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Warner to Sell Music on DVD
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Warner Music is planning an aggressive attempt to replace the CD by pushing consumers to buy their music on specially outfitted DVDs, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's music to the ears of some struggling retailers who seek a new physical product to re-capture some of the online (and file-sharing) market. 'As a retailer I'm going to be holding on desperately for any compelling physical product,' said Eric Levin, who owns two independent stores called Criminal Records in the Atlanta area. 'So the introduction of a new format...is cause for excitement.' More from the article: 'But there are some stumbling blocks that may discourage consumers from embracing DVD albums. The new discs would not play on normal CD players, meaning consumers could not simply pop their new discs into their car stereos or other players. And users would not be able to copy the main audio mix onto their computers. On the proposed DVD album, the main audio mix is to be protected by the same software that already protects the content on normal DVDs.'"
And it doesn't say what the format of those pre-ripped songs are, either, though it could very easily be assumed that they are DRM'd as well. If they are, it probably wouldn't be iPod compatible, either
Well, you say you read TFA, but I don't see much evidence of it:
"People familiar with the situation say Warner is close to a deal with Apple Computer Inc. that would make the digital tracks essentially identical to those the computer company sells through its iTunes Music Store service -- something that has proved elusive for others in the music industry, since Apple has been unwilling to license its proprietary copy-protection software to outsiders. People briefed on the talks said a likely solution would involve Apple creating the digital tracks and Warner putting them on DVDs."
Makes sense to me.
Does anybody still use a cd player anyway?
yeah, me and every single person I know.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Your ignorance is sickening, of course people still use CD players, especially when you know... music is sold on CD"S! What a silly elitist comment to make. Everyday I see those obsolete portable CD players on people as I pass them on the street and ALL the electrical outlets still sell those antiquated CD based music systems, not everything is ipod compatible. Some people still use LP's as well just so you know for future reference.
Jonathanjk.com
If it is reasonably priced, people may actually like it. Does anybody still use a cd player anyway?
I do, but no so much since i have satillite radio. A lot of people have cd players built into their car now (mine is even a 6 disc changer) or their home stereos; I doubt many would want to replace those things yet again. People DO listen to music other than with headphones.
I can't think of other places were an iPod or whatever would not be prefered over a CD / DVD.
One of the Joys of CDs is that what you hear is almost precisely what the band hears - Vinyl actually has its own sound so really you're not getting a carbon reproduction of the music.
Audiophiles decried the 22khz suggested rate for CDs and what we accept as digitally recorded music played back from a computer. CD audio is instead recorded at 44khz and it's pretty much as faithful a reproduction of what you'd hear 'in the booth' as can be expected.
DVD audio would probably record at 24bit/96khz. To be frank it's faintly ludicrous and almost entirely unnecessary, even for the most vainglorious Audiophile. Consumers can't be lied to and told that there's a difference between the quality because there really isn't. Purists claim they can hear the sizzle on a crash cymbal but since the levels of other tracks are almost always too high for a human to pick that out, it's really just posturing.
99% of music pushed out of the door is Brick Wall Limited anyway so we're not even using 16-bit 44khz sound to its full potential.
The ONLY consumer attraction for Audio DVDs would be the increased storage capacity and hence the ability to include more than one album on a disc and in a world where an MP3 player or iPod holds your entire music collection, short of the Studios making it "good value for money" (don't bet the farm on it) that's unlikely to be a big selling point.
They have a venue that does this already. YourMusic.com. They started me buying CDs again. And while they assess sales tax, there is no shipping cost (the previous big ripoff from online music clubs).
$5.99 per CD, not a terrible deal.
The article keeps referring to pre-ripped tracks that are separate from the "dvd-audio" tracks. However I would expect that there are no DVD-Audio format (higher than cd quality) on the disc, only regular cd audio on that has been stored on a DVD. Consumers didn't want the higher quality DVD audio even though it had tracks that could be played on a a regular DVD player. Why would they want a DVD with lower quality tracks that won't play in the cd player. This makes no sense on so many levels. It's so complicated that even knowledgable audio people will have to stare at the stupid package and read the fine print just figure out what they are supposed to be buying. If I can't rip the disc to lossess flac for playing on the home system, then I don't want it... although I'm sure I could rip it if I really wanted to...
Here's how you convert from DVD to audio cd. http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=139536 Piece of cake if you're familiar with DvdDecrypter and Nero.
I really don't think I am the exception. Canadian law professor Michael Geist did an analysis report on a CRIA (Canadian RIAA) study on which demographics "steal" the most music. It turns out that the worst P2P offenders are also the second largest purchasers! This is hardly proof that P2P and sales are related in any way, which is exactly Geist's point.
Maybe they'll be in a different protected AAC format, which iTunes will decrypt and generate an iPod-compatible AAC track serialized to your iTunes/iPod authorization keys. After all, IIRC that's pretty much what they do now, with your local copy of iTunes doing the final encryption. Of course what's to stop people from loaning out the disc to their cousin who rips his own encrypted AAC files?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
It's not about when cars add them in - it's the large number of cars out there that don't support it. For them, the CD is a requirement, FM Broadcaster units for MP3 players aside.
I think you are confused. Every car I have ever been in since I was born in 1981 has everything needed to be able to interface with a portable MP3 player that has a radio broadcaster. You set the broadcaster that is hooked to the MP3 player to a certain radio station and then you tune your car to that radio station and viola you are connected and can play songs directly through your cars radio. There is no added requirement on the car side that is not pretty much already standard since very few cars that I have seen do not have at least a basic radio.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Yes, because Nine Inch Nails, Beck, Ben Folds, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Neil Young, and David Bowie have all had such short-lived, cheesy careers...
Every last one of those artists have released material in a surround format (either SACD, DVD-A, or a DualDisc), many of them were specifically thinking in three dimensions when originally writing the music in the first place (NIN, Beck, Ben Folds, and David Bowie can all be found in interviews talking about writing for 5.1).