iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes

twitter writes, "The BBC's summarizes a Jupiter Research study, 'iPod fans shunning iTunes store.' From the article: '83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites... [T]he only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music — especially CDs.' This is despite years of iTunes promotion and apparent success. Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."

Comments

DRM is a hassle

[BWJones]

This is exactly what I have been doing since the beginning of iTunes. DRM on my music simply does not satisfy for a number of reasons including 1) quality (I can tell the difference). 2) It's a hassle to have to deal with the inability of others on my subnet to not be able to listen to (share) the DRM encoded songs. 3) I already had a huge amount of music on CD and have relied on ripping to iTunes as a back up means.

Interestingly, iTunes has increased my music purchases significantly, though on CD,

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Nutsquasher]

Yeah, I've bought more CD's now than before not because of iTunes, but because of Pandora.com. Points 1, 2, and 3 are very valid. Also, you're unable to resell your iTunes music collection if you wish.

I find it odd how I'm so anti-iTunes due to the stated reasons, but I'm more than willing to buy games on Xbox Live Arcade, seeing as they fit within similar restrictions. Well, only if they're original and not repackaged retro-games I've played to death.

It probably has to do with the fact that Xbox Live Arcade games are only available through a restricted medium, where I can bypass iTunes and buy a non-DRMed CD and Vorbis it.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM on my music simply does not satisfy for a number of reasons including 1) quality (I can tell the difference).

When is this faux-audiophile bullshit going to end. DRM does not change the sound of music. It does not sound any different.

A DRMd 128kbps AAC file decrypts and uncompresses to the exact same waveform as a non-DRMd 128kbps AAC file. It sounds just as bad.

A DRMd lossless format decrypts and uncompresses to the exact same waveform as a non-DRMd lossless file. It sounds just as good.

You cannot tell the difference between a DRMd file and a non DRMd file all else being equal. End of story, no argument, thank you take the next gate out of here.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Anonymous Coward]

lol. If you had ears worth a damn you would know that encryption of any kind irreversibly changes the data being streamed through it, and thus causes a definite change in the sound. I don't know the exact reasons for it, but you cannot deny that the data is being changed. According to Quantum theory anyway, you cannot help but change something like the resulting wave form simply by observing it, and you NEED to observe it in order to change it into an encrypted form, and then again in order to apply the unencryption key.

In my experience it changes the music in odd ways different to the changes that compression cause. It gives a bass that's more harsh, and increases the midrange while levelling out in the high end. That's an issue totally separate to what happens when you compress with AAC or MP3 or whatever. If you want to test, make an mp3 and then make two identical copies of the file. Run one of the resulting compressed files through an encryption utility (it doesn't have to be Apple's fairplay, even sending it via PGP email will do) and then decrypt it. Play the never-encrypted file and play the encrypted then decrypted file one after another, you'll easily tell the difference.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Yaztromo]

ol. If you had ears worth a damn you would know that encryption of any kind irreversibly changes the data being streamed through it, and thus causes a definite change in the sound.

This is the biggest load of crap I've read on /. in a long time. Congratulations!

Encryption makes the data appear pseudo-random, however the decryption will return the bits, before they are inserted into the audio buffer, to the exact same state they were in prior to encryption.

Your own test bears this out -- just do a comparison of the resulting files. The computer has no way of knowing that the "encrypted" file was ever even encrypted (as you aren't replacing the bits -- you're duplicating them). If you can hear a difference, it's only because the voices in your head are getting louder. Or maybe your tinfoil hat is askew.

Yaz.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[cskrat]

PGP is a lossless encryption whereas fairplay uses a watermark technique. Big difference in algorithms and quantum theory has nothing to do with it.

The difference between a DRM'd song and one that you rip yourself is an issue of control. With iTunes you are stuck with 128kbps AAC encoded by their in house encoding/DRM software. When you rip a song yourself you have the option of using any one of myriad different encoders, algorithms, bitrates, configurations, and etc. I usually use 240-355 VBR WMA encoding for personal use.

Personally I've only purchased one album from iTunes (unfortunatly I can no longer play it because I've changed computers too many times) and while their encoding method is fine for listening through earbuds, it shows noticable degredation vs. PCM on my 7.1 home theater setup. But it has nothing to do with watermarking DRM and it definately has nothing to do with quantum theory and schrodinger's cat, it is all about the bitrate and the encoding software. And Apple uses a substandard encoder set to a bitrate that is almost pallatable to AOL dial-up customers.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[BWJones]

DRM does not change the sound of music. It does not sound any different.

No, but I cannot purchase from the iTMS songs that are encoded at higher rates. That was my point.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Rix]

Ssh.

It may not be rational, but if it gets the plebes to opose DRM, it's good for everyone in the long run.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[wordsnyc]

It's homeopathy! The bits remember being encrypted!

Re:DRM is a hassle

[monoqlith]

Personally I've only purchased one album from iTunes (unfortunatly I can no longer play it because I've changed computers too many times)

Just so you know, there is a button in the iTunes Music Store account information page that lets you deauthorize all the computers that you've previously authorized to play your music. It only lets you do this once a year IIRC, but it's useful if you've reached your limit of 5 computers and can't get to an authorized computer to deauthorize it.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Yaztromo]

Of course the computer will identify them as being the same, its job is to work with discrete components in the form of bits, where the human ear can hear on a lower level than that. I'm no digital maven, so I can't say the EXACT reason why, but I've been selling, repairing and setting up high end audio systems for 17 years. It's my job to know what sounds the same and what sounds different. Perhaps the bits themselves are longer or shorter than before encryption, or perhaps they're a bit (pun intended) higher voltage where a computer will still read it as a "1" when it's in a bass waveform, therefore things like md5sum will claim it's the same file, but if you knew anything about signals over a wire you'd know things like a waveform that can be represented digitally can look (and sound) very different depending on the size of the peaks and troughs.

As it happens, I know quite a bit about digital signaling. I also know that that "bit" you're reading is going to be converted several times from when you read it fro the hard disk, by a variety of independent subsystems which set their own bit levels as high or low, based on their own signaling specifications.

You read some bits off your hard drive. The bits sitting on your drive have no voltage -- they're simply a magnetic field. This field get translated into either a 1 or a 0 bit. The drive controller copies this into a voltage that it then transmits across the drive bus to a bus controller. This bus controller then copies the bit to the system bus. The system bus copies it to the CPU, which copies it to RAM, which is then refreshed thousands of times per second. This is then copied back onto the system bus, and send to your audio hardware, which feeds it through a DAC.

Each of these transmissions is a copy operation on the bit -- not on the strength of the magnetic field, or whatever voltage was being applied to the transmitting component. So signaling in this case makes no difference -- so long as each field or voltage fits within the proper tolerances, it will be treated as a 1 or a 0, and will be raised high or low at the new voltage level as a completely new signal during each conversion. As such, it isn't the case that if the bit is magnetically weak on your hard drive that it will have a lower-than-normal voltage once it finally gets into RAM.

Thinking of it another way, it isn't like using a tin-can-and-string telephone to transmit data. It's more like the telephone game, where someone says something to someone, who then tells the message to the next person, and so on until the recipient receives the message. It doesn't matter if the first speaker is male or female -- the last person to pass on the message is going to state the same message regardless, in their own voice. The only difference in the case of a computer is that most stages have integrity checking to verify that the message is received properly, and in some cases can either request a retransmission if the integrity checking fails, or can receive the data in a manner that it can be reconstructed with mathematical certainty by using appropriate data encodings.

Encryption makes no difference. The system is not analogue -- it is digital. And the system only knows two digits. Each individual subsystem has completely different mechanisms for representing those bits, and that representation is completely independent of other subsystems. Reading an encrypted block from your hard drive causes the encrypted data to be copied into RAM, from which a decrypted copy is placed into RAM. This copy is generated electrically in exactly the same fashion if it had been read unencrypted from the hard drive. By the time it gets to the audio DAC, the data is identical from both a data and a signaling standpoint.

I'm sure you can handily replace the needle on a record player arm, but you know absolutely squat about digital signaling.

Yaz.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[ConceptJunkie]

Actually, it's worse than that. Encryption and decryption tends to stress the bits, so that rather than representing 0's and 1's, the bits can be off by up to 0.01, leading to degradation of the sound quality of the resulting audio data.

Sony has patented a superior bit, which should be hitting the market in late 2007, but in typical Sony style, these new bits, which represent 2 or 3, instead of 0 or 1, will not be compatible with existing bits. So while audio files that utilize the new Sony bits will lose far less fidelity per bit from being encrypted and unencrypted (less than 0.001% according to laboratory testing), they will not be compatible with the iPod without an expensive bit adapter.

Re:DRM is a hassle

[Redlazer]

Perhaps the reason youre more willing to suffer the same problem with Xbox Live Arcade is because its a different application, a different type of entertainment.

Music and games are entertainment, but they fill different facets of the entertainment genre.

Also, a video game seems "worth" more to the average person - you can get more out of it. A song is entertaining for the 3 minutes its playing.

-Red

but I already have a TON of CD's

[marz007]

Why do I need to buy all those again, if I buy, I'll probably buy via iTunes, but I've got a large catalog already purchased. This isn't shunning.

Re:but I already have a TON of CD's

[ender-]

If iTunes would take the time to notice that previous authorizations are never heard from again after I authorize a new install, it should just allow me to go along my merry, non-infringing way and let me listen to the music that I paid for.

Apple is more than happy to do this. You can go into your account settings in iTunes, and tell it to deauthorize ALL of your prior computers. You then can authorize your current system and listen to all those songs again.

As for old systems, maybe you should consider deauthorizing them before you get rid of them or overwrite the OS. Then this wouldn't be an issue at all.

Who would've thought?

[Opportunist]

So appearantly the majority prefers freedom over convenience? Well, at least it keeps my hopes up for humanity.

Re:Who would've thought?

[cubicledrone]

I expect that the reality is that people prefer buying physical things to buying something as ethereal as a downloaded file.

Blizzard makes over $100 million a month selling a chance to get a purple sword.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What a bad statistic

[Watson Ladd]

A lot of iTunes users had large CD collections before iTunes. So saying that most of their music is on CD is a pretty misleading statistic. Better is to look at music bought in the last n weeks.

No, no, no

[93 Escort Wagon]

"it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."

I have an iPod, I rarely buy anything from the iTunes Music Store, and it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with DRM. The albums I want to buy are quite often in the $12-$13 range on iTunes, and I can get them in CD form at the same price or even cheaper. When I buy the CD I get a) higher quality, and b) a permanent backup I can store in a closet or cupboard.

I think what's really going on is that people can see the obvious: the price structure (digital vs. physical medium) is currently way out of whack. You don't save anything by buying the digital version! Why would you do it? It's not like I ever find myself saying "I just HAVE to own the new Audioslave, and I can't BEAR to wait 3 or 4 days for it!"

Let me see if I have this right

[winkydink]

1) Most iPod user don't buy using iTunes
2) Every other online music store is a failure

Therefore, people don't like DRM.

Yeah, I see how that conclusion follows those two assumptions. How about, iTunes is successful because the iPod is successful and yet, that said, most people prefer to own a CD version of their digital music. Perhaps because they can encode either lossless or at a higher bitrate than offered by iTunes?

The average Joe most likely thinks that DRM is one of those new pop bands he's heard about.

Apparent success?

[kuwan]

Just because everyone that buys an iPod doesn't buy music from the iTunes store doesn't mean that it (iTunes) isn't successful. Success is measured in different ways. If they are making a profit then they are successful. You don't have to dominate sales to be successful. Also, given that Apple has like 80-90% market share for all legal music downloads then I'd call them successful.

It's going to take a while before downloads overtake CD sales (if ever), but that doesn't mean that a new technology in a new market isn't successful.

1.5 Billion Songs != Shunning

[thefinite]

"Shunning" is such a silly word to use for this. Just because the iTunes store has not entirely replaced the CD in its few years of existence does not mean that users are shunning it. Their business is growing faster than CD sales are growing. Steve Jobs even said in the recent Apple Event that they are the first music downloads store to crack the top five sellers of music in any form. He also said they are now passing the 1.5 BILLION song mark.

But I guess no one will read an article that says "iPod users gradually adopting iTunes Music Store to supplement CD sales."

Re:1.5 Billion Songs != Shunning

[dangitman]

But you still can't play your CDs directly with your iPod. You have to jump through hoops first.

Jump through hoops? I'm not sure what you are talking about. You simply insert the disc into your CD-ROM drive, iTunes rips the files, tags them, and transfers to your iPod. It's exactly as convenient as listening to the CD in a normal player.

It be like everyone was buying cassete players, but still buying 8 track tapes and recording them onto cassettes.

Not really, because the CD was a quantum leap in convenience from tapes. No more rewinding, or hunting for songs. It was also a big increase in audio quality. Never mind the fact that 8-tracks never had the kind of market dominance that CDs enjoy.

Similarly, the iPod was also a big increase in convenience. No more sorting through physical discs to find your CDs. No more bulky collections to carry around. The iPod did not increase quality - but the main reason for the success of both the CD and the iPod was not quality but convenience.

Maybe the switch will happen when the CD player is less dominant elsewhere (like stereos) and the media center PC becomes a reality in every home.

That's pretty much already happened. How many people actually play CDs in standalone CD players these days? How many people have a computer with a CD-ROM? I'm not sure why you need a "media center" PC to use iTunes. The difference is that people already have huge collections of CDs, and have stores that sell CDs in their neighborhood. I don't think it has much to do with people not being comfortable with using their PCs for music.

Bullshit

[7Prime]

I was totally with the article up until the last sentance, which makes a stupid, spun, assumption based on a causality. "People are buying CDs more than online music," great. "People PREFER buying CDs to online music," still good. "Online music has DRM," yes. But "Therefore people must not be buying online music because of the DRM," is NOT a good proof. DRM is one of MANY characteristics that separate CDs from music downloads, and I would argue it to be one of the least important to people. Even the "lossy/non-lossy" arguement is a very small, elite few, compared to the masses, of whome hardly care about the quality of their music. No, the three biggest reasons why CDs are still more popular is: tradition, the regularity of going to shop at a place, where you can then pick out music. And the third, which I think is probably the biggest, is the ownership of a physical object after purchase.

If people put money down on something, they want to be able to physically "hold it in their hand" (so to speak). It's human nature, we're used to dealing with physical objects. Being told, "now you have it, now go have fun" without any physical evidence doesn't naturally feel as ligitimate has being able to spend money, and hold in your hand the item you just bought. This may change, but currently people are comfortable exchanging money for items, admissions, but we haven't yet completely bought into this "paying money for non-physical data" thing.

I remember a study that showed that the majority of computer users didn't consider illegally downloading software or media to be anywhere as offensive as shoplifting. Similarly, I would suggest that people don't consider purchasing something online to be of the same legitimacy as buying something in a store.

Give me a decent, unbiased study that shows me that the common person gives much of a shit about DRM, and I'll listen, but this says nothing at all.

Re:It's "let's pretend to be a programmer day"

[recursiv]

You're the kind of guy that the audiophile crystal audio clarifier salesman loves to see walking in the door.

Re:It's "let's pretend to be a programmer day"

[shaitand]

Dude the ears of old audio nuts claim that DIGITAL data sounds different when sent through fiber optic digital links rather than other digital links. It is a figment of their imagination. It is not like one has to guess. You do a checksum of the file before encryption, and you do a checksum after encryption, either the number has changed or not. Most encryptions are fully reversable.

Re:Let's be honest here

[shaitand]

Who cares? The article also says that ipod owners were shown to be more likely to buy music in general. That means that regardless of how much of their music collections is pirated the music industry is alienating their best customers with DRM.

magnatune.com

[steveha]

If you would like to buy music from an online store, but you don't want DRM and you want top quality, check out magnatune.com. They let you download CD-quality (either as uncompressed wave files, or as FLAC), MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. And you can listen to everything before you buy. (128 kbps MP3, lower quality than you get when you pay.)

Not only do they not have DRM, but they encourage you to give away up to three copies of the music you buy, as a form of advertising.

They have a sliding scale on prices: you can choose what you want to pay, within a reasonable range. (I just checked, and at least for the album I checked, the range was from $5 to $18.) If you only like one song on an album, pay less for the album. If you really want to encourage an artist to make more albums, pay more. That's cool.

When you buy an album, the artist gets 50% of whatever you pay. Not 50% of the profits, and then they cook the books so they "don't have any profits"... 50% of the gross income. That's outstanding. I love their slogan: "We are not evil."

I have no connection to them, other than being a satisfied customer.

steveha

Playing devil's advocate...

[supersat]

I agree that DRM'ed music should sound no different, but let me play devil's advocate for a minute.

It might be possible that the decryption algorithm introduces some jitter by taking a varying amount of time to decrypt a chunk of data. A poorly-engineered system might pass this jitter through to the DAC, resulting in degraded audio quality. It might also be possible that the decryption operations cause the CPU to introduce additional noise on the power rails, which might also impact audio quality in a poorly-engineered system.

So, I don't think it's impossible that DRM affects sound quality. I'm just not convinced that it actually does.

Analog CDs?

[evilviper]

From the /. summary:

83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs

Ah yes, good old ANALOG CDs...

From TFA:

only 20 of the tracks on a iPod will be from the iTunes shop.

Well no-shit. CDs have been around for decades, and most everyone owns dozens, if not hundreds, of them by now. Meanwhile, Itunes has only been around for a few years... It seems pretty significant that in that short time, they've sold so many songs as to bring decades of CD sales down to only 80% of the tracks on an iPod... though that could have something to do with people listening to OLD CDs less than new tracks.