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NYT Opinion Piece on DRM And P2P
bsartist writes "The NYT is running an opinion piece written by a working musician who has a pretty healthy dislike of copy protection and DRM. From the article: 'As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle, and how many more iPods might have our albums on them if our labels hadn't sabotaged our releases with cumbersome software.'"
I wish some of the entertainment industry execs would click that link and get a fucking clue.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle"
Ok, go here: http://www.okgo.net/music_music.asp
Best of luck to the band!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Eh, ButMeNot.
--
RumorsDaily
" Um, we are listening to your music. We're just not paying. That's the point. "
No, that's not the point. The point is that the less net-savvy people are not listening to the music, since they can't download it to their iPod due to copy protection.
Did you read TFA, or are you just spouting garbage because you feel so proud of yourself for getting songs for free?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
From the article:
Luckily, my band's recently released album, "Oh No," escaped copy control, but only narrowly. When our album came out, our label's parent company, EMI, was testing protective software and thought we were a good candidate for it. Record company executives reasoned that because we appeal to college students who have the high-bandwidth connections necessary for getting access to peer-to-peer networks, we're the kind of band that gets traded instead of bought.
You know what? It was hearing "A Million Ways" on NPR, then a P-2-P download of the song, that CAUSED me to purchase the entire album! If I had not been able to dig the whole song a couple of times, I would have never have purchased it. "Oh No" was the first CD I've bought in 2 years. (I just haven't found a lot of music lately that appeals to me.)
So the very avenue that the record companies fear, generated a sale. How many others has it generated?
"Not that it will ever happen in our lifetime for audio files, but there will be some advancement in audio that will only be avaliable on DRM, it's only a matter of time."
It already happened; the copy protection on neither SA-CD nor DVD-A have been broken to my knowledge. Certainly I've never seen illegal download versions of them. However, the majority of people have decided that the music they can already play (whether that be purchased CDs or mp3 downloads) is "good enough", and the formats have been pretty stillborn.
But then, my system isn't exactly the worst I've ever heard (NAD player, Pioneer amp, Celestion speakers) and I think my CDs sound perfectly good enough as well.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
No, that's not the point. The point is that the less net-savvy people are not listening to the music, since they can't download it to their iPod due to copy protection.
Both my sisters know nothing about computers and apart from MSN, email and Word don't really have any use for it...oh yeah.. they both have a collection of music spanning hundreds of tracks (started with Napster and continued on with Kazaa and Limewire). I haven't seen either buy a cd in a long time, and its not because of DRM.
Point is, I think the article is wrong in this respect. Napster ushered in an era that made it easy for regular folk to download music. If you could check email you could get any song you wanted. Whatever else, I think P2P has affected negatively sales of CDs (although the jury is out how much exactly). And certainly if the people are not listening to the musician in the article its not because of DRM. And yes, he should have known that big labels like Sony or EMI are against P2P sharing.
I do agree with one sentiment though. Customers who do go out and buy a cd are punished for it. They are treated as potential thieves even though they already shelled out money for the CD. They have to deal with DRM and rootkits, while the 'pirates' essentially get a nice DRM-free nohassle mp3 off illegal P2P networks. Thats just bad business.
No lock available on any consumer-grade car, truck, minivan, house, garage, shed, or toilet (don't ask) is capable of keeping criminals out. This is *well known* among locksmiths and security professionals. Unless you live in a bank vault, you can't keep even your average garden-variety criminal out of your stuff.
Ever watch the show "It Takes A Theif?" Locks are there to make you *feel* safe, not to actually protect you or your valuables. They also provide a legal basis for prosecuting someone for B&E or trespassing. If the door is locked from them, they weren't supposed to be there.
And actually, I say that the "It Takes A Theif" guys don't go far enough (although I know why). They almost always go easy the second time they hit a house (after the security upgrade), simply because they'd get in MAJOR trouble if they went around destroying all the fancy gadgets that the producers just got done installing. Not only that, they'd seriously compromise their entire show premise if they went through, set off the alarms, and still made off with what they could...it would show that *NOTHING* is safe, EVER, regardless of security.
Here's a fun fact: If the locks on your home were made by Kwikset, I have a key to your house. There are a limited number of OEM keys cut for Kwikset locks, which are some of the most popular locks around. How safe are your locks now?
So has GM though. Chrysler killed off Plymouth, GM killed off Oldsmobile, and as far as I know, Ford hasn't killed off anything yet, have they? The pundits are saying Mercury is on life-support, but to the best of my knowledge, Ford hasn't officially announced the final nail yet.
Simply put, GM is having so much trouble meeting its pension obligations because no one will buy their cars without a deep discount.
The Chevy Cavalier was the #1 best selling car in Canada for several years running, yet GM was unable to parlay that marketshare dominance into huge profits. Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to defend GM's products. I think their vehicles are all cheap, flaky crap (with the notable exception of this one, which is just freakin' amazing). But it's been selling just as well or better than their competitors. So they should be in a comparable financial situation. Yet they're not. Why? Because of the pensions.
I'm not alone in this opinion; the pros all back me up:
They're losing money because they're paying out benefits to employees that don't even work there anymore at a rate proportionally higher than their competitors.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I returned the latest Santana CD to Borders Bookstore, where I bought it, after discovering it installed crap without my permission on my company-issued laptop. I was direct with the manager about the problem and they accepted the return with very little hassle.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Why? The human ear is not going to improve in its ability to discern nuances in sound in the near future.
We've pretty much maxed out on providing lossless sound already (as far as the human ear can tell) with current non-DRM formats.
When you're already at the 99.9% level of hearing the sound on playback as it sounded live, there really isn't anything that can improve on it.
Sure.. some suckers will buy a "new" format that claims to be more lossless, and they will insist to everyone that they can really "hear" the difference. But the truth is, unless they have some canine in their ancestry, they won't be able to hear the difference.
We've damn near maxed out on improving sound quality in file formats, as far as any human ear can tell.
DRM is dead. If you can hear it coming through your speakers.. you can record it. At 0.001% loss.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
New York Times
December 6, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Buy, Play, Trade, Repeat
By DAMIAN KULASH Jr.
Los Angeles
THE record company Sony BMG recently got in trouble after attempting to stem piracy by encoding its CD's with software meant to limit how many copies can be made of the discs. It turned out that the copy-protection software exposed consumers' computers to Internet viruses, forcing Sony BMG to recall the CD's.
This technological disaster aside, though, Sony BMG and the other major labels need to face reality: copy-protection software is bad for everyone, consumers, musicians and labels alike. It's much better to have copies of albums on lots of iPods, even if only half of them have been paid for, than to have a few CD's sitting on a shelf and not being played.
The Sony BMG debacle revealed the privacy issues and security risks tied to the spyware that many copy-protection programs install on users' computers. But even if these problems are solved, copy protection is guaranteed to fail because it's a house of cards. No matter how sophisticated the software, it takes only one person to break it, once, and the music is free to roam and multiply on the peer-to-peer file-trading networks.
Meanwhile, music lovers get pushed away. Tech-savvy fans won't go to the trouble of buying a strings-attached record when they can get a better version free. Less Net-knowledgeable fans (those who don't know the simple tricks to get around the copy-protection software or don't use peer-to-peer networks) are punished by discs that often won't load onto their MP3 players (the copy-protection programs are incompatible with Apple's iPods, for example) and sometimes won't even play in their computers.
Conscientious fans, who buy music legally because it's the right thing to do, just get insulted. They've made the choice not to steal their music, and the labels thank them by giving them an inferior product hampered by software that's at best a nuisance, and at worst a security threat.
As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle, and how many more iPods might have our albums on them if our labels hadn't sabotaged our releases with cumbersome software.
The truth is that the more a record gets listened to, the more successful it is. This is not just our megalomania, it's Marketing 101: the more times a song gets played, the more of a chance it has to catch the ear of someone new. It doesn't do us much good if people buy our records and promptly shelve them; we need them to fall in love with our songs and listen to them over and over. A record that you can't transfer to your iPod is a record you're less likely to listen to, less likely to get obsessed with and less likely to tell your friends about.
Luckily, my band's recently released album, "Oh No," escaped copy control, but only narrowly. When our album came out, our label's parent company, EMI, was testing protective software and thought we were a good candidate for it. Record company executives reasoned that because we appeal to college students who have the high-bandwidth connections necessary for getting access to peer-to-peer networks, we're the kind of band that gets traded instead of bought.
That may be true, but we are also the sort of band that hasn't yet gotten the full attention of MTV and major commercial radio stations, so those college students are our only window onto the world. They are our best chance for success, and we desperately need them to be listening to us, talking about us, coming to our shows and yes, trading us.
To be clear, I certainly don't encourage people to pirate our music. I have poured my life into my band, and after two major label records, our accountants can tell you that we're not real rock stars yet. But before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won'
Damian had a harsher version of this article on music industry blog coolfer.com. Read it here. Looks like he was forced to tone it down for the ny times...
At some point, all these files floating around for free on the net are going to start sounding pretty crappy, and the DRM files will be the only ones that will be the MUST HAVE rage.
I think you place too much importance on the general public's desire for Quality.
Yes, DVDs can provide a higher-quality audiovisual experience than VHS tapes. This doesn't mean much when people are still hooking up their players to their Plain Old TVs with a composite cable, and listening to the sound through the TV's 4-inch mono speaker.
DVD supplanted VHS because of convenience, not quality. DVDs don't need to be rewound. They're random-access. They take up less space and usually come with bonus features and content.
The industry has tried several times to sell a next-generation consumer audio format with higher quality -- DAT, DVD-Audio, SACD -- and invariably they've been relegated to small corners of the market. Oddly enough, the move from CDs to MP3s is a huge step BACK in quality. But the market doesn't mind, because MP3s offer far more CONVENIENCE. You can't carry 250 CDs with you in your pocket.
And that is why media companies are losing it. Copy protection and usage restrictions are nothing more than hassles for actual paying customers. And every time the content providers, whether it is music, movies, or videogames try to introduce another technological solution to their market problem, they only alienate paying customers. The actual people who are unwilling, uninterested, or unable to pay for the content just go out and get versions without the protection.
Yeah, it just boggles the mind. They go out of their way to ensure that pirated content is superior in every way to purchased content. The pirated stuff is easier to get. It's more flexible and can be played everywhere. It doesn't break my machine. It doesn't disable the controls on my player. It costs less. The only advantage purchased content has is that in theory it's the "right thing to do". But really, with the asshats running the media companies and their lawsuits and lobbying for offensive laws and the way they rape the actual artists, I'm not even sure that giving them money is "the right thing to do".
I found a link to RIAA Radar in a slashdot post a week or two ago. It's pretty cool and gives you a way to find those artists and labels who aren't part of the problem. Or at least not as much as RIAA members are.
From talking to my brother (a musician who sells his own CDs via his website using CDBaby), most musicians hate the DRM crap. They also want to get paid for their hard work. It becomes a Catch-22.
.99 than to get zip. CDs cost too damn much for how much filler music is on most of them.
New artists that have just signed their first record deal are not making a ton of money. If you think the record labels take draconian measures to try and stop piracy, you should see what they do to a new artist on a contract. The band usually has little leverage to negotiate with. Even if other labels are sniffing around, they are still not proven over a big market.
So, the new artist desperately wants to get their music heard. And the author of TFA makes a good case for that. A new artist isn't making a ton of money until they really become a name, and often get a new record deal. So if music is getting pirated some, they could care less.
It's when a band has become really successful that the members can say they are making some serious money. That 2nd and future contracts are much more band friendly than before, because the label can't afford to lose that band. And when that happens, the band is a little more interested in getting some of that money.
As the author of TFA mentions, artists often put everything into their music. Once they hit the road, their lives often suck, outside of maybe some groupie action, and until they are big names, they are all skanky looking pieces of shit. Also, many bands write all of their own music (unless they are Country, in which case they write little, and just perform.) So, they want to reap some benefits from that.
If they are a typical musician, they have put most if not all of their eggs into that music career. If it fails or they don't make good money doing it, all they have to look forward to is a life in the fast food industry, or going back to college after leading a life that isn't condusive to studying hard. Not a very attractive outlook.
So, yeah, they want to be heard, and they want to be paid. And it is usually between the 2nd and 3rd album that they finally realize that they aren't being paid that much. Then, they change sides in the file swapping wars.
The author is right about one thing, though. It's better to get a portion of