. To believe that this is just like any other "format war" is to buy into the premise of DRM.
Where are you buying your new CDs, that they cost $30-$35?!
The only time I ever payed close to that was for a special 4-disc set of a Classic recording.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
That's why I encode all my CDs to FLAC. It may not be the way of the future, but at least i'm not losing data. I can always convert it to the format-du-jour from flac, and keep the original files. If you go from OGG to MP3 to VFQ, you end up with a file that's got a lot more loss then going straight from the CD to one of the formats.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
buy vinyl. steal the mp3s off the internet. that way you have a physical, high quality analog copy that nobody can mess with, an mp3 file that has no vendor lock in, and the artist and his or her label get paid.
"I typically don't buy "used" CD's, because 90% of them are from people doing something wrong"
Oddly enough you could make the same argument for new CD's, because 90% of the record companies are doing something wrong (i.e. screwing the public and the artist, payola, buying lawmakers, refusing to pay artists royalties due to them, etc), and so by that argument you can never buy a CD because hardly any of them don't come with some sort of legal or moral baggage.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That's like taking some lossy jpgs, printing them out on paper, laying them down on the floor, taking digital photos of the paper photos, and keeping THOSE lossy jpgs.
WTF?
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
``Because it takes more CPU to play an ogg (very hard without a floating-point CPU, I understand), vendors still have to go through hoops to support it.''
That's not true and hasn't been true since the Tremor codec was released (and it was created exactly to make it easier to do Vorbis in hardware). FYI: Tremor is an integer-only Vorbis codec.
I think the issue is much rather that vendors won't support the format, because it costs them extra effort and hardly anybody is demanding Vorbis support. Even on Slashdot, many people swear by MP3, or perhaps AAC or FLAC. That kind of goes to show how little mindshare Vorbis has...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.