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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 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."
...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.
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
On'tday alktay aboutway usenetway
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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...
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"