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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.'"
Well now, that doesn't sound like too compelling of a physical product at all, now does it?
For those that didn't RTFA, supposedly the DVD would contain pre-ripped, lower quality versions of the song on the disc, but not actually allow you to rip the high quality versions of the song to your computer. Well, not legally, anyway.... 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, so honestly now - remind me again what the point is in them wasting money on a product that's doomed from the start?
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This will either lead to people hooking up their DVD players to their stereos or to the appearance (sp?) of small DVD-audio players to hook up to the stereo. I guess those small, portable DVD players could get slimmer and replace the walkman.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
And why would I want this?
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
If this were to succeed and CDs were replaced with DVDs, online purchase of music for download would skyrocket because at least those songs can be put on their MP3 player.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
And Time Warner is surprised that their stock is a flaming dog turd, and that they were unable to leverage the AOL merger in terms of media distribution?! These guys are so out of touch with reality that it would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. They refuse to see any opportunity in new ways of digital distribution, and only look for new ways to screw their consumers.
Why did it take so long? A folder named AUDIO_TS has always been present and empty on every DVD.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
And thus these discs will not sell. Well, that was easy. Next question?
Here, boys and girls are the two reasons why this system is doomed (and why it's obvious that Warner hasn't figured out how the consumer and the pirate think/work)
1) the main audio mix is to be protected by the same software that already protects the content on normal DVDs
So much for stopping piracy.
2) 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
And there goes consumer interest as well.
If SACD taught us anything, it's that consumers don't want to re-buy their collection, or replace their favorite stereo just for a minor difference in quality. It's just not gonna happen. There may be a small uptake, but the majority of consumers will say "Doesn't work in my stuff? Well then why bother?"
The real litigious bastards...
So, they'd like to sell me a disk that won't play in my car stereo or my portable CD player, with video content I doubt I'd ever watch and pre-ripped DRM'd tracks I can't use, most likely for more money.
Wow -- where do I sign up?
And what really cracks me up is they think that, not only will I want to buy new music in this format, but that I'm going to rush out and replace my existing CDs.
Capitalistic Humility is the virtue of selling what the customers want to buy, not what you want to sell. Seems WB forgot that. It is obvious why this format will be better for WB and the music industry in general. The only drawback is that it sucks for the customers, the people whose money the music industry wants.
They seem to be like Ford prior to the attack of the Japanese car manufacturers or Apple before the release of Windows 3.1. Complacent, expensive, and sure there is no other alternative for the customer. It might be a good idea to short their stock.
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When I walk around town, I see people with digital music players everywhere, so I doubt I am the only person who does this. Changing disks every album, and not having a random shuffle mode is simply not a convenient way of listening to music. I didn't listen to nearly as much as I do now when I had to change discs periodically; I would listen to an album and then stop.
This is a step backwards.
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'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
Now that's funny. A retailer "sanctioned" by the RIAA called Criminal Records who's afraid of "criminal" file sharing. That's more interesting than these DVDs they're talking about.
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Actually they are not forcing you to do anything because, you, like everyone else, will stay away in droves (Yogi Berra).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
that they just don't get it. This will sell exactly as well as DVD-A (which is probably what it is) and SACD. There isn't a big enough improvement to justify having to buy new players and probably have to buy the CD twice so that normal people can listen in thier cars and such. I have 4 devices that can play DVD-A, and 0 that can play SACD. Well, maybe 2 for SACD if it works in computers, I don't remember on that one. I have a dozzen or so that can play CD-A. Even those I don't use much, preffering my iPod.
.50 for 64K MP3, to $1 for 160K MP3/AAC, to maybe $1.50 for FLAC, I know I would be all over that. But the files have to be in the format I need, MP3 or FLAC so I can convert to whatever I want, and they need to be unencrypted. That's the online service I would use, and it's the online service people WANT. You could even set it up so that the user could say "I have an iPod" and it would default to AAC. A legal service like that would get slashdotted in minutes with people wanting to give you thier money.
Not to mention, that most bands seem incapable of putting out a GOOD CD, so I end up only listening to 30% or less of the music I paid for in the first place. So now I can't just rip the songs I like onto my computer for burning to MP3-CD mixes and my iPod. That interests me how? Oh yeah, it doesn't.
I mean really, who wants this? The 1% of music listeners that we call "audiophiles"? MP3 is good enough for most people, so better sound isn't going to sell more shiney plastic things. Think about it, what do people clammor to pay for? Easy, convience. Make it EASY TO DO WHAT THEY WANT IT TO. This is so amazingly simple. Apple is the closest of the legal providers to "getting it". iTMS is fast, easy, and the restrictions aren't bad enough that it bothers most people. I still don't use them for the same reason I don't use DVD-A and SACD, I have a dozzen devices that can play MP3, I have 4 that can play AAC, encrypted or not. The point is, I recognize I may be a minority in that case and see the value for users.
Personally, the best I have seen is AllOfMP3. Yes, they may not be legal, however, thier system that allows you to choose the encoding format and bitrate is "the way it ought to be" (tm). Those who are happy with MP3 can have it, those who want FLAC have to pay a little more, but they have have it. You OGG lovers can have yours as well. I think the music industry should buy AOMP3, charge a little more, and call it a day. If I could have a legal download in any format I want starting at, say,
Yes, some people would share some music. Reality check, people do that now and they aren't going to stop. If you make it fast, easy, and reasonably cheap, it's eaiser for me to just get on the site and download from you directly. Perhaps the files could be wattermarked? I don't know. I do know that if I were using AOMP3 a lot, I wouldn't bother to ask friends and family if they had a song, I would just go get it myself.
As for physical retailers, have a setup where people can come in and download songs to thier devices. People don't want to have to go to the store all the time to get things like music. Deal with it. But if you have something like this, people can drop in and grab a song they just heard on the radio or something. Or perhaps retail music is dead, will anyone really miss it?
Ah, right. So it's absolutely nothing to do with the fact that (here in the UK) HMV and Virgin can charge anything up to £17.99 (approximately $30) for some of their single CDs then? Likewise, the fact that record companies/stores price-fix CDs of 30+ year old recordings (say those by The Beatles) at the same (or higher) prices than new releases is irrelevant, is it?
The CD is getting old and tired
No, what you really mean is that the likes of Sony keep making a total "pigs ear" of trying to apply DRM to the open CD format so now you want we consumers to buy all of our music again on a new format that also takes away our "fair use" of the music we buy.
As a retailer I'm going to be holding on desperately for any compelling physical product.
As a consumer, a "compelling physical product" is one which offers good value for money. Perhaps you should consider some price reductions as part of your business strategy?
offer content through a breadth of products to meet consumer needs.
Ah, so consumers *NEED* more restrictive products, do they? Correct me if I'm worng but I don't see too many consumers hammering at the doors of Sony demanding more DRM...
But the capacity of both the CD and DVD sides of DualDiscs is limited compared to normal CDs and DVDs.
Fantastic! So on the *new* format, I can have twice as many Jessica Simpson videos, twice as many out-takes from a bunch of self-indulgent musicians or albums which are twice as long filled with double the amount of boring filler tracks! Brilliant!
Warner is not proposing any generic name for the new format, beyond simply "DVD album".
Can I suggest "Get Our New Audio Disc, Suckers!"? Or GONADS for short?
But there are some stumbling blocks that may discourage consumers from embracing DVD albums.
No shit, Sherlock! And those stumbling blocks are the price, the price and the price.
The DVD album would include "preripped" digital tracks of the entire album
Ah, now I see. So instead of my dowloading free software to rip my CDs myself at an encoding level to what I deem appropriate for my playing device and my listening pleasure, you're going to do it for me, are you? And presumably you'll reflect the fact that you've done this for me in the price of the product also. Wow, life gets better...
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The music industry doesn't seem to have realized that the Compact Disc is just too good a (physical) format. Consumers are happy with the quality of the sound reproduction (even though the dynamic range being used is fractional thanks to today's editing style), and there's a MASSIVE infrastructre built around the medium.
There is no future in physical media. The movie business might be realizing this with the whole Blu Ray/HD-DVD debacle, and the music industry should be watching those download vs. physical purchase statistics, because they're tilting further and further towards digital distrubution.
I expect my next car stereo to have a Type A USB socket on it, so I can plug in a flash drive, or an iPod, or whatever else the TECH industry (not the music industry) comes up with.
I see great commercial success of this new product, because from the quadraphonic LP we learned that consumers are happy to buy new equipment and brand new media for their collection to get additional channels of audio...
You've got it backwards.... The target is the middle-aged, gullible, and rich. No young, rich kid is going to carry around a portable music player large enough to play a DVD-sized format.
If the music industry ever wants another new phyiscal media to catch on, it has to be tiny... SD card or NDS cartridge sized would do... Anything signifigantly larger than 1" square is doomed unless it is easilly rippable to mp3. But when is the last time the music industry introduced new technology? This has been the least innovative decade in the history of recorded music, and not only is the industy not innovating, but they're suing all the third parties who are.
I'll not buy them. Simple.
This will push up online sales, not lower them.
I still remember buying LPs rather than cassettes because of the quality of the album cover ( early genesis fans will know what I mean ). I'm sad those days are gone
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You can make unprotected AACs right now. And if they make protected AACs (Apple's exclusive), they're going to have to use a single set of keys, which will be pointless anyhow, because they'll have to give the keys out to anyone who buys the DVD. And if you have the key to one, you'll probably have the key to all of them. So why bother? Just use MP3s, which most consumers understand, now.
(Paraphrasing slightly): The new discs would not play on normal CD players, and thus these discs will not sell.
That's not the reason they won't sell. You can't play CDs in a tape player or record player, but they eventually took off enough to replace both those formats. The reason these won't sell is that CDs are good enough. There's no reason to replace your entire record collection again with something that may sound slightly better (then again, if it's a lossy format, it may actually sound worse in some ways).
This format isn't significantly better than CDs, is in some way worse, isn't as convenient as CDs (which you can copy for fair use), and isn't anywhere near as convenient as downloaded music. It's completely redundant.
Someone else said it very well: CDs are just too good.
There has always been a trade-off between convenience, reliability, and quality. For many decades, records (in one form or another) were the consumer cusp of this triad, although not as convenient as some (cassette and 8-track) nor as good as others (reel-to-reel). CDs came along, and provided truly superior quality, a high degree of reliability, and were very convenient. The CD was and still is a very nearly perfect physical format for consumers.[1] Really, there's no need to replace it with anything, and that's what really worries the recording industry. The only format that will successfully supplant CDs is a non-physical format, and they still haven't figured out how to sustain an entire industry on that. Thus, they keep coming out with new physical formats to delay the inevitable.
The sad thing is that they're looking for sales hooks, and know that they're not getting them. The sound quality is already flawless, the convenience is as good as it practically gets, and so they're adding 'features.' Two-channel classic recordings remastered to 5.1, video clips, and now bloody RING TONES? I don't think they're really that stupid, just desperate.
Ah well. Good riddance to yet another crappy format.
[1] Yes, I know, the CD format has a ton of little flaws: Flawless sound is difficult to achieve in 44kHz/16bit, the plastic scratches too easily, some CDs rot, the cover art isn't big enough, the CDs aren't small enough, etc. etc. But it's close.
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Even if a new format came out that was somehow better than the classic CD format, my investment is such that a new format is probably not worth converting to. The conversion to CDs from LPs and tapes made sense -- no more crackling from dust, and no more linear-access media. But CDs are already digital, random-access, small, and reliable. All a DVD offers is more space, something a classic album doesn't need (and something which I can already provide with several of my CD players using data CDs with MP3 files).
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I have a Led Zepplin DVD (actually a 2 DVD set) of live performances, I have The Cramps playing in an insane asylum, I have a Rob Zombie DVD of videos. I bought the Zepplin DVD used, two years ago!
The Wall Street Journal is also woefully lacking in nerd cred: "And users would not be able to copy the main audio mix onto their computers." HAH! I've already ripped the Zepplin DVDs to audio CD for the car. And no, I didn't have to circumvent the copy protection; I sampled it.
This is sure to be a loser. Thay COULD have actually tempted me with this; a true high fidelity recording that would beat vinyl, sampled at ten times the sample rate of CDs and at four times CD's 16 bit bitrate.
Stupid music industry. They're dying, but that's a GOOD thing; they don't even know their own business. My 75 year old dad stopped listening to the radio, because today's country music "sounds like rock and roll", and he's right. If Lynard Skynard came out today rather than 1974, you'd never hear them on a rock station. They'd be country. I've heard country songs on bar jukeboxes with violins. Not fiddles, VIOLINS! In a "country" song! WTF?
Meanwhile, if you want rock you're out of luck. The "rock" stations are playing whiney minor key shit like "staynd". Meanwhile, go to about any bar on the weekend and you'll hear a live band of guys in their twenties playing old 70s and 80s rock to a twentysomething audience. And usually selling CDs of their own original rock and roll to boot.
And the established industry blames loss of sales on "piracy."
The established industry is dying, and good riddance to it when it finally does.
They should put the tracks on the disc as high-bitrate MP3s. Then everybody would be able to use them easily, no matter what music player they own. Oh, wait. . . But that would mean giving buyers more value for their money, rather than trying to strangle them. What was I thinking?
Record companies -- and this applies to movie studios too -- need to think less about restraining their customers and more about competing. They need to wake up and realize they're competing against books. . . beer and pizza. . . golf and bowling. . . a trip to the art gallery. . . a trip to the beach. . . a ticket to a sporting event. . . and every other form of entertainment that people pay money for. It's a competition they are capable of losing if they try hard enough.
You know what would be a "compelling physical product?" CD's for $5.00.
Indeed! "Compelling" is the word they seem to gloss over.
What surprises me about this shift is that the music industry is so narrowly focused on one use of the DVD, a use which very tightly follows how CD's already operate. High quality master, medium quality ripped files, possibly some visual extras. Ta da. CD's already do this, but they're considered less "secure" by the music biz bean counters.
What excited me about DVD as a format when it was first released is that it was meant to be a pretty broad delivery platform. When it was first announced I was still working in the music industry and I mentioned to several people at one very major label that it would be awesome to see this format, with its much larger capacity, used to sell entire artist collections on one disc (merely one example.) You could fit the entire catalog of Jimi Hendrix on one DVD with better audio specs than a CD, and include all kinds of extras like behind the scenes photos (viewable while the music played, also printable for those who wanted a hard copy), interview footage or audio, full size album graphics, etc. They could also feature a "greatest hits" mode that plays only the top singles from that entire artist's repertoire.
Nobody is thinking outside the box when it comes to the DVD as a consumer format. You could also sell that DVD compilation for approx. $20 or so (USD) and still make a hefty profit, even given the current climate in the music industry. It's much cheaper to produce than a box set and the benefits would be massive, and the labels could for once be seen as some sort of innovator.
Of course: major labels are so money-hungry that they would never see that suggestion as a beneficial move, even though it's the kind of thing that would sell like hotcakes to people who even already own CD's by the same artist. If they want to make the move to using DVD as the standard, I'm definitely for it if they start coming up with ideas like that. But they aren't. And they won't.
Anyone who thinks of DRM as a "feature" is out of their mind. DRM of any sort is a huge pain in the ass. Just give us our content, and give it to us in ways where we feel like we're getting some value for our money. The product they're currently describing sounds like another price upgrade from CD's (which many people already feel are not worth the money.) It's doomed from the start if that's how they're going to approach it.
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