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Yahoo! Sells, Advocates DRM-Free Music
prostoalex writes "Jessica Simpson's 'A Public Affair' will be sold on Yahoo! Music in MP3 format with no DRM attached. According to Yahoo! Music blog, this is a big deal for the major online music store: 'As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day -- the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!'"
Please explain to me what this really is. I visited the page, and what it looks to be is the users' ability to download an unfettered "customized" mp3 from Simpson where (I assume) a laundry list of common names are inserted into the mp3 (dubbed, no doubt)... giving the customer the illusion of some connection with the artist. (So far, it appears a more correct headline would have been "Yahoo advocates DRM-free music, offers one DRM-free song from their catalog!)"
Obscene marketing and subterfuge aside, I find nothing in the general Yahoo Music offerings to suggest the rest of their music is offered unfettered, free of DRM. Indeed, the FAQ includes the following info:
Any information/explanation or evidence to the contrary would be greatly appreciated, because, other than the free advertising, I'm not seeing any change in direction from Yahoo on this one.
I was taken aback by this. Something tells me they won't be allowed to succede, but it reminds of when WB tried selling a DVD without copy protection and discovered a) it was cheaper for them, and b) made no difference to their sales.
But when I clicked on the link, it took me to a Jessica Simpson page. MINE EYES!!! *clutches eyes and runs away*
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Pity they didn't choose an artist I would actually want to listen to.
Companies talk of thinking different, while others actually perform different. Tip of the hat to yahoo who may strangely become relevant again.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
~~~ zomg drm is like so sucky
although, there aren't many musicians opinions i would respect. but good to see at least some "major" artist is pulling against it.
Because when the track doesn't sell for shite (because the content is shite) then everybody will wave and wail that _clearly_ once the track was out there, the reason it didn't sell was that The Pirates(tm) turned it to the P2P dark side.
You know what I am getting at here. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I dont care about Jessica Simpson but it could just lead to more artists being distributed in non-drm format... and that is GOOD!
I was about to say non DRM is awesome but seriously...Jessica Simpson?
Who's going to buy her music let a lone pirate it!
I ate your fish.
i think the original article read:
"According to Yahoo! Music blog, this is a big deal for the major online music store: 'As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: Jessica Simpson doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling Jessica Simpson-free music every day), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that Jessica Simpson has a cost. She's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the Jessica Simpson back off, anyway!'"
Is the music industry starting to see sense?
/. pessimist and go searching for the loopholes. Sometimes it pays to be an optimist, and I reckon Yahoo et al. are going to need all the encouragement they can get to convince record exec's that this is a Good Idea (TM).
I'm not going to be a
Then we might see some decent music being released unrestricted!
Ah great! Now I have to balance buying a non-DRM'd product to show the people in charge that it can actually work against owning a Jessica Simpson song. The agony of these modern times.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
I just hope they keep Ashley Simpson's msuic DRMed.
I love iTunes. And I love the music store. Lately I have found myself buying CDs that I downloaded from the music store because I wanted non-DRM copies so I can share them on my home network that includes non-iTunes using boxes. I do not think I will be buying anything else from iTunes.
www.beastproject.org
For some this may be good news, but for others it may be "Jessica Simpson's music is so crappy that they don't even need to DRM it, cause no one will even want to waste their bandwidth to pirate it."
But keep it to yourself...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
And there was me thinking that her dad Homer's barbershop quartet LP was much better...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...nobody steals my dog's crap out of my front yard! It's just sitting there. No lock on it! Plain sight. Anyone could take it.
If Yahoo keeps it up and expands the program it'll be great for us consumers. Hopefully other mainstream companies will follow suit.
I never thought I would live to see the day when a major (really major) company not only publicly supports but actually takes the plunge to sell non-DRM infested music. What's next? Sony will release a $199 PS3? (Har har...)
This kinda reminds me of Gmail. Back when it came out it was just unthinkable that a company would give you more than a few MBs of storage for free let alone a whole GB! Nowadays, everybody gives you at the minimum of 200MB. I think that Yahoo, like Gmail, just might profoundly shift the paradigm of online music distribution like Gmail changed the way we think of free email.
Is this the beginning of the end of DRM? Not quite yet IMO because the RIAA and MPAA are still run by idiots, but I think the day may come sooner than we think if more major players like Yahoo come on board.
-pentapenguin
Possibly tomorrow I will be able to get a personalized tune from David Cassidy or maybe The Monkeys!!!
DRM it, and it will be gone.
...Microsoft will now enforce a "Revert to Windows Default" upon setting up AutoUpdate.
That's funny stuff.
I've seen reports that record companies aren't "happy" with the royalties they're getting from iTunes. Could higher-priced, DRM-free releases be part of their solution? Skeptical though I am, I hope so. Even though I have a Mac, an iPod, and many tracks I've bought from the iTunes store, I'd rather Apple not be the "only game in town" for music on my iPod. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, even through a reality distortion field I expect.
It's supposed to be Bryan not Brian. Now how am I supposed to get a truely personalized track. (Yes I'm being facetious)
Wait, Yahoo! has an online music store? /Not really trolling, actually didn't know about it until now, or at least, forgot about it.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Jessica Simpson... who's that? Wasn't her name Lisa? Whatever.
I could imagine that this is yet another move to prove that non-DRMed music can't be sold. I mean, who's gonna buy that song? If it was from some artist that has global relevance, ok. I could see a truely comparable result. So, the result will be that DRM is a key requirement for selling music online, because we'll clearly see that the latest Robby Williams (with DRM) will outsell this Jessica Simpson song by magnitudes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
After once happily installing to x64, the Yahoo! music engine no longer works on this architecture/OS despite having been a mainstream Microsoft release for over a year now. There isn't really any support for their music product line aside from a pittance of online help pages. It's a bit offensive to me as someone locked into x64 to hear that they are working away so hard when they lag behind their compeditors on entire platforms while not acknowledging their lack of support for x64 on their product web site.
Who's going to buy her music let a lone [sic] pirate it!
Me. $1.99 is a small price to pay to hit the MAFIAA with a cluestick. I can always delete the file later. (In fact, I probably will.)
While she may not be high on the average Slashdot user's, i.e. male, perhaps older than 20, I believe the 13-16 crowd like her music and will beg mommy and daddy to get them the new Jessica song. Remember folks as much as you want it to be true the people who post here are not the majority in this country. I have a feeling this won't do that great because it is not offered by the iTunes Music Store but it is still a step in the right direction.
This much should be blindingly obvious. However, for the benefit of the people on the 8-bit bus:
1) This is a trial balloon. If it sells well, it may convince some retailers to experiment with further DRM free tracks. If it sells poorly, it will serve as "proof" that DRM is needed.
2) There's at least somebody on the command chain who wants this to fail. Hence the $1.99 price.
3) The record company couldn't stomach the idea of a totally naked mp3 so they came up with this lame idea of embedding the purchaser's name in the file. If course this is easily worked around, but so's regular DRM. This is to deter the teeming masses. If John Q. Moron decides to fileshare, he'll soon be indicted by a thousand copies of "Jessica Loves John Q. Moron" floating around. You might add that they were being slightly clever by selling this crude copy protection measure as a value added feature.
I'd also speculate that might be meant to caution Microsoft ever so lightly. MS is openly scheming against its current music partners by introducing Urge and Zune. But it wants to keep them hooked on Plays For Sure while making sure their services are inferior to its own offerings. This is Yahoo's way of saying, "Look Microsoft, we might not need your crap DRM after all, so watch yourself."
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Before getting all excited about Yahoos altruism, think about the business side.
Apple has what...80%... of the portable music player market?
Until apple decides to share their DRM, everyone else (including Yahoo) is locked out of the iPod market.
MP3s are their only way in. If they can manage to line up some labels, they will suddenly have access to a totally new and much larger customer base.
I'm ecstatic that Yahoo wants to offer unencumbered tunes. But $2.00 / song? That's more than I pay for a 16-bit PCM CD. Besides, they don't have to package, distribute (old-skool distribute, that is) or keep brick-and-mortars. I might get interested/serious if it were $2 / album ...
I've already spent $500 this year with allofmp3. I'm not opposed to spending, I'm just not going to play sucker to suckers.
They get you to pay $2 for a song you don't want and their the ones that need to be hit with a clue stick?
Pity they didn't choose an artist I would actually want to listen to.
I think you meant, "Pity they didn't choose an artist. I would actually want to listen to it."
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
I'll give you my broken space bar and you can hit them with that. :)
I ate your fish.
1. What's the bitrate? It needs to be at least 192 kbps.
:-(
2. Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair"? Hmm, I was considering downloading just to show I'm supportive of a non-DRM model, even if it would need future tweaks, but just to try get the industry on the right track. BUT... Jessica Simpson? I really don't know if I can do this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
too little...too late.
the music industry is going to die.
What this means to me... Now why would they offer DRM-free only on a customized song? Clearly what they're thinking is that hey, if we're trying to sell someone a stupid trick, they're going to want to show their friends. There's no point if you can't. I don't need a copy of Jessica singing my name. It's not as if it was recorded with me in mind, just recorded for popular names. Oh how personal and wonderful that would be! Hah. If they locked it down, idiots couldn't MSN it to their friends to show off with their cool trick. In a sense, they're acknowledging that the point of this track IS to pirate it. Go figure.
Don't expect their "advocacy" to spread. I, for one, am very very sceptical.
Jessica Simpson != Music.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Burn your song to a Cd then Re rip...
BLA BLA BLA lower quaitity BLA BLA BLA ogg format, BLA BLA BLA should sue apple BLA BLA BLA
This is actually *gasp* the sort of DRM I could live with. A unique fingerprint that is traceable to the original buyer, so that they can find you if you pirate. But it doesn't actually hinder fair use at all. I really wouldn't mind if this became standard practice, as it only affects those who are actually doing something illegal, and leaves the rest of us alone. W00t technological, instead of legal, solutions to problems.
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.
They get you to pay $2 for a song you don't want and their the ones that need to be hit with a clue stick?
This is the first step. If they see that they can make money without DRM, maybe they'll think about releasing the songs I used to buy from them without DRM as well.
What I never unterstood with the whole watermarking stuff is how they can help to avoid people putting tracks on some P2P network.
if the RIAA tracks down one of your songs you can simply explain it by "my pc got infected by a virus because MS didnt provide a patch for powerpoint. that virus had a P2P module that shared my whole hard drive on the net". alternatively you can say "i was in germany last month where copying tracks for friends is allowed. some of my friends must have given my track to some of their friend and so on. one of them must have been a bad person how put the song with my watermark on a p2p network".
how can you avoid this with watermarks?
It is nice to hear an Internet superpower talk about selling "plain old MP3s," but eMusic has been doing this for years (well before the iPod even existed). They don't have acts like Jessica Simpson, or even Radiohead, but they do have a huge collection of quality, interesting music. Loads of Indie Rock, Underground Hiphop, old and new jazz, lots of classic stuff and new albums come in everyday. It's cheap and no watermarks, either.
I'm a serious music collector and plain MP3s simplify my collection--DRM is a major headache when you just want to HAVE music and store it anyway you like.
So this is just Yahoo saying that record-labels shouldn't protect their music with DRM because that locks third party vendors out, but it's ok when Yahoo does the same thing (with things like Yahoo! Unlimited) that locks non-windows users out.
I think we all need to wait a few more years till digital audio watermarking comes of age, and embedded buyer identification is able to sustain compression and re-recording (say, putting soundcard out to soundcard in and recording). Once that sort of technology exists, all the crap that the music industry keeps on throwing (like harassing P2P developers, locking out non-DRM platforms) will no longer be legally justifiable - if for each pirated song they can actually identify the guy who bought it and shared it, they needn't go after the medium used for doing the sharing.
Yahoo said:
As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day -- the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!
This translates into:
OMFG, for the love of god, PLEASE LET US SELL OUR SHIT TO IPOD USERS!!1!!!!!!1!1111!
Basically, what is happening is that all the non-iTunes are getting trounced by iTunes and the iPod. The music industry won't let them sell their music unless it has DRM. Apple isn't selling them the rights to use the DRM that the iPod uses and Apple sure as shit is not going to build in WMA DRM capabilities into the iPod. With iPods being roughly 80% of the MP3 market, this is a massive audience that Yahoo, Napster, Rhapsody, exc can't touch. They desperately want to sell, but they are not allowed to sell unless the music has DRM. Apple won't let them us an iPod compatible form of DRM.
This isn't a marketing ploy to pretend to be anti-DRM when they are not, and this is not being done because they "want to work on other stuff". This is being done because DRM free music is the only way Yahoo and company can break into the monopoly iTunes has over the iPod, which itself has a near monopoly on MP3 players.
This is a play of self interested corporations. Apple wants to lock down the iPod not because they want to set music free, but because they want a monopoly over the service that fills iPods. Yahoo wants to sell DRM free music not because they give a shit about how irritating DRM is to you and me, but because they want to sell music to iPod users. The RIAA, well, they are just evil and eat babies.
"We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!'"
I want to give Yahoo! a big sloppy kiss now. That's exactly the kind of thinking that might make them some money in the music business.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Bart Simpson: "Hello, I'd like to be included in the song please. Last name Diekoff, first name Aikatmai."
... Damnit! Listen, you little saw-headed twerp, if I ever catch you, I'm going to shove my Botox needles down your eyeballs and sic my Pomeranian on your ass!"
Jessica Simpson: "OOOh, baby, I want you so bad, Aikatmai Diekoff!
The RIAA can't lose on this one. There's three possible scenarios:
1) The track doesn't sell well: See? The pirates really ARE hurting the industry because Jessica Simpson is a mainstream artist and why wouldn't she sell well under normal conditions? We've released a track in good faith and the pirates HAVE to be supressing sales.
2) The track sells really well: Ahh, the price-point for online music is really $2 per track, not $1 (as per itunes). Apple, raise your iTunes prices and give us the lion's share.
3) The track sells about the same as on iTunes: See? DRM makes no difference at all to consumers. It doesn't hurt sales at all. Long live DRM!
no text
http://outcampaign.org/
After some trouble with their website (a big fat banner was blocking access to any name between b and g) I was able to get my "personalized" version of the song. The name gets inserted twice in the middle of the song, but sounds kinda sloppy and she's not singing it, rather a backup singer / overdubbed. The mp3 is in 256kbit, but it's extremely quiet compared to other mp3s. I compared it with the version on iTunes and that one is at least 3-4 times louder. It's almost as if they used a non-mastered version of the song... not good...
;)
btw: the instrumental of the song is so blatantly a ripoff of Madonna's Holiday that I wonder if they will get sued over it...
Since I didn't have the faintest idea who Jessica Simpson was (I vaguely expected a yellow person with blue hair), I went to the Yahoo Music home page where a link to her video was provided.
Unfortunately, Kubuntu on AMD64 is now officially an Apple product :
"We regret that Yahoo! Music videos are not currently supported for Macintosh."
Yahoo knows all...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I've seen reports that record companies aren't "happy" with the royalties they're getting from iTunes.
iTunes has had hundreds of millions of sales, and yet it is still claimed that iTunes exists only to drive iPod sales--that Apple really isn't making all that much off of iTunes. And now you say that the record execs aren't happy with the money they're making, either? If that's true, then who the fuck is getting rich off of iTunes? Clearly, someone has to be making lots of money because the model has virtually no overhead--it's basically just the cost of bandwidth. Either someone's lying or someone's being absurdly greedy... or both...
I don't think people will have much sympathy with the complaints of the RIAA and friends that they are not making enough money once it's clear that 80% of each sale is profit.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
Krusty: [on TV] Hi Kids! Welcome to Kamp Krusty! Hoo huh hoo heh ha heh!
I'll see you in a few weeks! Until then, I turn things over to my
bestest buddy in the whole wide world, [obviously dubbed]
<Mr. Black>. I want you to treat <Mr. Black> with the same respect
you would give me. Now here's <Mr. Black>.
B$
It's like that gubmint scam where they let you vote, but you have to pay for the gas to get to the polls. I showed those bozos who's boss by staying home on election day. Since I live in a swing state, maybe it would have been worth 30-cents to vote against Bush.
{Note: this was a joke. I voted against him in 2000 and 2004.}
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Although the article ans source of music blows, the stance from Yahoo is one of the most logical things I have heard companies say regarding DRM. This is encouraging, and rather than everyone tearing apart the websit because it has 1 song, we should support them because I know we hate this DRM crap.
If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it....
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I've never heard her sing (I turn the sound down when she's on TV)... but I've always called her Chestica Blimpfuns.
That's the only JS I'll ever share.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Someone posted that the files are watermarked. This sounds like a good compromise to me. It makes it slightly more difficult to distribute the file in mass, but I can still copy it to all my devices and archive it, etc. What's wrong with that? I guess the biggest problem is that I should be able to buy music anonymously, and the watermark is worthless unless I am associated with the watermark.
The funny thing is that the record company themselves (Sony BMG) is ALSO selling this same exact track DRM-free.
Well, actually, they are giving it away with purchase of a CD. You buy the CD (which doesn't come out until August 29) and you get to download the MP3 of this same song Yahoo is selling, for free, immediately.
The website is: http://jessicasimpson.com/preorder/
Aside from two bucks PER TRACK being absurd (especially for music I don't happen to like)...Does anyone see that this may utterly stab us in the back? The people that like this genre of music may not understand the significance of DRM-free software and thus not care to spend the extra money on it (which even if I wanted the song two bucks is out of my price range, typically I buy CDs that are 13 dollars or less for 12 to 15 songs). I can see sales of this flopping and the RIAA saying "Hey look, we tried offering DRM-free music but the public didn't buy it. They demand DRM in their music. We now have a mandate from the people to give them the DRM that they want"
1. Offer DRM-free music downloads at inflated prices
2. Profit!
3. Wait for said DRM-free music to be traded on p2p networks
4. Sue all your customers for copyright infringement
5. (more?) profit!!1
Err, wait a minute. There are no missing steps this time. This may be Sony's best idea ever!
Buy the watermarked track under an alias.
Distribute on Kazaa
Lawyers arrive at emply lot
Profit!
Oh please... that's like "advocating" nudity by trying to sell naked pictures of Whoopi Goldberg.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Thanks for recognizing that DRM is only a hinderence,
Now two more things.
Your pages are very cluttered.
This makes the pages unwelcoming. I would only go to these pages if I had a specific reason.
Look at google.
I don't want to pay monthly for music.
I am waiting for pay-per-song drm-free music.
Thanks.
Emusic already offers their whole library without DRM, and they seem to be doing well. Do people not know about it, or did it do something evil that keeps it from being mentioned in relation to this stupid Yahoo thing?
Don't you listen to the press releases and product pitches for all the RIAA's music? DRM manages your access to music and stuff.
I remember, back in the dark times before DRM, how I would frequently find my access running amok through the house, soiling my curtains etc.. On one unforgettable day, my access to John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard started poking my 4-year-old son with a pointy stick for no reason at all!.
I was in dire straits, I assure you. Thankfully, George MacDonald (no relation to George MacDonald) came by with some XCP software for me. I only wish I could repay him for this fantastic gift.My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
We only have ourselves to blame. All this time we've been complaining about DRM, we haven't been very specific. Next up, The Munsters soundtrack.
If you're using Konqueror, check the lower-right corner. If you see some sort of Sherlock Holmes detective hat, you have user agent spoofing on. Disable (or change) it via Tools -> Change Browser Identification. Some sites support Safari but disregard the fact that Safari is based on Konqueror when it comes to the renderring engine part (KHTML and KJS), so user agent spoofing is required for sites like that *coughgooglecough*.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
No, that was with plain old Firefox... No spoofing or other UA mangling involved...
I think it just went "if UA != "MSIE" displayMacPage()"
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I looked at this site too and to me two things are coming to mind. This is bait for the RIAA and as usual, there has to be a lawyer involved somewhere...! The other possibility is that this will be a plant by the RIAA to get you the listener to download this by which they then will find it on your box and send a suit invitation your way..! :-)
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
I created an online petition to try and get the RIAA to allow selling the music as MP3's. Pleas sign it!! http://www.petitiononline.com/riaamp3/petition.htm l
Buying DRM music is like paying somebody to paint their fence.
If you do it you support microsoft locking you into windows or apple locking you into iPod.
After all this it isn't your fence.
In Soviet Russia, the DRM restricts you!