EMI Experiments With DRM-free MP3's

trifster writes "Ars Technica has an article about EMI selling DRM-free MP3's through Yahoo Music's US online store. It should be noted that this trial is an attempt to increase sales and competition with online music that is not necessarilary available on iTunes." From the article: "Why the sudden interest in non-DRMed formats? It appears that the record labels are slowly beginning to realize that they can't have DRMed music and complete control over the online music market at the same time.... There are signs that consumers might be growing irritated by the Balkanization of the online music scene. Nielsen SoundScan reports that online music sales dropped during the second and third quarters of the year."

Comments

Or are they?

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

When I clicked on this... "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

It's a conspiracy!

Re:Or are they?

[LordSnooty]

Oh how I wish /. would change this behaviour and put an end to this tedious frist psot that always gets modded up.

Re:Or are they?

[redcane]

Maybe I got to the party late, but it's modded down now!

W00t - not.

[fyngyrz]

Selling a couple xian tunes w/o drm isn't going to exactly cause a wave of common sense to break out. Does anyone actually listen to this crap?

Re:W00t - not.

[somersault]

Err, my uncle does. not sure of any other people. I'm a Christian, but most Christian music is admittedly awful! There are a couple of okay Christian bands, I haven't heard these guys. One of Snow Patrols last few singles played a lot like a Christian worship song, I was surprised it ranked anywhere in the charts.. so boring musically, but that's pop music for you..

Never seen 'Xian' used before, I thought it was some kind of oriental thing :p

Re:W00t - not.

[shark72]

"Selling a couple xian tunes w/o drm isn't going to exactly cause a wave of common sense to break out. Does anyone actually listen to this crap?"

Norah Jones has had a couple of multi-platinum albums in the past five years. She's a bona fide star. Relient K are one of those "crossover" Christian bands that have managed to release three consecutive gold albums. By the way, I found this data with about two minutes of Googling.

Per Ars Technica, these artists were picked because their audience skews older. P2P usage skews younger. The Slashdot demographic is also younger, so most people reading this see the world as one where everybody uses P2P to get their music and nobody listens to lame artists like Norah Jones, but EMI is apparently looking at the big picture.

Re:W00t - not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rugs are oriental, people are Asian.

Re:W00t - not.

[Total_Wimp]

Selling a couple xian tunes w/o drm isn't going to exactly cause a wave of common sense to break out. Does anyone actually listen to this crap?

They're doing exactly the same thing they did with DRM on CDs; they're releasing them in very limited quantities so they can guage the public reaction.

This is a big deal. It's not big because the numbers are big, but because they're actually looking at the format at all. At one point (yesterday?) we were forced to use quasi-legal tools and we were treated like criminals if we wanted to have cross-platform music. Now at least there's hope.

My suggestion is run, don't walk, to your computer and buy these tracks, even if you hate the artists involved. The music industry is quite predictible in that they always seem to go in the direction that they think will make them more money. We want to encourage this behavior.

TW

Re:W00t - not.

[Daemonstar]

Oriental \O`ri*en"tal\, n. 1. A native or inhabitant of the Orient or some Eastern part of the world; an Asiatic. [1913 Webster]

Just because someone may prefer one name over another doesn't negate the definition.

Re:W00t - not.

[kimvette]

Well I like some Christian music, but there is very little good Christian rock, and I've never heard any that could be classified as progressive rock. Nor have I heard any Christian jazz. So, if I don't buy, does this mean that EMI will mark it down as a failure? Try offering some rock and some jazz, EMI, in either OGG or 320kbps+ MP3 format, then I'll buy.

How many MP3s do they expect to sell from that offering - 100 tracks worldwide? I think their selected offering is a maneuver to "prove" that DRM-free music sales from the labels won't work.

Re:W00t - not.

[bdonalds]

"Does anyone actually listen to this crap?"
What about Creed? Personally, I think they are a shite band, but their millions of fans who didn't realize that they were a Xtian rock band seemed to like them...

BTW...whatever happened to Stryper? :)

Re:W00t - not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, despite your clinging to, ehmm, 93 year old definitions, here's a fun usage note from The American Heritage Dictionary (printed in the year 2000, no less):

Usage Note: Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental meaning "eastern"is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive.

Re:W00t - not.

[Hawthorne01]

Never seen 'Xian' used before

Heh. I used that as a note-taking shortcut throughout Bible school. It's not common, but it is used.

Re:W00t - not.

[pilgrim23]

Fast food, apparel, cars, music.. regardless of the product; Build a good product, people buy the product.
  Build a bad product and, no matter how you cripple your product, no matter how many Weasels in Suits(tm) you hire to sue the consumers of your product, no matter how much you spend in popular media to use the Goebbels Big Lie technique for re-defining words like "steal" to then morally brow beat people into buying your product, the bottom line is still: you built a bad product. People will not buy a bad product.

Re:W00t - not.

[somersault]

And so Buddhism or Tai Chi, or a type of music will always be 'asian' rather than 'oriental'? I wasn't referring to a person. And I've been reading The Bourne Supremacy recently, and it's pretty old, so maybe I'm using outdated terminology *shrug*

Re:W00t - not.

[jawtheshark]

My suggestion is run, don't walk, to your computer and buy these tracks,

Exactly what I was planning to do... Not at home right now, but I'll do it as soon as I'm there. The only thing that is not clear is, if it's also available to Europeans. iTunes didn't accept European credit cards in the beginning either.

Re:W00t - not.

[Hawthorne01]

IIRC, Jobs was able to get the labels to buy into the iTunes Music Store because the market at the time was limited to just Mac users, and therefore the impact on the wild success (NOT!) the other online music ventures backed by the RIAA wouldn't be significantly impacted.

Well, we know how that one ended.

This a trial balloon, and a very big deal.

Re:W00t - not.

[elrous0]

Yeah, well I'm loading up my car..filling it up with a whole bunch of retarded crippled negro midget orientals...and we're gonna march right down to Websters and DEMAND A FUCKING CHANGE!

-Eric

Re:W00t - not.

[Foobar of Borg]

Never seen 'Xian' used before, I thought it was some kind of oriental thing

??? The "X" stands for Christ. It comes from the Greek letter Xi. If you see some churches, there is a Xi and a Rho in stained glass along with a picture of Jesus, since the Xi and Rho are the first two letters in Christ (in Greek, of course). As to the person who responded to you saying that only rugs are oriental: "Oriental" is opposed to "Occidential", or basically anything that is not Western. "Asian" is simply more specific since "Oriental" can denote not only Asians, but Indians (the real ones, not Native Americans), and the various Middle Eastern peoples. I'm not really sure why "Oriental" became so un-PC. Perhaps it has to do with ignorant people's usage of it to denote Asians? I don't know.

Re:W00t - not.

[somersault]

As I said before, I've been reading the Bourne Supremacy, I think it was written in the 70s, and it references Singapore and China quite regularly. I didn't mean it to be offensive, and I don't see what's wrong with the word oriental, it does sound cooler than Asian, and is less gneric.. Asian to me conjures up a different imagine than oriental, but neither is derogatory. I would have thought Oriental was a word more centred on China than Asia in general. And Xian seems to me like a Chinese word.

Re:W00t - not.

[Foobar of Borg]

BTW...whatever happened to Stryper? :)

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! [runs quickly out, slamming door behind]
[unlocks door, comes back in jabbing pointy stick] [sits shakingly back down at computer]
ahem, sorry. I believe God smote them.

Re:W00t - not.

[shayan]

I completely agree. I think everybody should buy this track not because they enjoy listening to Norah Jones, but because they want to show support for DRM-free digital sales. Spread the word: http://www.ghazizadeh.org/shayan/2006/12/buy-norah -jones-to-fight-drm/

Re:W00t - not.

[vertinox]

My suggestion is run, don't walk, to your computer and buy these tracks, even if you hate the artists involved.

I would disagree. Not only should these artists not be supported but I have qualms giving my money to companies who promote the RIAA system.

RIAA as a group should be removed. They are the problem. Not just the DRM. They destroy art and ruin independent music.

Maybe I'm just bitter, but if you want to support non-drm music then buy it from non RIAA groups like www.emusic.com

Re:W00t - not.

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Same here. "Contemporary Christian", especially, sucks pretty hard IMHO. My mom and aunt love it though.

As for Christian bands, there are some good ones such as Norma Jean, Demon Hunter, and Underoath (a little emo, but still good).

Re:W00t - not.

[Anonymous Coward]

India and the Middle East are also in Asia, so Asian is no more specific a term than Oriental.

Re:W00t - not.

[TomHandy]

This was actually answered above you. The reason that it is seen as offensive is because it is defining them in relation to where they are from Europe. Thus, it is the definition of a Eurocentric term for describing someone else. This is one of those things where you wouldn't necessarily see anything wrong with it, but from a cultural standpoint, hopefully you can sort of see why Asians wouldn't specifically like to be called by a name that just defines them relative to their position on the map compared to Europe.

Re:W00t - not.

[somersault]

That's weird, I kind of thought of it as Oriental as basically Chinese, maybe with Thailand and Singapore (no, I don't know the geography round that area too well!). Asian would mean more just anyone from anywhere in Asia. I guess if I thought of Samurais I'd consider them 'oriental' even though they're Japanese.. meh, it's not a very well specific word, hence why I used it to describe a word that sounded like it originated in the east somewhere.. I hope I don't sound racist anyway, maybe ignorant. Japan is one of the few places in the world that I think I'd actually like to live in one day - the other one was Canada (even before I started going out with a Canadian girl :D ), and I'm from the UK. Will bear in mind that 'oriental' apparently isn't very PC in american culture. Over here you'd hear it a lot in the names of Chinese/Thai food/restaurants, I wouldn't consider it derogatory at all..

Re:W00t - not.

[somersault]

Do americans mind being called 'westerners'? Do I mind being called a westerner? Not really.. (I do get your point but I think it's taking PC too far - well most 'political correctness' is a load of horsecrap anyway)

Do they use different maps over in 'eastern' countries? I mean the pacific is a pretty good place to cut off a map, being a mostly empty space. The only other thing you could use usefully would be the atlantic, I guess that could put asia in a more central location. If you wanted you could turn the map upside down, but the way north is already defined, it seems a bit pointless. It's just geography. East is no worse than west (well apart from in Germany maybe.. ahem..), and east/west are no worse or better than the 'centre'.

Re:W00t - not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because they AREN'T a Christian band. They are a Rock group that sings songs that involve spirituality - and some of them are Christian, so some of what they sing is based on what they know. A better (though not perfect) example of a crossover Christian band is P.O.D. - though they are IIRC members of one of the more unusual Christian sects.

There's far better Christian Rock groups out there. DC Talk's Welcome to the Freakshow (concert album) is amongst the best I've ever listened to.

Re:W00t - not.

[Thansal]

We are the pirates who don't do anything,
we just stay at home, and lie around.
And if you ask us, to do anything,
we'll just tell you, we don't do anything.

Arrrrrr.

Yup, most christian rock/pop sucks. But then again most rock/pop sucks. However Reliant K and veggie tales just make me happy.

Re:W00t - not.

[M. Baranczak]

Getting way off topic now...

The trouble with "Asian" is that it's less specific than "Oriental". An Asian could be from Iran, or Siberia, or Kazakhstan, or Korea, or Sri Lanka. "Oriental" means you're from the easternmost part of Asia.

Another thing... "land of the rising sun" is clearly a Sinocentric term, yet the Japanese don't seem to have a problem with it.

Re:W00t - not.

[Total_Wimp]

It's a good idea to encourage civil behavior in your enemies. Getting a truce and a peace treaty is almost always much cheaper, eisier and almost always gives you a better outcome than spending every last ounce of strength trying to destroy them

TW

Re:W00t - not.

[howardd21]

I think Howard Stern is already there.

Re:W00t - not.

[WaXHeLL]

"Try offering some rock and some jazz, EMI, in either OGG or 320kbps+ MP3 format, then I'll buy."

Good luck trying to sell the public something in OGG format. The majority of the portable players out there do NOT support OGG, this would be is contary to what Yahoo is trying to do (test the effectiveness and demand of selling MP3s versus DRMed WMA).

Re:W00t - not.

[h4rm0ny]

Certain words keep getting relegated to the ranks of "bad" words despite their accuracy, because some idiots consider it an insult and greater idiots hand the word over and scurry around trying to find a more round about way of saying the same thing. Retarded, cretin, spastic, oriental are examples. It's the same idiocy that has led to absurdities such as 'differently abled' and 'someone of colour.' It offends me because trying to avoid using a word with a correct meaning, is a tacit acceptance that there's something wrong with being that way. For example, I see the accepted descriptions of mentally disabled people change in a sort of five year cycle. Learning disabilities is the current vogue. I hate the way people keep washing their hands of the words. It makes it sound as though we're ashamed of someone.

The smart people reclaim the words. Why do lots of black people use the word nigger to refer themselves? Because there's nothing fucking wrong with it - it means black! Why were lots of gay people proudly using the word poof in the eighties? Because there's nothing fucking wrong with it. They, and lots of other groups, were making a stand saying that they had no problem with the term.

And there's nothing wrong with the word oriental, either. But unfortunately it's been used as an insult and many well-meaning idiots have scurried away from it in horror and tried to find ways to disguise the meaning. Which is even more insulting, to my mind.

Re:W00t - not.

[SCHecklerX]

My suggestion is run, don't walk, to your computer and buy these tracks, even if you hate the artists involved. The music industry is quite predictible in that they always seem to go in the direction that they think will make them more money. We want to encourage this behavior.

Sorry. I'd rather just pay a decent price for a CD and then encode/index/tag/etc the stuff to be used with my computers/sansa as I see fit.

Why is this simple concept so hard for everyone to grasp?

Re:W00t - not.

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

except he's not loading them up in his car. . . let's just say his sphincter was designed by Hummer.

Re:W00t - not.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Japanese word for Japan is based on that. Even their flag - it's a rising sun. It's because they were defined by their relation to China, got their writing system (well, 1 of 4) from there, etc. They obviously don't mind, they practically celebrate it. There's a strong traditionalist and historical culture, although there are some subtleties and which /. is not the place to discuss.

Re:W00t - not.

[bdonalds]

Why do lots of black people use the word nigger to refer themselves? Because there's nothing fucking wrong with it - it means black!

That might be the most idiotic thing I have ever read. You may wish to research this a bit before you accidentally preach it to the wrong group....

Re:W00t - not.

[TomHandy]

Again, it's not so much that they are in the "Eastern" part of the map. The idea of calling it the Orient is based on its position RELATIVE to Europe. That is why some would find it offensive, because it is basically using a term that is, by definition, Eurocentric.

"Westerner" isn't really commonly used as a term as far as I'm aware, although when I have seen references to "the West", it's also actually still often a Eurocentric term, inherently (it's a term that Westerners basically use for themselves). So the comparison isn't really identical.

Re:W00t - not.

[TomHandy]

The land of the rising sun is a name that the Japanese have given to their own land, not someone else's definition or name of their land. It's pretty different.

The term "asian" isn't really about specificity, so I don't think the trouble you cited is really relevant. It is only "troubling" in the same way that European or African is similarly "less specific".

Re:W00t - not.

[tddoog]

My vietnamese friend said that oriental is used only when referring to food and that asian or the more specific nationality (korean, etc.) should be used when referring to people.

Re:W00t - not.

[kimvette]

Well, the requested format can be generated on the fly using 100% OSS, so if demand for ogg for a particular track is low, no big deal, but if someone requests ogg (or wma, vqf, or any other standard format) it can be generated upon request.

Re:W00t - not.

[LocoMan]

This is getting off topic (or already is), but I do remember reading somewhere that in most asian countries they use the atlantic ocean to cut off the map, leaving asia around the middle of the map, the americas to the right and europe to the left.

Re:W00t - not.

[vertinox]

It's a good idea to encourage civil behavior in your enemies.

There is a reason that in most modern conflicts, that an unconditional surrender is the only option. Your enemy is still going to want to kill you even if you are a peace for a few years.

I know people think I'm a bit flamey and bitter, but that is how I feel and I believe if you support true artists, then you don't give RIAA a nickel.

Re:W00t - not.

[TFloore]

BTW...whatever happened to Stryper? :)

They went to Hell with the Devil?

Re:W00t - not.

[cafucu]

Excellent book! I liked it, except that it referred to people in the Western Hemisphere as "western" and, more specfically, people in North America as "north American." I think Robert Ludlum could have left out the outrageous racial slurs and the book would have been just as good.

Re:W00t - not.

[Neil Hodges]

Everyone's either too lazy to go out and buy a CD or is uncomfortable with paying online.

I, personally, do buy cheap CDs and rip them to FLAC. This is basically my only option, as I mainly listen to J-Pop (Which is not at any of these music sites, by the way.), like the lossless audio (I can perceive the difference.), and can find CDs for cheap enough. I tend to get albums somewhere between $20 and $30, and singles (Usually at least four songs.) at about $12, after the currency conversion.

Re:W00t - not.

[Knara]

In my life I've had more than a few friends who are either asian-american or actually immigrants from a number of countries. The whole idea of "oriental" being derogatory was a surprise to them (and also kind of amusing), which says something when they are actually of east asian ethnicity, or were, in fact, born in one. I had one friend who, being asian herself, was informed in law school (in her 20's) that using oriental was derogatory, something that just flabbergasted her. So I wouldn't take your explanation as being particularly commonplace except maybe in some circles.

Re:W00t - not.

[Knara]

I'd agree (having been raised evangelical/catholic (don't ask) and having been exposed to my share of contemporary christian music) that most of the bands suck ass, but when there are exceptions they're quite notable. Demon Hunter is the most recent one I can think of, but I do believe King's X was a christian rock band before they "went secular" (a phrase that always amused me when spoken, as it was accompanied by such a sad intonation).

Re:W00t - not.

[debest]

Yup, most christian rock/pop sucks. But then again most rock/pop sucks. However Reliant K and veggie tales just make me happy.

Have to agree wholeheartedly. I've been putting Veggie quotes in my sig for a couple of years now. I love it when /.ers recognize it.

Re:W00t - not.

[Knara]

Not only that, but the WWII flag of japan had a friggin _rising_sun_ on it.

Now granted, that flag is out of favor because it conjures up images of imperial japan in wwii, iirc, but nonetheless.

Re:W00t - not.

[Pandare]

Actually, the "X" comes from the Greek letter chi. It's used because it looks like a chi. Xi is the |ks| sound and looks likes an equals sign with an extra bar over the top and parallel to it.

Our modern "x" sounds like |ks| because some dialects of Ancient Greek had the aspirated |k| sound slur, for whatever reason, into the |ks| sound. This was picked up by Latin speakers and thus the letter "x" as we know and love it today was born.

Re:W00t - not.

[h4rm0ny]

I meant to say "because there's nothing wrong with what it means" rather than nothing wrong with the terms, but I didn't preview.

And many black people do use the term nigger and for the reason I gave - they see no reason why a word which means black should be offensive. Then again many black people object to the term and many others don't spare it any thought at all. It's ridiculous to generalize people's opinions based on something as arbitrary as skin colour. But it's also ridiculous that words should become terms of abuse when they mean something that isn't negative. That word is one such example as it wasn't originally an offensive term. Cretin and spastic are other examples, but I used that one as an example because some people have had the sense to reclaim the word as something other than an insult. Contrast it with the medical descriptions used for the mentally disabled which have changed three times in my living memory as if there's something terribly wrong and we have to keep finding different new ways of hiding it.

When an idiot with a prejudice against a group uses a ordinary and correct word as an insult, the problem is with that idiot and not with the word. Suddenly backing off from that word as if it were contaminated does not solve the problem of the idiot.

Re:W00t - not.

[WaXHeLL]

We're getting ahead of ourselves right here. The US online music sales industry has a reluctance (pressure from the RIAA?) to release anything in a format they can control (other than eMusic, which primarily represents independent labels). The article in question really is just a test to see how accepting the public is of MP3 versus a DRM format (although eMusic seems to be quite successful with their model).

Even under that assumption, I'd think that it's somewhat pointless to re-encode MP3 into OGG or whatever other format (and completely defeats the purpose of FLAC). With all of the "audio quality debates" going on, applying two types of lossy compression on top of each other probably is not a good idea. I'd almost say for certain that the distribution system of these online music stores does not carry the original CD or even the original raw WAV files in stock to do so, when it's much more economically feasable to have the audio pre-packaged and converted (and DRM applied as it's being sent to the customer).

Re:W00t - not.

[Knara]

Wouldn't surprise me, though it would probably interest you to know that the translation of the hanzi for China means (more or less) "land of the middle" (character for "center" with the character for "country" or "land").

Cultural centrism is hardly something that Europeans/Americans have a monopoly on, obviously.

Re:W00t - not.

[Knara]

dunno about Jazz, but "Petra" was kind of progressive rock.

It was lame, but kinda progressivey. Granted, this is from recalling a band I listened to back in grade school, so maybe it sounded more "progressive" to junior high ears than to my ears now.

Re:W00t - not.

[Knara]

They're on tour (or going to be soon) with Slayer, apparently.

No, I'm not kidding.

Re:W00t - not.

[microwave_EE]

Just wanted to second your seconding of the gp. I find that there are quality Christian bands, and I find that the ratio of acceptable Christian music to junk is higher nowadays than that of the wider field of rock/pop music. Just an opinion, of course. Also, I believe my sig is still very veggie-related.

Re:W00t - not.

[debest]

Not sure if the ratio is worse than pop rock, but there certainly is a smaller pool of talent to draw from when you're trying to fill out a "playlist" of each. That probably does more to increase the perception of crap: you run out of quality that much faster, since the supply is so much smaller.

Drive through Quebec and listen to French-language music stations sometime if you really want to hear this phenomenon! There's this booming cottage industry of French "artists" to fill in the allotment of time that these stations require. They probably are never heard outside of the province.

Oh, and my favourite ex-Sig (I rotate them quite often) remains "Look at the tomato. Isn't it sad? He can't dance. Poor tomato!" :-)

Re:W00t - not.

[TomHandy]

I don't think I said anything about how commonplace it was; the original poster was saying they didn't understand why oriental was considered offensive to some, and I was explaining why. I'm not saying that everyone would find it offensive, or at least be offended to the same degree. But personally at least, I wouldn't go out of my way to use the term "oriental" since I wouldn't know what someone's particular view on the term would be.

Re:W00t - not.

[sowth]

I tried that before with some religious extremists. I gave them every chance and the benefit of the doubt. They screwed me every time. Now I have kidney failure and two strokes for it.

This isn't just about buying and listening to music. This is about basic freedoms. The RIAA don't care about those. Their main goal isn't just to prevent copyright infringement, but to eliminate any possible competition. Look at the patterns.

To acheive those ends, they have sued and harrassed developers and users of communications sofware reguardless of whether or not they were actually infringing or encouraging the infringing of copyrights. They scared away legit developers and trained the public to believe P2P was only for "sharing free music", which flooded the internet with "free" pop crap music and movies. They have spammed the internet with DMCA complaints, many of which there was probably no infringing activity at all in the first place. They have tried to force DRM systems onto computers, which many of the schemes would likely lock down the system and disallow many legitimate programmers from writing programs on their own computer, even those having nothing to do with sharing files or music.

In fact, look at the Napster case. They completely ignored the users who were doing the infringing activity and went after Napster saying they wouldn't sue the "fans" of their music and advertised "free" music for the system in all the newspapers. Maybe the guy who made Napster intended it to be used that way, but they eventually did this to every popular P2P system (including usenet), reguardless of the intent of the developers.

And you are saying we should make a "peace treaty" with them and buy their music? Yeah, because I want to listen to crappy music all day and watch TV. This internet and computer thing was a poor idea from the start...who am I but a lowly pauper slave with an absurd dream for strange things like freedom and innovation and the ability to communicate and collaborate with people all over the world. Who would want that?

Great!

[balsy2001]

So I can get 3 songs from artists I would pay not to hear without DRM.

Re:Great!

[hobo sapiens]

Yeah, notice they offered DRM-less music from a washed up wannabe diva (Jessica Simpson) and a whiny, pasty-faced nancy boy (Jesse McCartney). No self-respecting pirate with any sense of decency would copy and distribute that crap.

Nothing new

[MatrixCubed]

I've been "experimenting" with DRM-free MP3s for years...

Re:Nothing new

[AugustZephyr]

Read: I've been "stealing" DRM-free MP3s for years...
... you pirate you

Flied Lice

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM-free is just a marketing stunt, its the latest version of playsForSure.

Psych!

Dupe.

[Weaselmancer]

I've been experimenting with DRM free MP3 files for years.

Good job guys

[Mr. Underbridge]

...for finally figuring out that controlling, say, 30% of a market with 50% piracy is better than controlling 2% of a market with 10% piracy.

Re:Good job guys

[HappySqurriel]

I honestly don't think that everyone in the music industry is as greedy or stupid as we would assume. I am willing to bet that there are dozens of executives who (like the majority of slashdotters) believe that the recording industry would be far better off if it reduced the cost of downloaded music to make stealing music not worth the time involved; if you're spending $0.25 per song (to pick a number) most people aren't going to bother with looking for torrents of new albums. They also realize that there are people (like me) who would then pay for an album they normally wouldn't associate with if it was inexpensive enough; terrible dance music is pretty good to run to.

I suspect the problem is that people who see things the same way most of us do are the 20/early-30 something iPod owning executives who do not have that much weight with the companies; I expect that in 15 years most record companies will catch up to today's reality ...

Re:Good job guys

[Anonymous Coward]

to make stealing music not worth the time involved

It's not stealing. Please don't repeat the music industries propaganda.

Re:Good job guys

[gEvil (beta)]

I expect that in 15 years most record companies will catch up to today's reality ...

And where will that put them? Oh, that's right. 15 years behind the times...We can only hope that their thinking will be so "progressive."

Re:Good job guys

[Anonymous Coward]

the 20/early-30 something iPod owning executives

These are media empires, not dot-com startups. There are no executives in their 20s.

Re:Good job guys

[raddan]

BTW, totally OT, but Underworld's Second Toughest in the Infants is a great "dance" album to run to. I save it for the speed workouts. I'm always on the lookout for music to run to that's rhythmic, but is more than just kick-drum-and-some-squealy-noise. I've been happily playing this one since '96. Never seems to get old to me.

Re:Good job guys

[Crafty Barnardo]

I expect that in 15 years most record companies will catch up to today's reality ...
And they will then still be 15 years behind.

Re:Good job guys

[hobo sapiens]

terrible dance music is pretty good to run to.

You're half right. terrible dance music is pretty good to run FROM. Gotta run, Britney is chasing me! Bye!

Re:Good job guys

[Reziac]

My own price points, that I'd gladly pay to save hassle and get a guaranteed good file:

64kbit mono: free, as a sample to see if you like a tune well enough to pay for it (64k *mono* makes a small file that sounds better than 64k stereo, and is sufficient to tell what the song really sounds like, and get addicted to the point where you want a better copy)

128 to 192kbit, stereo: 10 cents

320kbit: 25 cents

Original-CD-quality WAV: 99 cents (about the same price per track as a discounted CD, but saves them the cost of pressing/distributing it)

(If I've gotta pay a buck for a lowly MP3, I'll wait til I find the CD used or discounted, and make my own. And I'm NOT interested in clips as the "free sample"; they're too annoying.)

This is all provided the files are 100% DRM-free. I don't care about filesharing; I'm just not interested in buying what I can't horse around among my own equipment however I please. If they want to watermark their downloadable files, no problem.

Better yet, watermark the files AND use filesharing to DISTRIBUTE them, with a small commission paid to the sharer for each file that a downloader subsequently pays for. That would penetrate what is now a completely uncontrollable market, with a chance for profit where none now exists, and at NO cost to the content owners.

Probably someone could figure out how to do this using ID3 tags.

Re:Good job guys

[GreyPoopon]

I suspect the problem is that people who see things the same way most of us do are the 20/early-30 something iPod owning executives who do not have that much weight with the companies

I disagree. I suspect that, instead, once today's 20/early-30 somethings move up the management scale and have a taste of the power and money that follows that position, they will become just as greedy as those they are replacing. In fact, you can probably count on them to be worse. Why? Because they are part of the digital music generation and will have a much better idea of exactly how to screw the consumers out of every last cent without endangering their customer base.

Re:Good job guys

[cmdr_beeftaco]

and if a train leave Chicago at 15 mph...

Sheep

[AlHunt]

Honestly, if the sheep would stop buying crippled music, the crippled-music industry would die in less than 10 days. baa baa

Stop buying CDs altogether and the **AA suing everyone's grandmother would die in less than 30 days. baa baa

Re:Sheep

[garcia]

Strangely enough, allofmp3 was selling DRM free music in multiple formats for years and look what happened to them.

Hmmm, guess it has little to do w/the sheep and more to do with the power of the conglomerates and their lawyers.

Re:Sheep

[notanatheist]

Stop buying CDs? And what? Buy only downloaded compressed formats? Whatever. Obviously you don't own a Squeezebox or nice hifi system. Maybe you listen to all your music through some crappy headphones that came with a portable music player. Maybe if they find a way to do DAE off Vinyl I'll switch to that. (no, not the scanner hoax posted on Slashdot before). I want the freedom to choose the format my music is compressed in if it is compressed at all.

Re:Sheep

[tttonyyy]

Well, where there was allofmp3, I guess others will pop up.

http://www.mp3sale.ru/
http://www.gomusic.ru/
http://mp3stor.ru/ ...have all been mentioned recently, but how trustworthy they are is another question.

Re:Sheep

[rucs_hack]

I thought the main problem with allofmp3 was that they didn't have permission to sell what they were selling, not that it was drm free.

Re:Sheep

[The_Wilschon]

No you missed the point. If nobody bought from these crippled music stores, then they would cease to exist. That has nothing to do with the existence of non-crippled music stores online. The conglomerates and their lawyers cannot force people to buy something, they can only force those selling other things out of existence.

Re:Sheep

[multisync]

Hmmm, guess it has little to do w/the sheep and more to do with the power of the conglomerates and their lawyers.

You mean the pigs and the dogs

Re:Sheep

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Stop buying CDs? And what?

And listen to the collection you already have?
And borrow/trade from your collection with your friends?

It isn't like he's saying you will never get any new music ever again.
I'm sure many of us have gone more than a year without acquiring any new music.

Re:Sheep

[Java Ape]

Hah! They're still running, despite claims to the contrary. Getting money into your account now involves getting a Blizzard gift card first, but that takes about five minutes. My downloads are running at break-neck speed while they're around. I think it's sad that the most user-friendly and effective music distribution site in the world is being shut down.

It's not about money, it's about control -- I don't want some DRM-damaged crap that won't be playable in five years. Allofmp3 delivers what the customer wants, everyone else is delivering what the RIAA tells them to. I buy LOTS of CD's (probably 7-10 per month), but NOTHING from the RIAA. If I want music from the groups they represent, I either use allofmp3 or buy the cd's USED on ebay -- even if it costs more than buying the same CD at WallMart. At the moment, I'm burning bandwidth!

Death to the RIAA, long live allofmp3.com!

Re:Sheep

[Jugalator]

They had permission from their equivalent to the RIAA (= ROMS) though.

I wonder... If iTunes would distribute shadily licensed work from Russian artists, would Russia be able to shut down the entire iTunes via the World Trade Organization?

Or am I not understand this issue fully?

Re:Sheep

[turgid]

Honestly, if the sheep would stop buying crippled music, the crippled-music industry would die in less than 10 days. baa baa

I run Linux exclusively at home. cdparanoia doesn't care about "copy protection." I buy and listen to what I like. I also go to many live concerts.

The last thing I downloaded was in the days of Napster. It was "I'm the Urban Spaceman" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band which I already have on 7-inch vinyl but no longer have the record player upon which to play it and hence rip it.

Re:Sheep

[Reziac]

What Allofmp3.com shows, is that you can indeed SELL music in a freely shareable format, and despite the fact that free copies are everywhere, people will *still* BUY the files if it's sufficiently easy and cheap. Allofmp3.com wouldn't have been in the business so long if they weren't making money at it.

Which in turn shows that the RIAA argument that "if it's freely shareable, we can't SELL any" doesn't hold water.

Re:Sheep

[Znork]

There are several other (entirely 'legit') sites with DRM free music; emusic and audiolunchbox jump to the mind.

They even come with the advantages of good music and with pre-screened no RIAA labels. I'm not sure I really appreciate EMI going for the drm-free business; now I might have to start screening again to make sure my money isnt going to quasi-fascists. They may be out to quash freedom with their jackboots, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for it.

Re:Sheep

[Alsee]

I thought the main problem with allofmp3 was that they didn't have permission to sell what they were selling

No, that is the RIAA public relations and political lobbying lies. Their primary tactic is chant "priate" endlessly until they get what they want.

Russian law operates on the exact same legal principals as US law on all relevant issues here.

Pandora.com (an American company) operates in full compliance with US copyright law, under a statutory license.
AllOfMP3.com (a Russian company) operates in full compliance with Rusian copyright law, under a statutory license.

A statuory licence means that the activity is legal, even if the copyright holder wants to forbid it. The RIAA's ranting that there is somethign wrong with AllOfMP3.com or Russian because the RIAA has not granted permission is bogus. Statutory licenses are legitimate in US law and the law of just about every other country on earth. The RIAA has no more right to compain about than, than a Russian artist has a right to complain about their music being sent by Pandora.com under the almost identical US statuory license.

Pandora.com sends MP3 format internet downloads (or any format that want!), as allowed by American statutory license.
AllOfMP3.com sends MP3 format internet downloads (or any format that want!), as allowed by Russian statutory license.

(Note: You can find Pandora's MP3 file downloads in you temp folder named Access-## with no file extenstion, just rename the file to SongName.MP3)

Pandora.com is required to pay a royalty for each song they send to each person.
AllOfMP3.com is required to pay a royalty for each song they send to each person.

Pandora.com pays those roalty to the US collection organisation (CARP), which then distributes those royalty payments to the copyright holders.
AllOfMP3.com pays those roalty to the Russian collection organisation (ROMS), which then distributes those royalty payments to the copyright holders.

For the indentical MP3 file download, Russian law requires AllOfMP3.com to pay a royalty rate about 20 times higher than the royalty rate set by US law.

Why is the RIAA so pissed? Well two reasons. For one thing they are having a shit-fit that AllOfMP3.com is sending DRM-free music. (US CARP law allows DRM free music as well, and they are desperately trying to get that law "fixed" as well.) The other reason the RIAA is pissed is that AllOfMP3.com more directly undermines their absolute control and massive rates of online stores held under the RIAA's thumb. US law imposes some arbitrary restrictions on companies like Pandora.com to try to force it to resemble old radio. US law has weird terms such as Pandora.com cannot send you more than three songs by the same artist in any single hour. The primary limitation is that Pandora.com cannot send you a specific song that you requested within an hour of you making that request.

So US law and Russian law are almost identical, and US law and Russian and operate under the exact same legal principals, the only differense being that US law has narrower allowances for the copyright-activity and sets a lower royalty rate, and Russian law has slightly more flexible llowances for the copyright-activity and sets a twenty times higher royalty rate.

And then the really fun part is that the RIAA bitches that their artists are not getting paid for the AllOfMP3.com music. And you know WHY RIAA artists aren't getting paid? Because the RIAA contracts with their artists turn over ownership of the copyright to the RIAA members and forbids the artists to go and directly collect their payments themselves. The RIAA is the only one legally allowed to go get these payments, take their share, and distribute them to the artists. And guess what? The dickwads at the RIAA REFUSE to take the money. The RIAA REFUSES to take the money and pass it along to the artists. And as I mentioned, the RIAA contract prohibts artists from going to get their money themse

Re:Sheep

[AlHunt]

>Stop buying CDs? And what? Buy only downloaded compressed formats? Whatever.
> Obviously you don't own a Squeezebox or nice hifi system.

I'm not sure why you think that's "obvious", but you miss the point. I know it's a Pollyanna kind of world, but if no CD's were sold in the next 30 days, don't you think the music industry would "change it's tune"? Same with downloading crippled-crap music - it it just stopped cold, the industry would react pretty quickly. In fact, if iTunes revenue went to *zero* for even one day, their world would rock.

But, it'll never happen ... because frankly, not enough people care. [insert big *sigh*]

Re:Sheep

[AlHunt]

Archive.org http://www.archive.org/details/etree has a nice live music archive.

Re:Sheep

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It's not a matter of who's a sheep, rather who is your shepherd.

Re:Sheep

[Technician]

Maybe if they find a way to do DAE off Vinyl I'll switch to that.

High up the list for me is a good linear track turntable with a moving coil cartridge, a good amplifier with good phono pre-amp, and a good PC with a good sound card. Use Winamp and chose you encoder. Uncompressed wave files are there if you want them at most any bitrate you want.

You are welcome.

It has worked for me. I didn't drop manufacture names as I didn't want to start a golden ear silver wire debate.

Re:Sheep

[famebait]

I thought the main problem with allofmp3 was that they didn't have permission to sell what they were selling, not that it was drm free.

They were within Russian law, but the Russian system was badly broken: a company was able to sell music for a pittance, without the the artists or rights holders ever seeing any reasonable compensation, having any control over pricing, or being asked for permission.

So they fixed the law. After intense lobbying from abroad, I'm sure, and I have no idea if the new law is any good or not. But it is still important to realize that the old law was really unfair.

Re:Sheep

[Steve001]

AlHunt wrote:

Honestly, if the sheep would stop buying crippled music, the crippled-music industry would die in less than 10 days. baa baa

Stop buying CDs altogether and the **AA suing everyone's grandmother would die in less than 30 days. baa baa

The problem with not purchasing any music is that it doesn't send a clear message of what you object to. In that situation, a drop in sales could be blamed on piracy (to provide an example) as the main factor.

I think what would send a very clear message is for people to stop purchasing music with any form of DRM. As an example: If the sales of music drop by 50% and 95% of that drop is of music that is DRM protected it would provide a clear indicator of why sales have dropped, especially if the sales of all other music is little unaffected, or increases.

Re:Sheep

[turgid]

Thanks for that.

Re:Sheep

[Reziac]

Very very interesting, thanks for the insights. Fascinating that the RIAA cartel is *forbidding* artists to collect their own royalties... and I'm wondering if that violates some states' laws (maybe under a broad interpretation of "right to work" type laws??)

Sales dropping

[pinkocommie]

Could we get more data on that? Is iTunes also falling or are the WMA based (napster et. al) skewing the statistics in general? Also how about emusic and allofmp3.com?

Re:Sales dropping

[WaXHeLL]

AllofMP3 was directly cited as an example of an issue that Russia has to address in order to join the WTO.

What is the OP talking about?

[WaXHeLL]

"It should be noted that this trial is an attempt to increase sales and competition with online music that is not necessarilary available on iTunes."

I don't get how the OP infered that statement from the article. Both of the songs cited in the article (A single from Norah Jones and two tracks from Reliant K) should be on iTunes. Apple has an agreement with EMI, just as Yahoo Music/Musicnet has an agreement with EMI.

eMusic on the other hand, representing a much larger percentage of the independent labels out there, has a selection of music that can't be found on iTunes.

Does anyone have numbers on this?

[zappepcs]

Does anyone know if Christian music lovers are in the demographic of illegal file downloaders?
Christians are supposed to be honest and pay for stuff anyway, right? Just how big a risk is this little online venture?

If these files start showing up on P2P lists, what does that say about us all?

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christians are supposed to be honest and pay for stuff anyway, right?

On the other hand if you do steal a Christian artist's music, aren't they supposed to forgive you for it?

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[operagost]

Christians do wrong things just like everyone else. Illegal file sharing is a problem; the only difference being is that they rationalize it as being OK for the purpose of evangelizing.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember having visited a christian mp3 channel on efnet a few years ago. So yes, christians hve no moral qualms pirating.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[SeaFox]

If these files start showing up on P2P lists, what does that say about us all?

That we really don't practice what we preach? In other words, people aren't as religious as they claim themselves to be. Which isn't breaking news. Studying actual church attendance statistics will tell you as much.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

As A Christan Music lover and a slashdot follower, I can tell you that honestly doesn't necessarily mean stupidity. I'll buy their CD if i want to support the band, or I'll go to the concert and feel fine about downloading their stuff. Not all laws are just.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[kevin_conaway]

Does anyone know if Christian music lovers are in the demographic of illegal file downloaders?

Ehh, don't read much into the Christian label. Theres nothing real specifically Christian about their music (same with MxPx). They basically just don't do drugs, drink to excess, sleep around and their music generally has positive overtones.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Sesticulus]

My bible thumping evangelical step brother in law thought it was really cool he could download all that free music he wanted off of P2P. My devout Catholic sister in law asked me to bootleg a DVD for her at Thanksgiving (I refused).

Apparently they are all about following the letter of the law, the 10 commandments don't say anything about thou shall not copyright infringe. As an atheist, I think they missed the point.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

A true Christian composer or artist would be creating their work as a way of praising the Lord, not of becoming wealthy, and would dedicate all their work to the public domain as the best way to spread the Word.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they damn you to hell. Let's see you talk your way out of THAT predicament.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

About your sister: she isn't as devout as you think.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[smoker2]

Yeah, and then ya get to slap them *again* !

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[bilbravo]

I was going to post this as well. Relient K is a very "positive" image type band, although a few of their songs have Christian themes. They are also pretty popular, I hear a few of their songs on the radio, and on MTV/VH1 (same with Switchfoot).

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[TheRaven64]

The Bible says that if someone hits you in the face, you should turn the other cheek (to allow them to hit the other side of their face), so if you download a track from a Christian artist, then according to the Bible they should email you the rest of their songs.

Personally, I find that too dire a punishment to risk, so I'm going to avoid downloading any Christian music...

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if Christian music lovers are in the demographic of illegal file downloaders?
Christians are supposed to be honest and pay for stuff anyway, right?

just like you're supposed to make sure your brain is properly connected before opening your mouth.
Nor you nor them do the right thing (tm). What a pity.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if Christian music lovers are in the demographic of illegal file downloaders? Christians are supposed to be honest and pay for stuff anyway, right? Just how big a risk is this little online venture?

I suppose you're not much into religion, or just trolling.
Anyway, what you say is a common idea, but wrong: Christians should not do something immoral, like you shouldn't too - you have a moral, don't you? - but most of the time they do what we all do, we don't care about morality of our deeds.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[mrbcs]

What is the true motivation of the Christian Artist? Are they making music to make money or to Glorify God?

I do venture into a.b.sounds.mp3.christian where this discussion is played out almost weekly. Some of us (in Canada) pay a tax on media which as far as a lot of us are concerned, legalizes downloading.

Another group downloads to try out new music since it doesn't really get played on mainstream radio. Some of us (God forbid) even go out and buy music after we listen to it. I've deleted quite a bit of sampled music so far, and I've bought a lot of cd's. I also go to concerts and spend $200 on tickets, t-shirts and cd's to support artists.

There is also a group of people in there that trade out of print music. I've had the chance to replace old tapes that died many times.

When I can download mp3s, without drm, and get a chance to listen to them before hand, I'll probably leave the newsgroup. Till then, I have no problem downloading music.

The whole point of Christian Music is to spread the Gospel. From another angle you could argue that they're no better than the money changers in the temple if their motivation is strictly money and profit.

/flame on!

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[deviceb]

or if you bitch slap them, they should turn the other cheek? so.. if you jack one song from them.. they should give you the next up front!

yarr

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[kirun]

It's easy, just use a Get Out Of Hell Free card.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Joe Snipe]

mod parent up, +1 sacrilicious!

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christians are supposed to be honest
As a matter of fact, all of the worlds great religions include honesty as part of their moral code. That would include Islam, Buddhism, Hindu, Judiasm, Baha'i, etc.

And, believe it or not, most non-religious-followers also have a sense of right and wrong, a personal code of morality, and live their lives as honest people.

Oh and insofar as dishonesty is concerned, it seems to be just as prominent in the followers of the world's great religions as in the non-followers.

As my final point...there are plenty of Christians (or whatevers) who don't consider data duplication to be dishonest, let alone theft.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[cptgrudge]

They should forgive you for it, so you won't answer to them. You will have to answer to Jesus. :P

In all seriousness, "forgiveness" is really only part of it. The other part (if one cares) is taking responsibility for your actions if you are really sorry. Which I would guess means either deleting the files or buying them legitimately. I suppose it's your belief system that determines if that is a requisite of "honest" for you, though.

As far as Christians being honest and "paying for stuff", I'm a Christian, and I download music from P2P networks. Whatever. I don't see it as wrong. But for those artists that I listen to and like, I support them by buying their music through their chosen channels.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[husker_man]

I can't speak for all Christians on this, but I've never pirated any music of any sort whatsoever. Now, I do rip (using Winamp) all of my albums and store it on a hard disk for my listening pleasure, but I certainly don't share them. Am I in violation of the terms and conditions? Possibly, but I feel this is certainly covered under fair use.

However, my wife and I helped a girl from our church purchase a PC. She ripped all of her CD's to her hard disk, and then sold the CD's. Was it wrong? I suggested that it was to her, but she wasn't willing to listen to my advice.

Now, have I ever downloaded anything for free? I have downloaded The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before it came out on DVD (after seeing it in the movie theater three times), but I deleted it after watching one scene from the latter part of the movie. (I've also downloaded Don't download this song, but nothing else that wasn't for free.

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[Wizzy Wig]

On the other hand if you do steal a Christian artist's music, aren't they supposed to forgive you for it?

This one will, and you'll feel much better for it!

Re:Does anyone have numbers on this?

[SonicSpike]

I am a Christian audio engineer and let me tell you, just visit any major Christian recording artist's discussion forum, and you'll find a lot of debate on the subject.

It's the price, stupid

[arniebuteft]

Wake up RIAA and realize that the price of music drives piracy. People will always have an incentive to crack DRM if they can't get the music for a fair price legally. I imagine the music industry is scared to death of sliding music prices, even though that's where it's going to head eventually. There is some point between "overpriced" and "free" at which both consumers and most artists will be happy. Those artists who expect to become millionaires from a popular record (and who don't tour), are going to be sorely disappointed. Those artists who are happy making a decent living, and who actually produce good music, will prosper.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[shark72]

"Wake up RIAA and realize that the price of music drives piracy."

Pricing drives shoplifting, auto theft, and lots of other crimes. Businesses can take this into account, but no matter what industry you're in, there's always going to be a certain percentage of people who will try to help themselves to your product for free and use pricing as a rationalization.

"People will always have an incentive to crack DRM if they can't get the music for a fair price legally."

Agreed, but for many people, "fair price" has been sliding downward so that it's below whatever price the industry sets. Remember six years ago when CDs were $20 and online tracks were $3 and hard to come by? People justified P2P usage back then because CDs were so expensive and legit online tracks were expensive and offered little selection. Today, new CD releases are south of $15 and selection of online music is plentiful at $0.99 and below. Yet this price is still not "fair." For many people, it never will be. Those people likely aren't high on the record companies' target audience... unless you're counting lawsuits.

"I imagine the music industry is scared to death of sliding music prices, even though that's where it's going to head eventually. There is some point between "overpriced" and "free" at which both consumers and most artists will be happy."

...and the industry has found that at $0.99. The iTMS has been an overwhelming success, despite the fact that everybody on Slashdot hates it because the pricing isn't "fair" and because the product is DRM-laden.

You are not going to believe this, but if online music pricing dropped to $0.80, $0.70, or even $0.50, I would not buy more. I buy all the music I want online, and $0.99 is not a burden to me. It's conceivable that I'm the only consumer on the planet for whom there's no elasticity between $0.99 and $0.50, but that's highly unlikely. Pricing theory is all about finding that point on the curve that makes the most profit, even if it means that you're limiting your potential customer base.

"Those artists who expect to become millionaires from a popular record (and who don't tour), are going to be sorely disappointed. Those artists who are happy making a decent living, and who actually produce good music, will prosper."

This sounds a lot like many arguments I hear for lower music prices which end with some form of "artists will just need to accept their new place in society." Why should they want to do that? Many people would trade fame for money, but many would not. If I offered to make you more well-known but your salary would have to drop by $20K a year, would you do it? Do you think everybody would take me up on my offer?

Re:It's the price, stupid

[kevin_conaway]

You are not going to believe this, but if online music pricing dropped to $0.80, $0.70, or even $0.50, I would not buy more. I buy all the music I want online, and $0.99 is not a burden to me. It's conceivable that I'm the only consumer on the planet for whom there's no elasticity between $0.99 and $0.50, but that's highly unlikely. Pricing theory is all about finding that point on the curve that makes the most profit, even if it means that you're limiting your potential customer base.

The problem is that 0.99 is not a fair price. Its easier for them to distribute yet the price per song is still higher than just buying the album. If an album has more than 15 songs on it, you're losing money. Forget about "boxed" sets that have ~100 songs on them but retail for ~$40.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[Tadrith]

Store prices on music has dropped quite a bit, as well. It's not unusual for me to find a new artist that I like and their CD is $9.99 in stores. Not coincidentally, I've also purchased quite a few more CDs in the past year than I usually have. I find this is a fair price for a CD.

Though, factoring into that is the fact that I actually found quite a few bands this year that I enjoyed, which is a rarity. Personally, I'd like to see them get rid of the copy protection and DRM and leave music prices where they are at, that way I could actually easily rip my own CDs. As it stands, it's easier for me to get my CDs into MP3 form by downloading it, than worry about whether or not the disc I bought has copy protection on it.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[TubeSteak]

Remember six years ago when CDs were $20 and online tracks were $3 and hard to come by? People justified P2P usage back then because CDs were so expensive and legit online tracks were expensive and offered little selection. Today, new CD releases are south of $15 and selection of online music is plentiful at $0.99 and below. Yet this price is still not "fair."

Most musicians don't make money from the sales of albums, record companies do.

Because of this dynamic, 'people' can't afford to buy all the music that they would like to consume.

Pricing that prevents that is not "fair" from the consumer's POV.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[badasscat]

...and the industry has found that at $0.99. The iTMS has been an overwhelming success, despite the fact that everybody on Slashdot hates it because the pricing isn't "fair" and because the product is DRM-laden.

How do you define "overwhelming success"?

We know from simple division that even among iTunes Music Store customers, the average number of purchased tracks is 21. We also know that the number of illegal downloads continues to outnumber legal downloads by 40 to 1. (Both of these stats come from previous - and recent - stories posted here.) People continue to fill up their iPods with music they have obtained elsewhere (legally and illegally). If such a small percentage of music sales can be deemed an "overwhelming success", then what would constitute failure?

I think the music industry has seen these stats, they know these stats, and they also know that even with whatever limited success iTunes and the like has had (and it is "limited" at best, not "overwhelming"), most of that success belongs to Apple, Real, etc. Not to the music industry itself. So they know they've still got big problems.

This sounds a lot like many arguments I hear for lower music prices which end with some form of "artists will just need to accept their new place in society." Why should they want to do that?

Whether they want to or not is not really relevant. The fact may be that they have to.

Look at it this way. In the late 1800's, a lot of people made a lot of money in the railroad business. By around the 1950's, that was no longer possible - the business just wasn't what it was anymore. Media is just like any other business, and in fact the exact same thing is happening to the newspaper and magazine industries right now. You can never count on a business to make you rich forever. How you feel about that as a member of that business matters not at all.

Unless you want to count classical composers who often consorted with kings and queens (but were rarely really rich themselves), the whole notion of getting rich by writing and playing music is an entirely recent phenomenon. It's not something anybody would have assumed 100 or even 50 years ago. It was something people did for the love of the music, and hopefully they did it well enough to make a living. That living was mostly made through playing live, not through sales of media.

Many people think the music industry's run as it currently exists is simply over. It does happen. Industries come and go as times change; they are not static things.

That does not mean music will go away. It just means the current major label-dominated industry itself might, along with the ability to get rich by selling records. Being a musician may become more like any other profession, where the savvy and talented can make a good living provided they continue to work year-round playing live, releasing new music and creating other related merchandise. Labels will still exist - there does need to be someone to do the real production and promotion work - but they may not be dominated by the four majors. The entire industry may look a lot more like the indie record industry of today. eMusic may be the new model. Or, the opposite may happen, and it already sort of is - musicians that want to get rich will need to become "brands", transcending their career in music and turning themselves into full-on multimedia campaigns. Or, there could be some combination of both models, which is probably the most likely scenario. But you won't be able to get rich just selling records for very much longer.

It probably sounds far-fetched to you, but then in 1930 there probably wasn't a man alive that thought there'd come a time when the New York Central wasn't steaming from New York to Chicago six times a day. Things change in business, often dramatically. And new technology is what drives that change.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[not_a_product_id]

and the industry has found that at $0.99. The iTMS has been an overwhelming success Yeah, and the music industry hates it and keeps trying to get Apple to allow it to get the price increased.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[shark72]

"The problem is that 0.99 is not a fair price. Its easier for them to distribute yet the price per song is still higher than just buying the album. If an album has more than 15 songs on it, you're losing money. Forget about "boxed" sets that have ~100 songs on them but retail for ~$40."

Volume incentive pricing is hardly new; it's not "fair" (if I understand your meaning) that a four-pack of bottled water or toilet paper costs much more per unit than a 12-pack. Part of the disparity is often because there's a lower net cost per sale per unit in larger packaging, but the big reason is that the vendor gets more money from you that might otherwise go to a competitor (ie. you might otherwise buy four bottles of water from their competitor next week, so they'd rather sell you the 12-pack and keep you off the market for three weeks). If this concept is actually new to anybody, check the "price per ounce" sticker that many supermarkets provide; note that the larger version of something is almost always cheaper by unit.

We should not expect the music industry to work any differently. If they want to offer an incentive for buying an entire CD, then they're simply following the same practice that countless other industries do. And there's no obligation to set individual track pricing based on (price of CD / tracks per CD). If that pricing works out to be the optimal point on the sales curve, then great. But often it won't.

The ability to individually purchase any track on a CD is something that simply did not exist 10 years ago; for me it's been a money saver. I typically do not want an entire CD; if I can get all I want from a CD for three bucks instead of $14, then game on. Even if the net cost to me per track were less than $0.99 if I clicked the "buy album" button, it's not a good value for me if I don't want all the tracks.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[DA-MAN]

Agreed, but for many people, "fair price" has been sliding downward so that it's below whatever price the industry sets. Remember six years ago when CDs were $20 and online tracks were $3 and hard to come by? People justified P2P usage back then because CDs were so expensive and legit online tracks were expensive and offered little selection. Today, new CD releases are south of $15 and selection of online music is plentiful at $0.99 and below. Yet this price is still not "fair." For many people, it never will be. Those people likely aren't high on the record companies' target audience... unless you're counting lawsuits.

The Industry promised 5 dollar cd's when the technology was in it's infancy. They promised it would cost so little to make a cd in time that the price of a new album would cost no more than $5. Guess what, it costs us at home less than 5 cents to burn a cd. And since they never delivered on their promise of the $5 cd, people are saying to hell with them.

I personally gave up on music. iTunes was cool for a bit, until I tried to stream my purchased tracks to my TiVo, which can play just about any format that isn't drm'd. After jumping through hoops to burn and re-rip my own tracks, I just didn't want to deal with downloads. And cd's are too expensive. It's not worth it to me anymore, I stick to podcasts for listening and occasionally listen to the HD Music channel on my Home Theater.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be easier for them to distribute but that doesn't mean it's cheaper. People seem to think that a physical product always has to cost more to produce than a purely digital product but that isn't necessarily true. In the case of music, cd duplication and packaging costs are very cheap whereas the costs of maintaining a popular online music site - which would include bandwidth, storage costs, electricity, etc - can be significant.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[teh_chrizzle]

The problem is that 0.99 is not a fair price. Its easier for them to distribute yet the price per song is still higher than just buying the album. If an album has more than 15 songs on it, you're losing money. Forget about "boxed" sets that have ~100 songs on them but retail for ~$40.

i agree that music is too expensive, and i agree that online distribution is *way* cheaper, but the unit price argument has been used by both sides over the years. the unit price argument over the years has evolved something like this:

1. 1999:CDs suck, they only feature 1 or 2 tracks that i am interested in, so if i spend $20 on a cd and only like 2 tracks, it's like paying $10 a track.
2. 2003:iTunes is great it lets me get the tracks i want for a dollar each, which is like saving $18 on an album that sucks otherwise.
3. 2007:iTunes sucks... if i want all the tracks off of "bob marley: legend" it's going to cost me $20, when i can buy the CD for $15, it's like buying the CD is only $0.75 a track, plus it's not compressed so i can listen to it on my OMFGexpensive stereo in joyjoy surround.
4. 2011:bittorrent sucks... yeah i can get all the tracks i want for free, if i want to scarifice a whole day just to grab a dozen albums. i would totally pay some dude to just find shit for me so i can spend my time actually listening to my stuff rather than searching for it all the damn time.

yes music is overpriced. yes digital distribution costs almost nothing. yes, you are totally right about unfair pricing, but unit prices are a moving target, and we as consumers are moving the target faster than the industry can keep up.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[hackstraw]

Wake up RIAA and realize that the price of music drives piracy.

That is only a small part of it.

I pirate music I have on CD somewhere upstairs or in my car because I'm too lazy to dig out the CD and rip it myself. I get the bonus by frequently being able to download all albums by the artist in one download. Even if the CD boxset was free, its still easier and more convenient to download the music than it is to rip the plastic off of all the CD cases.

In fact, I've even heard of markets that are around convenience over quanity or quality. They are things like convenience stores, where the prices are often more than at other, less convenient stores. There are also things like fast food that is not the best food, but its priced lower and the service is faster than other restaurants.

I have yet to of seen the availiability of a resonably priced MP3 collection on a standard data CD that I can play in my car CD player or copy onto my computer and/or MP3 player.

So, for now, convenience and price wins and the media moguls lose.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[Technician]

Today, new CD releases are south of $15 and selection of online music is plentiful at $0.99 and below.

And a new DVD is anywhere from 0.99 to about $18.99 for 2 hours of audio and video. From my standpoint the CD's are at least twice as expensive as the alternatives. At least I can buy back catalog movies, cartoons, TV shows, etc for under $5 for 2 hours of content. The music industry wants an arm and a leg for CD's of 20 year old material in comparison.

I've moved on to Creative Commons and ancient public domain recordings since anything newer is plated with a gold price tag.

I still haven't gotten solid answere to modern uses of the content either. I saw the Lights.wmv Christams lightshow set to music. It violated many copywrite limites.
1 It was broadcast on FM for people other than the owner to recieve
2 It was recorded and posted online for massive copyright violations
3 It was used in a public performance

I wrote the band (TSO) and asked for permission to do the same. I don't think my letter even got read. The only reply I got was generic addition to the mailing list for discount concert tickets..

This is after the band made a hero of the violator and made him a guest at one of their concerts.
They also liked the light display, but skirted the copyrite violations.

I wrote the RIAA and got no reply. Does anyone know the proper avenue to obtiain proper permission for a Christmas light display? Public performance?, Posting a dirivative work online such as myspace, youtube, or other site?

Everyone is so tied up with litigation or tour schedule to handle modern uses for the content. Since I don't have permission to use it yet, I haven't yet bought a copy.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[pwizard2]

If you're worrying about infecting your computer with some DRM demon by feeding it a random music cd, then try ripping the cds with linux. Since most of the DRM software does not run under Linux (and even if it did you would have to authorize it with root access before it could install anything) you would likely be in the clear.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[Firehed]

If I got a CD-quality file, I'd pay a buck a song. Provided that the ARTIST actually makes something from it. As it stands now, most artists will see single-digit percentages of sales profits (either in CD or paid download form), if they get anything at all.

Start paying the artists their fair share, and I'll start buying music again. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if artists were to put a mailing address on their websites, I'd happily send along ten bucks to them after downloading an album of theirs from a questionable source. Even $2 would almost certainly be an improvement over what they're making from sales. As it is, I've yet to see this information posted on any artists' website (or any that I listen to, anyways), so it's not an option.

At one point, I would have understood the need for the RIAA and it's marketing power (and, thus, giving them a *reasonable* cut). But I don't think I've acquired a track (legally or otherwise) in the last five years or so after finding out about it through some RIAA-backed marketing technique. Most of my current music was discovered after hearing it in some sort of fan-created video that got put up on YouTube or something to that effect. That HL2 video by Machinima (Still Seeing Breen) led to me buying three CDs from the artist (Breaking Benjamin) whose song was used in the video; likewise for ALL of my purchases since the pre-Napster 1.0 days and the vast majority of other music was found in a similar way. Everything that wasn't purchased was done so out of this principle, not a cheap bastard. If artists want to give away their music, so much the better for me, but I don't expect to be able to get something for nothing, and I would happily support them if I had a way to do so where they actually saw the money. The actual point here being that the RIAA no longer serves a purpose - getting hardware and software to do your own recording at or near studio-quality is fast becoming so cheap (at least relatively speaking) that anyone could do it with a small loan from friends if not directly out-of-pocket.

I WANT to support my favorite artists. Unfortunately, the only way for me to really do so is to see them live. Which I'd love to do, but I really just don't have time time to go road tripping on the offchance they get within a few hundred miles of where I live.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[GWBasic]

I'll pay ~$20 for a CD-DVD combo or SACD; a little more if it's a new release, a little less if it's a remaster of an album that's older then 5 years old. This is provided that there's a 5.1 mix. (I'll pay a little more if it's true DVD-A/SACD, a little less if it's lossy AC3 or DTS.) For new releases that are only a CD, I'll pay a little more then $15.

For CDs that are over 5 years old, $15 / CD, or $0.99 / track is highway robbery. I've been picking up Beatles and Pink Floyd over the past few years, and I'm getting fed up with being asked to pay $18 for an item that's essentially been unchanged since the super-duper-stereo-remaster came out 10 years ago. (Fortunatly I can find most of them used.)

Serisously, it's very difficult to be compelled to pay high margins for material that's older then 5 years old.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[ThousandStars]

If such a small percentage of music sales can be deemed an "overwhelming success", then what would constitute failure?

The numerous other music stores, including Sony's, Wal-Mart's, Real's, and whoever else opened one this week.

The Zune. (Insert joke here.)

The status quo.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The Industry promised 5 dollar cd's when the technology was in it's infancy. They promised it would cost so little to make a cd in time that the price of a new album would cost no more than $5. Guess what, it costs us at home less than 5 cents to burn a cd. And since they never delivered on their promise of the $5 cd, people are saying to hell with them.

It's not quite that low, but $6-$7 CDs are possible through CD clubs, including the "shipping" charges. Just not all of the time. Several times a year, there are sales, including ones when shipping is waived if you get 5 or so CDs at a time.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[shark72]

"We know from simple division that even among iTunes Music Store customers, the average number of purchased tracks is 21. We also know that the number of illegal downloads continues to outnumber legal downloads by 40 to 1. (Both of these stats come from previous - and recent - stories posted here.) People continue to fill up their iPods with music they have obtained elsewhere (legally and illegally). If such a small percentage of music sales can be deemed an "overwhelming success", then what would constitute failure?"

If I were a music industry executive (knock wood), I don't know if I'd use that ratio as a primary metric. There'll always be lots of people who will choose the "free" route. I think that what's fundamentally more important to a record company (and their stockholders, if they're public) is their sales and margins today vs. previous years, and whether their growth is on track. Reducing piracy (either with the carrot or the stick) may be a secondary goal, but their primary goal is to make money. Last quarter Warner did $731MM worth of business, and $100MM of that was digital sales (a new milestone for them). But their total business was down 10% from the previous year. Whether that 10% loss was due to piracy, I don't know -- lots of Slashbots say that "piracy doesn't hurt sales; it actually INCREASES sales by introducing people to more new music" but I'm not sure I buy that.

"Many people think the music industry's run as it currently exists is simply over. It does happen. Industries come and go as times change; they are not static things."

Many people think of the music industry as the Titanic; they've hit that big ol' P2P iceberg of doom, they're taking on water, and Jack Dawson's penning that strongly worded letter to the White Star line. I think of it as more like the QE2. It takes a lot of time and energy to turn that mofo around, but they're doing it. You made some very astute predictions about how the business of making money at music will change; I think you've nailed it. But my bet is that Warner Records will make in the ballpark of $731MM in Q3 next year, and in Q3 2015, and in Q3 2025.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[turnipsatemybaby]

That is entirely true. The question is, if you go onto iTunes (I don't use it myself so I don't know), do you get a discount if you buy 10 or more songs at once? If you don't, then your entire argument is moot because the music industry *isn't* following this pattern with respect to online music.

Also, consideration must be given to the differences between physical and online distribution. The per track cost of buying music online is $0.99. Fine. But it is also lower quality compared to a CD. AND it's infested with DRM restricting what you can do with your music and most CDs do not.

With all the cons that the music industry imposes for the price, the value of online music is dramatically less that physical IMO, even when taking into account the "mass purchase discount" effect.

Re:It's the price, stupid

[Vitriol Angst]

Huh.

Right.

And a Movie DVD can be purchased, for $25 down to $9 now. Though movies seem to have a bit more involved to create them.

>> "...your salary would have to drop by $20K a year"

The Utility and Service provided to the customer are not mentioned. Would many allow the government to arrest people so that they could make an extra $2 Million a year? Apparently so. What's the product? Who cares -- I've got the government guaranteeing me a fat check -- who-hoo!

How is this FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is neither FUD nor BS!

I want my favorite editor back. Go and wake up that lazy Zonk and make him serve us our daily dose of "journalism".

Thanks!

It Will Not Be Long

[moore.dustin]

With the rise of iTunes and downloading music online, people are already getting upset about what they can and cant do with the music they OWN. These companies are looking to control how you can use the things you own and people do not like it. One iPod per iTunes, cant share music files, cant move music library - these are just some of the issues people are beginning to realize as they explore the world of digital music (Average User).

People want to do what they want with the things they own, period. Companies should not be deceiving consumers by giving the illusion of ownership when they purchase a song. Instead they should be prompted warned that buying said song from said service will result in the following restrictions. Well maybe they are better off telling them they are not allowed to do anything with the song besides X and X, just to save time and space :)

If the DRM was explained and the restrictions spelled out, as they should be, sales on iTunes and other services would begin to fall as soon as any alternative that allows people to do what they want with the songs comes out. Of course, seasoned digital music consumers have found an alternative already, but no money is being made off that yet... If no alternatives are allowed to hit the market then the average user, as they become more knowledgeable about the issue, will result to the same methods.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[Apple Acolyte]

I don't know what you're talking about. One iTunes library can have an unlimited number of iPods synched to it, and there's nothing preventing one from moving a library from one computer to another. The only major restrictions found in iTunes are on burning audio CDs with protected tracks (5 times) and on sharing protected tracks between computers (5 computers). You may not like the concept of DRM, but iTunes DRM is reasonable. There's no need to spread misinformation.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[evamedia]

1 iPod per iTunes, what are you talking about? You can use as many iPod's as you like from 1 copy of iTunes, including DRM'd tracks

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[Rude Turnip]

"The only major restrictions found in iTunes are on burning audio CDs with protected tracks (5 times)..."

It is actually unlimited burning. But 5 times per a given playlist. So, you alter the playlist and alter it back and you're good to go again. The fact that we even have to clarify these things among ourselves is another problem with DRM.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[moore.dustin]

Per iTunes library? I was not trying to say that if you own two devices you cannot use both on iTunes, I apologize for the lack of explanation. Rather, if you load music onto your iPod at home with iTunes, then go to work and you have a different copy of iTunes you cannot sync your iPod with that installation/library. Again, sorry for the confusion!

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[TheRaven64]

I take it you don't own a reasonably modern mobile phone. Mine is a year old now, and was the free-with-cheap-contract one. It has 1GB of storage space on a removable card (which cost about £10), and can play AACs. In fact, it can play any of the AAC files in my iTunes library except the few I bought from iTMS. To me, this is an unacceptable restriction. I bought the music, but I can't play it on a device I own because of artificial restrictions.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[GateGuy]

Did you have no idea that you would be unable to play your purchased music on your cell phone when you purchased the music?

Somewhere you clicked through a license, saying that you did acknowledge that you would not be able to play the purchased songs except on authorized devices.

Yet you chose to purchase the music anyways. Now you want to change the contract you agreed to.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[Anonymous Coward]

> In fact, it can play any of the AAC files in my iTunes library except the few I bought from iTMS. To me, this is an unacceptable restriction. I bought the music, but I can't play it on a device I own because of artificial restrictions.
Use QTFairUse6.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[Buran]

I think the point being made is that this is an unreasonable behavior. If you pay for something you should be able, the original poster feels, do what you want with it. Hiding contrary "we can do what we want" excuses in a clickthrough that these companies know by now that no one reads is hardly ethical or okay. (unless you are a lawyer).

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[aedan]

You can do that now.

If I plug my iPod into another machine which is authorised to use my iTunes account then it will ask if I want to copy the purchased music from the iPod to the computer.

It's an easy way to back it up, even an off site back up in my mum's house.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[TheRaven64]

I haven't bought much music from iTMS. When I did, it was because the store was brand new, and I wanted to see what it was like. At the time, the only devices I owned which I might have wanted to play back music from were a PowerBook and an iPod.

Back in the '80s, I bought some CDs. At the time, the only thing I owned that I could play them back on was a large CD player that went in the HiFi stack. Later, I got a portable CD player (from a different manufacturer), and a few computers with CD-ROM drives. These were not form factors I considered when I first bought CDs, but I have been able to use my CDs with them. With DRM'd music, this is not the case. What I can do is limited by the whims of the seller, and not by the available technology. And this is why I no longer buy DRM'd media.

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[mr_matticus]

Here's where people of your beliefs lose me. When did ownership of music EVER mean actual OWNERSHIP? It never has. What you get when you buy music has always been a transfer of limited rights (i.e. a license--a word which has changed dramatically in meaning on Slashdot). Ownership of the CD has always been ownership of the physical elements and ownership of the license. I'm going to stop using the word 'license' now and instead call it 'banana' because otherwise I'll be modded into oblivion.

There is more to the purchase and use of rights to entertainment than that which is encompassed in copyright law; there is more nuance to the notion of intellectual property than speeding tickets, and part of the problem is a long-standing disagreement on what 'intellectual property' is--is it nonphysical property ceded to society upon expiration? Is it a public commons temporarily confined to an "owner"? Neither one is decisive or correct (though the law clearly favors the former, both semantically and practically; 'privatizing' a public good is a major pain, whereas 'opening to the public' a formerly private issue is much more mechanically stable from a legal perspective). Ultimately, setting aside expiration of exclusive rights for a moment, entertainment is controlled by its authors (or the agents thereof). The authors sell bananas, giving you varying sets of rights. Some of those bananas are like renting, some like leasing, and so on. The extent of the banana is only limited by a few specific provisions in copyright law; so long as it's clear what rights you get with your banana, they can sell you any kind of banana they want at whatever price they want so long as there's nothing illegal in it. You're buying a right to specific actions when you buy the banana. Those actions and usage rights might prevent you from doing something you want to do; they might prevent you from doing something with a digital file that you could do with a CD, or vice versa. Bananas are not all identical, and what works for one format is not necessarily applied to the others.

The only thing that's different about digital downloads is the banana is different. It's no more or less ownership in the traditional, exhaustive sense than it ever has been.

I think CDs and DRMed downloads are both overpriced, but this whole "I should OWN the music I buy" concept is misguided and bizarre. You never truly owned the music on that old 45 you bought in 1976, why should you start now?

Re:It Will Not Be Long

[moore.dustin]

Exactly. The examples of what could happen to screw the consumer are numerous. The main point here is that once I buy the song from iTunes, I should be able to listen to that song as many times as I want and on any device I want, period.

Three words....

[8127972]

IT'S A TRAP!

Re:Three words....

[Ginger Unicorn]

in what possible way could this be a trap?

Re:Three words....

[oliverthered]

technically thats four words.

Re:Three words....

[indigest]

I know you are probably joking, but this COULD actually be a trap.

EMI could put a unique inaudible watermark on every download and wait for the files to show up on P2P. Then, they could easily track down the person who originally leaked the file onto P2P by analyzing the watermark. Even worse, they would already have the name and address of the leaker and possibly a signed document promising not to share the downloaded files.

I would be very careful with any MP3 files downloaded from this service.

Re:Three words....

[despisethesun]

In my experience, contractions are usually considered one word.

Quality / Bitrate..?

[bhunachchicken]

DRM free..? Well, okay... I'm listening (so to speak). But if the quality isn't 192kps and up then I'm not interested.

Personally I'd rather see a "more legal" version of allofmp3.com... Choice of format, bitrate, etc? Yes, please. I'd be very happy to part with my hard earned cash in that case.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[WaXHeLL]

I'd be very suprised if those tracks weren't released as 192kps MP3s. All of the PlayforSure music stores have switched over to 192kps WMAs in a "music quality" war.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, what I love is that the ppl clamoring for higher quality tracks are ppl who couldn't pass a double blind test between probably 96-128 kbps and 192. The truth of the matter is that double blind tests are rarely conducted by humans above 128kbps because it is so difficult(I've heard of a high bitrate test using some program to look for noise). In fact there is a 48 kbps test(Thats right, Forty Eight Kilo Bee Pee Ess ;) test in progress at the respected http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php I was looking for another thread about how "ABX killed my ego" but gave up. Basically, no one can tell the diff easily above 128 using modern encoders, its all the placebo effect. Download foobar2000 http://www.foobar2000.org/ and try taking a double blind(ABX test) with FLAC vs 128 kbps lame. Have fun flipping a coin to decide which one is higher/lower quality.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[TheRaven64]

Personally I'd rather see a "more legal" version of allofmp3.com AllOfMP3.com showed us what the costs of distributing the music are. Double that number, and give the difference to the artists, and I'll use the service. Until then, I'll stick to buying very small amounts of music from non-RIAA labels.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[AK Marc]

AllOfMP3.com showed us what the costs of distributing the music are.

They showed us what a company that is doing distribution would charge with some unknown profit built in. We know the upper bounds, but not the lower bounds. For all we know, the costs are half that. Though I do agree that paying twice that cost, with the extra to the artist would give us much cheaper music and pay the creators more than buying their CDs.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[cshay]

I can't tell the difference between 128kps and 192 when a quality mp3 encoder is used (eg the original Fraunhofer one). I think the push for 192kps began when high speed encoders had to cut corners to do the encoding quickly. Then the internet was flooded with low quality 128kps recordings.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[WaXHeLL]

A lot of these issues stem from each individual user's hardware (ie sound card, speakers/headphones, etc). People also generally percieve louder as "higher quality."

For MP3, even with the excellent quality of LAME, you start hearing a decent amount of audio distortion on hardware of decent quality at around 112kbps and lower. 128kbps and higher, the percieved loss of quality drops of pretty sharply.

It was actually only after I got my audiophile headphones that I started encoding my music at much higher bitrates. The "swishing" sensation can be percieved at 128kbps audio and lower with a good sound card and decent quality headphones ($250+).

In my previous life as a computer hardware reviewer, I actually did get a chance to play around with AOpen's (now discontinued) line of motherboards with vaccum tube amplified audio. In terms of audio quality, those boards beat the socks off of any other sound card I compared them to (again in a double blind test). The noise isolation was also superior to anything else I've heard, which was quite suprising, given that the sound card is from on-board electronics. I actually still have my two boards lying around, although the chipsets are long obsolete.

Taking your computer/portable music player out of the loop, and using high quality audio gear will differ your perspective on the various bit rates for MP3 encoding.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[evilviper]

I can't tell the difference between 128kps and 192 when a quality mp3 encoder is used (eg the original Fraunhofer one).

The Fraunhofer codec is actually rather poor, especially when compared to modern ones like lame.

The fact that you can't tell the difference is quite likely a result of poor equipment. With a $10 soundcard, I can't tell the difference either, because so much of the frequency range is distorted. With a $25 SB Live card, and maybe some $30 Aiwa/Sony/Senheiser earbuds, I believe most anyone will be able to hear the difference...

Whether it's enough of a difference that they care is a different question all-together.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[evilviper]

That was supposed to be: "full-sized headphones/earbuds."

Listed companies make good quality versions of both for about that price range, and either should work fine.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[BoberFett]

It's not about the quality now, it's about the quality 10 years from now. Right now, the format is MP3, AAC or whatever the heck you're using. Ten years from now, what will the format be? If the portable players in the future change formats a couple times, you're going to have to re-encode your audio. A couple more lossy compressions on an already lossy source file and your music is going to sound like garbage. Do you think they company you bought your MP3 files from is going to give you free downloads of all the music you bought in the new format?

When I play a CD right now that I bought 15 years ago, it sounds exactly the same as it did back then. If music could be downloaded in a lossless format, it can be encoded in whatever format you want in the future.

Re:Quality / Bitrate..?

[riflemann]

Personally I'd rather see a "more legal" version of allofmp3.com...

But allofmp3.com is completely legal. They are doing nothing shady, legally, they are completely abiding by the law.

Oh you mean they don't comply with the laws of *your* country? Too bad. The US administration's references to them as illegal is absurd.

We might as well go around calling women drivers criminal too. After all, it's illegal for women to drive....well in some middle eastern countries anyway, but that doesn't matter, because Americans seem to believe that laws of one nation apply to others.

Wow

[styryx]

Like, I'm so touched. Thank you EMI! No really, that's so amazing. It more than makes up for the destruction of countless peoples lives and the endless misery you have caused! Way to go!

Re:Wow

[Lord_Slepnir]

endless misery you have caused

I know you're trying to make a point, but Celine Dion isn't quite THAT bad.

Re:Wow

[gemada]

yes she is

Um, it's *Relient K*...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about your musical tastes, but my local listenable station plays Relient K right along with all their other stuff. It's somewhat surreal to have a juxtaposition of Christan music, emo-alternative-rock, and songs missing half the lyrics due to FCC rules.

(It's a non-Clear-Channel "new rock" station -- alternativish, but toward the rock end, but not so far toward rock as to need the "big stupid idiot guy who acts like he's Howard Stern on a drug cocktail" DJ. Where did the "boorish dolt guy" meme come from, and can we Gitmo that exec?)

I Tunes and Zen

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy all of my online music from apple. I installed it after the airlines started to give away 10 free songs with every ticket. I burn it to a cd and then rip it for my zen.

Allofmp3.com

[mpapet]

This one will bite the dust as soon as the other cartel members get wind of it.

This is the same cartel convicted of fixing the price of CD's. This is the same cartel has the ability to maintain an artificially high $10-$18 per new CD. Look at the demise of allofmp3.com. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3.com_legality

The money to be made by eliminating your right to first sale is too powerful.

Balkanization of media download services clearly benefits the media cartels.

Consider this story another sad footnote in the history of your rights being taken away.

Re:Allofmp3.com

[testadicazzo]

I have 5 moderator points, and I was almost going to mod you up as insightful, since you are mostly correct. But I'm giving up my ability to mod this thread just to disagree with you on one point:

Consider this story another sad footnote in the history of your rights being taken away.

Look man, defeatism helps not at all. Cynicism is okay, but rally people to be active about something. Defeatism just helps the enemy.

I know, there's a hell of a lot of bad news out there, and it gets discouraging. But think for a moment about all of the positive social and economic changes that have occured in the U.S. within one human lifetime (let's say the last 75 years: there's people alive who remember that far back). If you're black your life is better than it would have been 1930-1960. if you're gay your life is better than it would have been pre 1990. If you're a single woman or a single mother, same thing goes. I can go on, but I hope you get my point.

All of these positive changes are the result of people working towards a goal in a determined way. Martin Luther King may be the guy we remembered, but all those faceless nobody's toiling in futility had just as much of an impact.

So don't consider them a sad footnote. Do what you can to make sure they don't become a sad footnote. Support them however you can!

Re:Allofmp3.com

[Lehk228]

Balkanization of formats benifits only one entity, and that is Apple

the recording industry has lower sales numbers and higher piracy, as do the artists
fans have a smaller selection of music AND hardware lock-in if they go with Apple
Retailers have to deal with angry customers when their new MP3 player won't play the songs they just bought

Re:Allofmp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, there's a hell of a lot of bad news out there, and it gets discouraging. But think for a moment about all of the positive social and economic changes that have occured in the U.S. within one human lifetime (let's say the last 75 years: there's people alive who remember that far back). If you're black your life is better than it would have been 1930-1960. if you're gay your life is better than it would have been pre 1990. If you're a single woman or a single mother, same thing goes. I can go on, but I hope you get my point.

On the other hand, if you're a white male it's been a downhill slide all the way. And if you complain about it, you get told that your current concerns are nothing compared to civil rights struggles, or the problems of gays, or whatever, so STFU. Defeatism is perfectly justified.

Which song?

[whoami-ky]

OK. I am willing to spend $0.99 on a DRM free song by Norah Jones just to "cast my vote" that I am willing to buy DRM-free music. Could someone please tell me which song it is? I can't seem to find that information anywhere.

Re:Which song?

[Aladrin]

Ditto that. I've been unable to find hide nor hair of such a beast on Yahoo Music, though. I see where I can be forced to download their proprietary player and buy music through it, but I refuse to do that, even if the end result is an MP3.

Re:Which song?

[dlim]

The Norah Jones song is "Thinking About You" from the new album "Not Too Late" due January 30th, 2007 and it's nearly impossible to find on Yahoo Music's site. It's a 192 Kbps mp3. Here's a direct link to the promo landing page (don't ask my why it's at "amplified.com"):

http://www.amplified.com/thinkingaboutyou

Oh yeah, FF users, ignore the message about "No Windows Media Player". You don't need it. Just click OK.

Re:Which song?

[whoami-ky]

Thanks. I found it. If you want to start at the Yahoo site, the link is http://music.yahoo.com/promos/norahjonesmp3/. By the way, I did purchase the song. It's not too bad. I just wanted to let them (RIAA, EMI, etc.) that I'm willing to pay for non-DRM'd music.

Re:Which song?

[Lachryma]

Yes, this is exactly the problem I ran into. "Download our Windows software and use it to make purchases for DRM-free MP3s!" What a great idea, Yahoo! How could that possibly not work?

Re:Which song?

[mqduck]

But don't forget that you're also "casting your vote" for Norah Jones.

Re:Which song?

[Xemu]

I thought the idea of voting with my wallet and purchasing the DRM-free mp3 was a good one, but when following the link I got

Sorry, this page is not available in your country

Credit cards have worked online for just about anything else for the last decade. Well, I am sure looking forward to the day our overlords in the music industry cast away the shackles of national borders.

Declining sales for 2nd & 3rd quarters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this perhaps because of the surge in online music purchases that will follow millions of people around the world getting music players for Christmas? It seems that 1st quarter sales would be higher for this reason.

Did CD sales have a similar trend in the 90s when they were still becoming dominant?

They want access to the iPod Market

[matthaak]

I don't think this story is really very much about the record industry starting to recognize consumer frustration and so on. They simply want to distribute digital music through channels other than iTMS and still maintain access to the iPod market, which is enormous. This is the sensible explanation put forth by the WSJ (although they speculate consumer demand is a driver as well): In a Turnabout, Record Industry Releases MP3s

From the article: Blue Note and other music companies are beginning to think they will have to sell some MP3-formatted music both to satisfy customer demand and to provide access to Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod for songs that are sold by online stores other than Apple's iTunes Store.

Re:They want access to the iPod Market

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I think that'd be an interesting maneuver by the record industry. Presumably they're sick of Apple dictating pricing to them, since Apple's iPod more or less owns the mp3-player market and iTMS is currently the only way to get DRM'ed music on an iPod. They're probably hoping that when they DON'T need iTMS anymore (because people can download mp3s to their iPod), Apple won't be in a position to boss them around anymore.

The fun part of this is that it can only benefit consumers. It's not like people are buying iPods because iTMS has a stranglehold on the online music market; it's the other way around (people are using iTMS because it works with their iPods). Even if this move "kills" iTMS, it won't do much at all to hurt iPod sales. So for the foreseeable future, the RIAA has to either accept Apple's relatively low and equitable track pricing or else peddle their music DRM-free. Sounds good to me!

this is crap

[yagu]

This is PR crap, and Yahoo along with EMI don't deserve the light of day for exposure about this stunt.

I went to the yahoo music web site, and nowhere on "page one" is there a hint about selling mp3s.

So, yahoo and EMI skate by getting a publicity tour out of this while not even really brushing up against what non-DRM music is all about? (I remember the last unencumbered debacle, they were selling a Jessica Simpson track, and they would customized the track to put your name in the song.... Sheesh)

I really wish these people would go away with their stunts or be ignored (I know, I'm not ignoring, huh?).

Re:this is crap

[zolaris]

While I don't disagree that this may be a publicity stunt, which "page one" are you looking at. At http://music.yahoo.com I see a link at the bottom to "Relient K's new MP3 single with bonus track!" . I think that qualifies as information on page one.

Re:this is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't have that the first time I visited "page one", but a refresh did show it.... However, I still hold if this were news it'd be more up front and center. (Considering even after seeing the Relient K reference there are no other references to the Nora Jones tracks...)

-Regards, yagu

Re:this is crap

[dlim]

I got the link for the Norah Jones one from a Google Cache of the yahoo music homepage.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Ijy8eya6sIkJ:m usic.yahoo.com/+yahoo+norah+jones+%22thinking+abou t+you%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a

Ultimately it takes you to

http://www.amplified.com/thinkingaboutyou

I guess they hid the link before the press release.

Re:this is crap

[terevos]

Mod Parent up. This is the correct link for the Relient K download. That info should've been in the slashdot article.

My favourite non-DRM MP3 source...

[leoc]

http://www.Zunior.com

I'm not affiliated, other than being a very happy customer.

Re:My favourite non-DRM MP3 source...

[socalian45678]

...and another: Calabash Music

Re:My favourite non-DRM MP3 source...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also DRM-Free and great! http://www.emusic.com/

No such signs

[CODiNE]

There are signs that consumers might be growing irritated by the Balkanization of the online music scene. Nielsen SoundScan reports that online music sales dropped during the second and third quarters of the year.

This bit of misinformation has been getting around lately, actually they claimed the same thing last year. Perhaps they're hoping that if they say it enough it will become true? (Paging Godwin)

Look 4Q is always the highest, think Thanksgiving and Christmas... followed by 1Q, think people using their iTunes gift cards or trying out the iTunes Store now that hey have a new iPod. I'm sure practically every consumer goods business has a similar sales graph where things drop off after Xmas. It's just interesting to me that analysts are using this to predict the death of the iPod ... oooops, perhaps I've just hit the nail on the head there, the anti-Apple folks need something to predict for the next 20 years. :-)

Patent free?

[dmeranda]

DRM-free maybe, but still not patent-free. When they distribute them in a truely free format then I'll definitely be interested and will be willing to pay for that freedom. If it's not free then why should I pay for it? But even though it is still not free enough for me, it is a very good sign that perhaps some lone sole in the industry is having an ah-ha moment.

Re:Patent free?

[91degrees]

The problem is nobody's really interested in royalty free formats. mp3 licencing costs are low enough that this isn't a problem, and it's by far the most widely supported format, supported on almost everything. No free format comes anywhere near.

Re:Patent free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely.
I have never bought anything other than flac or ogg formats from allofmp3. And I haven't bought from anywhere else because they don't provide an option of those formats. Price is not an issue to me.

Re:Patent free?

[evilviper]

and [MP3 is] by far the most widely supported format, supported on almost everything. No free format comes anywhere near.

MP2, the predicessor to MP3, is superior to MP3 when you get to 160-192kbps, and any MP3 decoder inherent has to support MP2 decoding as well.

I've had no problems renaming mp2 files to .mp3, and having them play on every MP3 player I've tried. If there are any exceptions, and program than gives MP2 files an MP3 header could easily be written up, and I would suspect someone has likely done so already...

The model that would work for me.

[Maxo-Texas]

You sell me the MP3.

You record that you sold a license to me.

If I need it again in the future, you will allow me to get another copy of it for a nominal charge such as 10% of the original purchase price. This will be reasonably limited to one replacement copy per year. However, if I'm brought up on charges and have a copy of that version of the song in my possession, the license cover it and protect me from prosecution. I am not authorized to offer the song for upload but I can transfer my license to another person by paying you a reasonable transfer fee.

You may offer me upgraded versions but they will be at a discount reflecting that I already paid you for a license.

You may charge me a reasonable fee ($20 to $30) per year to keep records of and track my licenses.

You charge a reasonable price for the songs. Roughly 20% of minimum wage for new songs and 5% of minimum wage for songs older than 5 years.

Re:The model that would work for me.

[GigsVT]

There's no need for all that crap. Just sell the download for what it's worth, about 10 cents per song.

I don't have any problem buying music I've already bought over again on allofmp3. Hell sometimes it's easier to buy it again than to remember to burn a copy of it to listen to at work.

Re:The model that would work for me.

[freedom_india]

How about this way: You SELL me an MP3 for my usage as per existing First Sale Laws.
What i do with it, is my problem. Not Yours.
You can't control to whom i seel it to, or i delete it.
I can't ask you for another copy of the song if i delete it. Similarly, you can't prevent me from doing what i want with it except public broadcasting.
I can convert the MP3 to a Ringtone, change it, Karoake it, etc. But i can't plagarise it, just like i can't plagarise a paperback.

That's what allofmp3.com does.

RIAA may claim they are illegal, but allofmp3.com business model is without peer.

Re:The model that would work for me.

[tkrotchko]

In your plan, the record companies seem to be getting a lot more money for what I already have when I buy a CD.

I have to pay a yearly fee to have them acknowledge I own something.

I have to pay a fee to give my music to someone else.

I have to pay a fee if I want to download the song again.

Wouldn't it be simpler just to buy a CD? It's cheaper, and I don't need to pay some mega-opoly to acknowledge that I just paid some mega-oply.

I realize your heart's in the right place, but it seems we're doing an awful lot of work to make things "easier".

Re:The model that would work for me.

[Maxo-Texas]

And when you lose the songs (hard drive crash, CD goes bad, etc.) you are not going to have allofmp3 going forward.

It was nice - I used it- but it was driving through a loophole and it couldn't contribute as much for donations as the record companies.

Re:The model that would work for me.

[GigsVT]

What?

Unless they change Russian law to make it illegal, which hasn't happened yet, it'll be there. As it stands right now, it's 100% legal.

Besides, my point is the labels need to emulate allofmp3, sell the tracks cheap and sell a lot more of them, DRM free. Then people won't mind buying the same stuff over and over if their hard disk crashes or whatever.

Exepecting a little more

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I am simply underwhelmed by the effort, 3 fuggin songs, c'mon! I've always thought that they had a reason other that piracy for DRM, like trying to protect their business models. No self respecting scene group would be caught dead using those releases and for anyone who does want to pirate something, there isn't exactly a dearth of bittorrent links to choose from, not even for flac versions. I've always thought DRM was stupid due to the fact that CDs have easily defeatable DRM making the whole thing utterly pointless, unless of course they are trying to protect an obsolete business model... 3 songs, what a grand expiremint. Seriously, anyone willing to pay for mp3s likely wouldn't copy em, because if they had wanted to, they would have just waited for a crappily encoded(Those mother frackers need to update their copies of lame.exe, btw :/ L.A.M.E. 3.98a7 http://rarewares.org/ FTW) scene release to show up in the waters.

Fp fagOrz

[Anonymous Coward]

RAM) for about 20 The project faces, anD the bottom

Zune

[fermion]

I wonder if the release of the Zune has anything to do with this. With MS turning it's back on play for sure, the DRM format war has pretty much fizzled. There is the Apple option, with the iPod, and then there are a few other DRM options that might eventually share 25% or so of the music. So how do you sell music, and not piss off customers who want to play it on their chosen device. Fairplay won't work on a zune, but an unencumbered MP3 will. it will also play on the iPod. And you don't have to be a slave to the Apple pricing scheme.

It could be that MS did us a favor by abandoning play for sure.

Digital music sales falling?

[punkr0x]

I don't understand the spin they're putting on this. According to the graph in TFA, sales dipped slightly in Q3 of last year, then skyrocketed through Q4-Q1 of this year. Through Q2-3 of this year, sales have stayed steady, but still WELL above last year's sales. If they jump again in Q4 and next year, they're growing at a ridiculous rate. I think the article is bending the numbers just a little bit when they say digital song sales are stalled for the first time since the ITMS launched.

Exactly!

[Luscious868]

As much as I hate the RIAA (and the tracks in question), I'll be buying these tracks and encouraging everyone I know to buy them as well! I'll probably even send an e-mail to Yahoo customer service and to the label as well thanking them. The bottom line is that we need to reward those labels that will release DRM free music to try and send them the message that we want DRM free music. Vote with your dollars on this one. If there is success here they might try it with other tracks.

itunes

[javilon]

They are doing this out of desperation. Now that digital downloads are catching up, they have lost their power over the sales channel. They have to talk to apple as equals and cant impose their tiered pricing schemes to them. They have lost control.

The ipod is more and more entrenched in popular culture every day. They are trying to break apples grip on this market with the zune, but its not working.

So if they cant control the DRM used, they don't want anyone else having this kind of control. They know that the one controlling DRM will be the one controlling all of the market.

Seriously, though...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, though, isn't it interesting that it's the Christian bands who are apparently the most forward-thinking about copyright?

Perhaps because they value sharing?

No, not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Remember six years ago when CDs were $20 and online tracks were $3 and hard to come by?"

No, not really. I mean, unless you shopped at Virgin. But I never remember online music selling for $3. Do you have a link or something?

CD prices have remained pretty constant at $13-18 for about 10 years now. I'm sure that makes record company exec nuts.

Re:No, not really.

[TaoPhoenix]

I concur with $13-19 range for CD's for even longer, say 15 years or more. And at that range, to borrow a wrestling phrase, "It was too expensive then, it's too expensive now, and that price will be too expensive forever".

$0.99 has been the dominant price for some 5 years now, and guess what? "It was too expensive then, it's too expensive now, and that price will be too expensive forever".

We all know it's not the artists getting all that money. So some nervy break-away company with deep pockets needs to start a serious price war and make it stick. As *demonstrated by P2P*, consumers are in fact profoundly sensitive to price and/or lack of DRM.

I helped negotiate a deal at my local Radio Shack for a 2 Gig 3rd party player and 50 eMusic songs for $80. As soon as I work out the mechanics, I plan to make a large purchase to send a "message that counts". Even before this discount, eMusic songs are about 48 cents each.

I have roughly determined that 25 cents per song would enable me to make large scale music purchases. Online ISP pricing was similarly priced through the stratosphere about 15 years ago, and that market crashed hard once the armor cracked. Music will be the same.

Re:No, not really.

[shark72]

Kudos to you for supporting emusic. They've seen some success lately and I'd really like to see them do better, so they can convince more artists and labels to get on board.

Your "then / now / forever" observation applies to countless products in my world. I will never buy an SUV that costs more than $40K; nor will I buy a Hugo Boss suit (not than I'm against nice suits; I simply prefer Armani), nor an HP computer, and I will not even buy breakfast cereal -- all for the reasons you mentioned. Yet all of those industries are doing just fine. They simply don't see me as a customer. Same thing with the record industry -- there will always be folks who would never buy a CD for $15 or a track for $0.99. I think that the record industry is fine with letting folks like you go, just as the luxury SUV and breakfast cereal markets are presumably OK with me not being in their base of prospective customers.

Re:No, not really.

[hobo sapiens]

I have been using eMusic for a while now. They are pretty good, and getting more and more stuff all the time. Still a lot of crap on there, though, but of course that it entirely subjective. But they recently raised prices, or at least effectively did so by decreasing the number of downloads per month but kept the prices the same for the packages. Instead of 40 songs, I get 30 for the same price. Not a huge problem, since its still relatively cheap, but I wonder... are they caving to pressure from the music industry, or are they are building a war chest to snag some deals with major labels? I hope its the latter scenario.

Wish-Fulfilment Fantasy. Again.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are signs that consumers might be growing irritated...

Where? On Slashdot? Wow.

The vast majority of Consumers©® don't know what DRM is, don't know how it works, and don't care. They'll keep handing over the cash without thinking about it, no matter what.

Oooo, I'm soooo afraid of DRM!

[sco_robinso]

For just about every music service out there, 5 minutes on google will show you precisely and easily how to strip the DRM off the music and convert the song into a regular MP3. I pity the people who download lots of music and keep it in the native DRM format (M4A for example).

Just strip the DRM off, convert it into a regular MP3, and be done with it. No biggy for now.

Re:Oooo, I'm soooo afraid of DRM!

[nick.ian.k]

For just about every music service out there, 5 minutes on google will show you precisely and easily how to strip the DRM off the music and convert the song into a regular MP3.

Say, that sounds familiar. Whaddya figure the TCO of music bought at those "convenient" online music stores comes out to?

Re:Oooo, I'm soooo afraid of DRM!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's illegal to that.

Re:Oooo, I'm soooo afraid of DRM!

[sco_robinso]

TCO, hmm probably not much more than the song itself. Seeing as the best anti-DRM software is free, it's really only a few minutes of your time on top of downloading the song. Im not going to factor a few minutes of time into it, because them to be fair and do a true TCO, you'd have to factor in hundreds of other things.

Although DRM is a pain in the ass, at this point it's not too troublesome in all reality. I would conclude that about 95% of users either dont even know what DRM is, and therefore it's probably not affecting them, or people are just finding some way around it. So currently, I just can't buy into the argument that DRM is such a big deal.

As long as an inherently non-DRM format (MP3) is dominant, I wont be worrying. It's been almost 10 years now since MP3 went mainstream and took off, and to this day, the RIAA types still have virtually no real control over digitized music. Anyone out there who wants non-DRM music can get it easily. The iTunes/iPod system prevents the casual ID10T from copying, but who are we kidding, the real security behind the 'i' music world is a joke.

I think that's all the control the industry will ever have, control over the ID10T masses who dont know how to turn on hidden files/folders and dont now how to put 'Convert M4A into MP3' into google.

Re:Oooo, I'm soooo afraid of DRM!

[nick.ian.k]

Although DRM is a pain in the ass, at this point it's not too troublesome in all reality. I would conclude that about 95% of users either dont even know what DRM is, and therefore it's probably not affecting them, or people are just finding some way around it. So currently, I just can't buy into the argument that DRM is such a big deal.

But it's a pain in the ass; you just said so yourself!

Even if you don't disagree with DRM as a matter of principal, there are plenty of instances where you either have to commit time and effort towards finding a work-around, or you simply give up and don't get to do what you want/need to with that for which you've already paid. In the former case, it's even worse, because DRM technologies are often revised, which means the old work-arounds no longer work, which means staying abreast of both DRM technology and circumvention, *plus* the fact that, technically, what you're doing is illegal in many places and could get you into loads of trouble. If and when it comes down to getting prosecuted for your crime, you're facing numerous penalties (fines, incarceration, and so on) if you admit your guilt or, if you decide to fight it, extensive legal fees + the potential of penalties if your defense botches it.

Yeah, maybe all of that can't be measured accurately without context, but that's the nature of TCO studies, and why I mentioned the idea in the first place. I'm not suggesting that a real TCO study would be worthwhile -most of the ones I've seen that cite specific figures don't hold up well under close analysis- but rather that the general approach is a damn fine way to talk about what DRM is already accomplishing short-term: lots of needless hassle for ordinary people who otherwise would probably not be considered criminals.

Re:Valid Criticism

[mpapet]

You caught me doing something I particulary despise when I see it in others.

Thanks!

$5 works

[weston]

Today, new CD releases are south of $15 and selection of online music is plentiful at $0.99 and below. Yet this price is still not "fair." For many people, it never will be.

Maybe for some people. But for "many" people, $5 seems to be a good target.

I've made/sold compilation CDs with a bunch of local musicians, almost all of us (with one or two exceptions) with only small followings. The idea was to cross-pollinate our audiences, really, but we were going to do our best to sell as many CDs to whoever would buy them at the summer festival where we were all performing and promoting the discs.

$15? Even the fans of some of the artists on the CD were slow to buy.
$10? Fans were likely to buy, but the average passerby would pretty
$5? They *sold*. Almost all of 'em. Many to people who'd never heard a single artist on the compilation before.

We repeated this experience over a few years. $5 is the magic number. We've been able to sell some discs for more as we acquired a rep, but strangers buy at $5.

I seem to recall an NYC street musician doing a similar experiment and coming up with the same number. Wish I could come up with a link.

As for individual tracks online, I don't have similar experience trying to sell, but as a buyer, I can tell you that at the prices AllOfMP3.com sells at (about $.10-$.15 per track the way I encode), I've found that I don't even think about the cost. If I want to listen to something I don't already have handy, I'll buy it. In some cases, I have even just bought songs I *already own* but don't want to bother looking for the CD. The cost of downloading is practically negligible and it's a very low-hassle experience. I'd probably continue to think that way up to a quarter per track.

This isn't to say I *won't* buy music online at higher prices. I've shopped the iTunes store regularly and have bought a good chunk of music there. I'd probably never buy stuff on a whim there that I've bought at AllOfMP3.com (say, the "Flash Gordon" soundtrack by Queen), but I'm willing to buy some material I really like there, even with the DRM encumbrance, which is a hassle when it comes time to switch systems or share with friends.

Re:$5 works

[metamatic]

I find your comments interesting, as your figures match my own preferences exactly.

If I see a CD from a band I know I like at $10, I'll buy it. At $15+, I'll wait until the price drops to around $10 ($12 with postage), unless I know it's truly exceptional.

A CD at $5 I'll try even if I'm unsure I'll like it.

Re:$5 works

[shark72]

That's some really interesting data, thanks. I think I'd fall into that group as well... if I were at a festival and I saw a CD of local bands with which I was not familiar, I might pop at $5, but no higher.

But the counterpoint is that the market as a whole isn't unknown local bands sold at festivals. Stuff by artists you know and respect is more desirable; while $5 is my top end for a compilation of unknown artists, I'll pay $10 for the next album by one of my favorite bands. In short, "$5 is the right price for compilations of unknown local bands" != "$5 is the right price for mainstream music."... although you probably weren't trying to stretch that point.

If the music market had unit elasticity (where demand scales 1:1 with price), then it would be just so easy: the record companies could just lower their prices to $0.25 per track and make 4X the number of sales (although their net profit would go down, due to some fixed costs that would not drop by 75% if the retail price did). But unit elasticity is all but unknown in the real world, and the record companies don't have much room to experiment: Warner Music posted their numbers last month, and they made something like 1% net profit over the year. I can understand if they're gunshy about experimenting below $0.99.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucifer experiments with Holy Water

Norah Jones song

[Anonymous Coward]

I applaud Norah Jones for making the song available on Yahoo.

BTW there are some really nice photos of her on the Yahoo web site.

I have a question, though - If I enjoy thinking on her being impaled on my penis, does it make me a plumper-lover? Some photos of her are quite nice, but the others make her seem a bit chunkety. And I really don't like the one where she is wearing glasses.

Ciao

I'm not paying a subscription

[Anonymous Coward]

"You may charge me a reasonable fee ($20 to $30) per year to keep records of and track my licenses"

I'm not paying a subscription. Period, it's just music.

I just want you to sell me the stuff I want for a price I'll tolerate, no different from any other market. Quit all that shit with the 'we'll sort of sell you the right to play it perhaps', quit all that 'you can only play it on devices that support Plays Maybe v2.33'.

What the fuck is there problem? Did they forget salesmanship 101?

This, finally sounds like they're wising up to the market they're missing out on.

Buy some just to help their "experiment"

[Chris Daniel]

I'm seriously considering buying some of this DRM-free music -- I normally stay away from major labels -- just to help their little experiment be successful. Maybe if this is a success, media companies will at long last make the realisation that DRM only hurts their customers, and thereby their profits. Some artists on major labels are actually good; buy some of this, even if it's just a couple songs.

Re:Buy some just to help their "experiment"

[NorbrookC]

just to help their little experiment be successful.

Exactly! While it's fashionable to bash the recording companies, sometimes it helps to encourage them when they're making a positive step. So far I've seen complaints about the artists chosen, the assumed recording quality of the mp3's, demands for different formats, moans about the price, and demonization of the company and industry in general. All the usual responses I see every time here on Slashdot when DRM and media gets mentioned.

I don't like DRM'd music, e-books, or software. Fine, so when I get a chance to purchase them without DRM, I do. I use my consumer dollars to reward those who make it easy on me, who don't put enormous restrictions on what I can do with my purchases, and who charge a fair price. These are businesses, and the one rule they all follow is "money talks." This is an experiment, and if you want them to move more to where you want them, ranting and raving isn't working - financial incentives do.

Re:Buy some just to help their "experiment"

[robogun]

I had the same thought, but the Yahoo Music Unlimited site makes Firefox blow up. Looking thru their Faq they mention Firefox for Windows is not supported (obviously), furthermore the tunes won't play on Ipods. Even though I use something else (Rio if you have to know) there is no way in hell a music service that doesn't support ipods is going to make it.

Re:Buy some just to help their "experiment"

[Chris Daniel]

http://music.yahoo.com/promos/norahjonesmp3/ Worked for me. I did end up buying the track.

Re:Buy some just to help their "experiment"

[robogun]

I tried to sign up thru their front page & firefox can't follow the links, at least my install won't.

I'm sure the non-DRM tracks will load on an ipod, but the rest of the catalog won't. But I suppose it is a step in the right direction, it had to be if I actually had my credit card out.

Not Easy to Find, Not Easy To Buy, but I did it.

[weston]

So, yeah, I searched Yahoo's site, and pretty much think the article is wrong. Yahoo Music is not selling this track as an MP3 (alternatively, their peanut butter may be spread so thin they're simply unable to actually execute the policy of selling it, even though they've decided they're selling it).

But this "amplified.com" site is in fact selling it. However, I've never heard of them before, and like a lot of other online retailers who I've never purchased from, I'm reluctant to hand over my credit card number. So I decided to use a feature my credit card offers called "ShopSafe", which lets you generate temporary numbers with a given limit and expiration date.

I decided to use a temporary number I created two weeks ago that had one dollar left on the account. The purchase came back "declined due to insufficient funds". Odd, given that the track was supposed to be $.99, and there's a dollar left on the limit.

OK, I decided to create a new number, just in case the old one was the problem. Limit $1, expires 2/07.

Declined due to insufficient funds.

Well, maybe like many companies, they actually ding you for just a bit more for some reason. OK. I bumped the limit on the temp number up to $5.

Declined due to insufficient funds.

Suffice it to say that if this was just about purchasing the song, I would have given up by this point for certain. But I don't want some brain-damanged analyst who is unable to fathom the very idea of *ease of experience* to attribute the failure of this promo to piracy (or worse "people like DRM"), so in principle I want to support it.

$10 limit: declined due to insufficient funds.

I'm sorry? $10 in an account is not enough to purchase a $1 song? This must be the kind of Math that the analytically challenged record labels use to determine their loss figures.

I was finally able to buy when giving the card a limit of $25. For a $1 song. Not to mention 20 minutes of work.

It is an MP3, and it's not bad. For the song itself, it wouldn't be worth the hassle.

It's the Other Forms of Competition: PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS3 at $650 "represents" 65 ITunes Albums.
- Plus when you buy a PS3 you usually want at least 2 games: ~$150 dollars: 15 Albums.

Then there's the Wii( Weeeeee ).

This year is going to be bad for the music industry.

Not news...

[SomeOtherGuy]

I have been experimenting With DRM-free MP3's for years -- and they work
pretty good.

Forget Mp3, sell lossless and add value

[BlueCoder]

Music industry this is what you do.

Sell lossless files.

Add value. Remaster the music at 32 bit fidelity, 96khz and 5.1 or 7.1 tracks built in. And add lyrics and other meta data to the stream. You can't get that off a CD so it will become the new defacto standard.

Develop a new volume standard. Stop overdriving the signal and depleating the dynamic range to get volume. Instead develop volume level stats for meta data and require music players to adjust the volume of the song so that dynamic range is preserved.

Devolope a worldwide licence database service that allows people to buy the licences on perticular songs and resell and transfer them to others. Legal and voluntary.

Thoughts and Solutions

[Christopher_Edwardz]

The MP3 debate is near and dear to my heart and I've given it a lot of thought. So here is my 25 cents (inflation):

CD prices are not, as such, artificially inflated to an outrageous degree. However, they are IMO spending their money inefficiently.

A LOT of the money they collect for a CD has already been spent in marketing.

If we're going to point our fingers at them and say that they're bad people, we should do it because they're ramming (successfully) horrid music down people's throats.

If you listen to the music put out these days, you'd find that almost all of the songs from a given artist sound exactly alike. *cough* metalliwhiner *cough* or any of the other popular bands.

The reasoning behind this is simple: when mary-muffins goes to buy the latest CD, she is less than happy if all the music doesn't sound as good as the 1 or 2 tracks splattered across pay-for-playdio. (I don't like getting a CD for a single song and have the rest of the CD suck either.)

Mary-muffins would know good music if it hit her in the face, she is just never allowed to hear it. The current RIAA members are the gatekeepers. Remember (anyone?) mp3.com? I do.

I found over a dozen bands that never appear on the splaterworks. Small, little bands with unique sounds and really interesting songs.

CNET bought them and for some odd reason, destroyed the entire music catalog and the service. It no longer exists.

Song (as well as movie) piracy exists for a single reason, and it has little to do with money above a certain age: ease.

If I can download a song or 6, in mp3 or better, at an acceptable bitrate in which I can hear the songs before hand (lower bit rate is acceptable for that of course), and if it is as easy as getting songs from bittorrent or whatever (click and go), then I'd buy.

Otherwise, if I can get superior service, packaging, delivery, and ease of use for free... why wouldn't I?

(Spare me the legal or moral argument. I consider the RIAA to be far more reprehensible than someone infringing on their copyrights. I consider them to have sleazed their way into many of the copyrights they own in the first place. I cite http://www.jdray.com/Daviews/courtney.html/ as Courtney Love's take on the music industry and http://negativland.com/albini.html/ as Steve Albini (producer of Nirvana's "In Utero".)

Knowing that the music industry spends a LOT of money on promotion, and that live events and selling goodies (like t-shirts and whatnot) make the bands more money and promote at the same time (assuming people want to see them, unlike the ditzy shizz (those idiotic morons that maligned their country and alienated their entire clientele then wondered what the hell happened)), the music industry simply needs to change tactics.

They would earn (tons) of money, get to keep themselves as the gatekeepers, and take less risk in promotion if they followed this plan:

1. create a web portal and transfer their existing catalog of artists onto it. DRM free.
2. create a small cafeteria plan of offerings ($x for y songs per month, $x per song, and so forth). Create a merchandising link to sell the band's material goodies as well.
3. create a system for preview, band info, perhaps even music videos (streaming, if not download) to promote some hype.
4. DO NOT promote the artists via the normal very expensive channels. Do not pay radio stations to play the artists. Do not spend loads of cash to merchandise them.
5. As an effect of 4, the _patrons_ would then decide to which music to listen. Word of mouth, especially among the teen to college crowd, is the most effective advertising vehicle. You can't buy advertising as good as word of mouth.
6. Use intelligent linking with the bands. "You like x band? You'd probably like y band too. Click here to see."
7. Stick in advertise

Re:who pays that price

[Anonymous Coward]

i got any store and not one cd is less than 10$ and those are older not selling ones, i see new cds at 15 and up to as im sick to say once i saw one for 29.95
you need to see the math of how sick and greedy that is, so here we go again.
cd stomped cost .25 USD
artist at most:1.00 USD
labels etc :1.00 USD
marketing etc :1.00 USD
total :3.25 USD

at 15.00 - 3.25 =12.75 almost 400% markup
at 20$ - 3.25 = 16.75 almost 550% markup
that 30$ cd - 3.25 =26.75 almost 800% markup
so
lets apply this to your next carton of milk.
currently the avg markup on milk is avged about 30%
at 3$ a carton thats about 75cents
so lets say base price of 2$ on avg
now at 400% markup carton cost = base cost + markup ( 2+8=10$)
at 550% thats (2 + 11=13$)
at 800% thats (2+16= 18$)
now who hte heck will pay 10$ for a carton of milk let alone 18$
greedy my arse, the fact is that pirates have such nice ways to get stuff around they cant stop it nor will htey after all these same companies that are suing people also sell that internet access
yah know that adsl or cable for 50$ a month thats the tax right there. Thats the angle.
nothng is free, in fact i pay for everythign i download so piss off, the fact i have knowledge that allows it too me cheaper should impress you not anger you. that i have found a better way, you should invest in ISPS and make your revenues there, it is YOUR ONLY hope RIAA/MPAA

Ooops.

[jez9999]

"ERROR

Sorry, this page is not available in your country."

Looks like they REALLY don't want people buying that Norah Jones crap.

Apple doing us a favour

[skingers6894]

I've never considered this before but could Apple actually be doing us a favour by not licensing fairplay?

By not licensing fairplay the only way for others to get into sales for the somewhat successful(!) ipod is through DRMless format.

I'm sure this has been to the benefit of organisations like emusic which can and do sell unencumbered mp3s to ipod owners.

If the labels want to get into online sales directly the only realistic way to do it is via DRMless mp3 or aac.

Just a thought.

Obligatory Simpsons

[mjwx]

"Everyone knows the best bands are affiliated with Satan"

Re: Markets

[TaoPhoenix]

... Except the major players behind the SUV market... are not okay. Recent news is showing that they rode the easy cash vehicle (ECV) too long, and are getting crushed by vendors with more efficient SKU lines. As One Of Many to make a Borg joke, they are furious that I am not a customer.

Buy your Hugo Boss suit - just not at the usual Boss price. I very carefully set a distinction between the item, and the value *that particular sales outlet* chooses to sell it at. It simply becomes an art of getting the exact same value... for less with a variety of savvy tricks.

Cereal is doing "fine" for now ... but only because there's no crusade currently against cereal in some fashion. However, there are stores that also sell the exact same cereal, still fresh ... for less than the classical Manuf. Sugg. Retail.

My advice is to be *price sensitive*, not *time sensitive*. If you can wait long enough to use Wall Street's This Quarter Sales mentality against them, then you can often slice 10% or more off prices.

Re: Sturgeon's Law

[TaoPhoenix]

Popularlized by SF writer Theodore Sturgeon, there's large quantities of crap everywhere. Including RIAA labels. (All the more reason their pricing is silly.)

I have a blast picking stuff out of the dollar bins of used stores, ... because by the time the averages play out, I end up with 1 good CD per about $8 spent. The fun is, like testing music online, it's a group I physically could never have bought straight up - because I did not know they exist. The other day I 'set the bin a challenge'. 'Let's get a very strange yet smooth cd to read Dean Koontz novels by.' - And the Bin nailed it perfectly.

So yes there's some less than stellar stuff on eMusic ... and there's some incredible stuff. I have played the Fields of the Nephilim album for a week straight now.

It's the tech, stupid

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I could easily blame piracy on P2P software and fair use rights (which allow the copying of copyrighted content, thereby making it easier to pirate, etc, etc), but I'd just be modded -1 Troll.

Wake up. Price is justification to not buy into the market, not to pirate.

Re:RIAA Defence?

[MacWiz]

If a track from the Beatles, Zeppelin or Springsteen has exactly the same value as a tune from The Wiggles or Hannah Montana, then the whole space-time continuum is obviously unraveling, creating the vortex of death that's sucking the industry down the internet tubes.

Why Emusic is great

[rubies]

You're going to say "they have nothing I want" - until you open your ears in the same way you did when you were a teenager. There's little that's truly mainstream you'll find on your local radio (maybe Creedance) but as a way of finding new music it's cheap enough to just give things a go. If you're in your mid-late thirties and need an excuse to go back through music you missed in the early eighties, or music from now that you've been having trouble justifying based on cost, the tracks end up being less than 30c each. It's fabulous.

So now...

[antonyb]

The Devil may get all the best tunes, but they're DRMed

ant.

Re:Not Easy to Find, Not Easy To Buy, but I did it

[sowth]

The purchase came back "declined due to insufficient funds". Odd, given that the track was supposed to be $.99, and there's a dollar left on the limit. ... I was finally able to buy when giving the card a limit of $25.

Not odd at all. What about shipping? Don't you think $24.01 is reasonable for shipping a heavy MP3? Especially through high speed innernet pipes? Come on man, let's be fair! ;-)

So did they actually deduct $25 from your account? (What is up with that?)

No, it's not dead... Re: Allofmp3.com

[guardian-ct]

Allofmp3 is not dead yet. The site still exists, and I think (though I've not tried it) you can still download MP3s from it. It's amazing that the RIAA has somehow convinced people that AoMp3 is dead, when it's not.

I think

[ClioCJS]

I would like to repost your rant on my blog.

Re:I think

[Alsee]

I would like to repost your rant on my blog.

Rather than require you to wait life + 75 years, I think it would best promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts to release my Slashdot post CommentID 17154432 to the public domain. I hereby do so. Chuckle.

I welcome and encourage you to improve it in any way you see fit.

-

No Christian Jazz?

[Anonymous Coward]

"When the saints go marching in"...

Re:Not Easy to Find, Not Easy To Buy, but I did it

[weston]

The pending amount appears to be $20.99.

Sometimes pending charges are replaced with final charges; I'll be watching closely to see what they do.

Thank you.

[ClioCJS]

http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2006/12/11/all-hail- allofmp3com/

Re:Thank you.

[Alsee]

Cool. Though on re-reading my post on your site I can't help wishing you had cleaned up a few of my glaring typos in the process, Chuckle. I think I need to go look for a spellcheck plugin for Firefox.

-

Re:Thank you.

[ClioCJS]

it's consistant with the rest of my psotings on my sight :)