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Sony and Universal Prohibit Sharing Via Zune
ack154 writes "Engadget has a story about Sony and Universal Music apparently denying Zune owners the ability to 'squirt' songs by certain artists to other Zune users. That's right, if you've actually purchased songs from the Zune marketplace and happen to run into another Zune owner, you're prohibited from sharing certain songs. From the article: 'In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.'"
I'm not. Saw this one coming when they announced the song sharing thing. I had hoped, however, that the giant music conglomerations would grow up and let it go through. Zune shared music can only be played a few times, so what's the harm in a little advertising?
Earbuds/headphones that automatically mute when someone other than their owner tries to listen to music with them?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Microsoft: Haha jackasses! The Xbox 360 is outselling the hell out of your overpriced console and there is nothing you can do about it!
Sony: O Rly? Squirt this bizitches.
Ahhh, the mysterious world of corporate interaction.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Zune terms of service:
==========
14. Content Usage Rules
All music you purchase or acquire on a subscription basis from the Zune Marketplace is subject to this agreement and any other applicable terms and conditions, including limitations imposed by the use of digital rights management (DRM) technology. Content may be used for personal, non-commercial use only.
14.1 Purchased Content Usage Rules. You are authorized to use the content that you purchased from the Zune Marketplace on up to five (5) total authorized computers.
You are entitled to burn purchased content, and playlists containing purchased content, to CD solely for personal, non-commercial use. There is no limit to the number of times you can burn an individual song; however, you may only burn the exact same playlist a maximum of seven (7) times.
==========
Microsoft won't even follow it's own legalese anymore. That's good to know. Well, hey, good news is, there are shitball lawyers out there that aren't on Microsoft's payroll, perhaps one will bless us with a class-action filing...
Well of course there is no warning that a song might be unsharable! If they warned you, you might not buy it.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
The term "squirt" was actually used long before Zune by wireless and satellite engineers. Sending a bit of data wirelessly to a satellite was termed "squirting". It did not come from MS marketing and nobody at MS really likes it either.
There, in order to simulate telephones, researchers had figured out how to digitize speech, squirt it into the computer, then turn the bits back into sound waves afterwards.
You only have so much radio capability (power for transmitters, sensitivity for receivers). You can cover the whole area in every direction from the airplane, or you can squirt it all in one direction.
Squirt the bird: To transmit a signal to a satellite.
Ok... you may or may not remember the following item from billboard magazine a few weeks ago:
s p?vnu_content_id=1003380831
http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.j
"Yesterday, Microsoft agreed to share revenue from Zune sales with record labels and artists. Forcing the issue was Universal Music Group, which at deadline is the only label named in the program. UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions.
"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. "So it's time to get paid for it."
When I saw the headlines on Engadget I thought for sure Universal wouldnt be one of the labels, after all Microsoft chose to pay them off causing good ol' Doug to say he's entitled to a chunk of iPod sales as well. This begs the question: what was the point of the payoff? What did it get them?
You can't wi-fi RIAA songs to each other, but if someone ever hacks the Zune, they'll sit there and infect each other, especially if everyone is close together at the stadium or something.
Its not as if Microsoft has a choice in this matter.
At the very least they could label songs that are restricted. At the very least. The fact that they don't label them as such, and now people can't share the songs as advertised is pretty bad. Of course, the record companies are just plain brain-dead to think they should restrict free advertisements of their music. From what I understand, the whole sharing process is designed to encourage users to buy the songs they borrow, once their limited-use period runs out.
Morons. All of them.
Sony and the other music companies haven't forced Microsoft to implement anything. Microsoft could have chosen to manufacture an MP3 player and set up a music store selling MP3s from more enlightened companies and artists. They could have created their own niche in the market and targeted those not well-served by Apple's lock-in model, while also selling music playable on iPod, the dominant player. Maybe it's a long shot. But then, going head-to-head with iPod looks like quite the long shot anyway. Forced? Microsoft's a big boy; I'm sure it can take responsibility for its actions.
The Zune has only been out for something like a month and people have just noticed this out now??
Just how unpopular is it?!?
I stole this Sig
You answered your own question! Precedent for forcing the same kind of "deal" on Apple is the payoff. Microsoft doesn't give a shit about the Zune; that's why it isn't a "PlaysForSure" device (and probably why it looks like a piece of shit too). It's greatest value to Microsoft is as a sabot -- a shoe to throw into Apple's works.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The grandparent was referring more to MS's long term behavior in relation to DRM than to the current situation.
But even in the immediate sense, MS might have benefitted from showing a bit of spine.
Basically, Microsoft has chosen to:
1) put in stupid DRM features,
2) *and* watch as people continue to buy iPods because when they buy something form iTunes they don't have to guess which of a handful of DRM policies dictates how they can use a particular song,
3) *and* continue to not sell their devices at all.
The whole point of Microsoft's tanking of Plays for Sure in favor of Zune was supposed to be a smooth consistent user experience. Giving half the Sony and Universal tracks you sell different restrictions than the others without telling the buyer is *not* smooth or consistent. They'd have been better off just skipping those tracks altogether if needs be.
That's basically what Apple has done in that kind of situation with Sony in Japan and Austrailia. If a label doesn't want to deal with your terms, just launch without them, and if you start making money they'll cave in eventually. Sacrificing usability for one label's whims is a loosing proposition in the long run; I would think that's especially true when you're trying to buy your way into the market, as Microsoft seems to be in this case.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I think they were aware of its limitations when they added the feature. In my opinion, it was never intended to be an actual useful feature. They just wanted WiFi as a bullet point on their features list, to differentiate their product from Apple's. Whether the feature actually did anything useful was an afterthought. That's why the WiFi was crippled from the start.
Reading this made me realize an implied feature of the iPhone - with an 802.11 connection and running OSX, this could essentially run iTunes. Well, when I open iTunes on my laptop on campus I see a dozen or so shared music lists on the network. If you want to share your music with the cute girl in the coffee shop it would be easy as pie with an iPhone - as long as you're on the same network. This scheme would work better than the Zune's squirt anyway. You can stream the music from someone else's machine as long as they are in range for as many times as you would like, and when you're no longer on the same network it goes away (iTunes doesn't allow you to copy the music over). Plus you get the added benefit of searching the other person's music list and you can share passively. The iPhone just might be a lot more social.
Matt Jubelirer (product manager of Zune) interview. See the funny CNN video as well, wherein a shuffle steals the show from the Zune.
I have a Zune. There, i'll admit it. I like it, too. The zune marketplace software can be a tad slow at time but the zune pass is the main reason to have one, if I could have bought it sans the player and used what I had before (and still have) I'd have done that. But okay, fine, they need a new player to expire the content, that's probably its main reason for existing and not being their previously endorsed "playsforsure".
Anyway, as I said the Zune pass is the main reason to have one, it lets you download whatever you want from the marketplace.
Now, odds are if you have a zune, you have the pass. Maybe not, but likely so.
So. If you meet another zune owner (and I'll admit this has never happened to me, and I live in one of the ten largest metro areas in the US), and you both have zune pass --- meaning whatever the song is, you could go home and download it and keep it on there for as long as you were a member (forget the 3 days 3 plays) --- you still can't zip it over there. Ridiculous. I guess you might as well just tell them the name of the song or artist.
The wifi feature of the device is pretty much a non-feature. The zune pass is really the only feature at this time. Something apple could easily implement, and hey, I hope they do at some point. But they'd probably have to pay through the nose after microsoft's deal for that. but that's neither here nor there.
Given the pass, the player is still worth it for me. They may update its firmware someday and add other stuff, but as I said, I mainly have this for the pass.
I actually keep the wifi turned on (sacrificing some battery) because on the zune boards I frequent (Zunerama) they kind of encourage everyone to do that in hopes paths might cross (on the boards this has resulted in exactly one reported encounter of people that didn't buy them together)...
Someone even went and made a way to chat with Zunes over wifi. How? Well, it lets you share photos. So he created a set of pictures with every letter of the alphabet, plus common phrases and emoticons. So you share photos in a certain order and your recipient can view the pictures to put together the message. A staggering amount of effort...
Anyway. Given that its Sony, and Sony and Microsoft are currently enemies on the gaming front, dunno if its somehow related. Sony doesn't allow sharing of music on PSPs, does it? I have a sony ericsson walkman phone which doesn't seem to have much in the way of DRM enforcement on it. It is supposed to have some kind of associated store from Cingular, but never got around to using it.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Make a device that allows limitless wireless sharing, plays every format it possibly can, with a rocking interface.
That is, how about making a product that's actually better than what the competition offers. It's just a small percentage that uses iTunes anyway, people rip from CDs, copy from friends or download.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
That's basically what Apple has done in that kind of situation with Sony in Japan and Austrailia. If a label doesn't want to deal with your terms, just launch without them, and if you start making money they'll cave in eventually. Sacrificing usability for one label's whims is a loosing proposition in the long run; I would think that's especially true when you're trying to buy your way into the market, as Microsoft seems to be in this case.
And if Microsoft was the only entity coming to the party, that strategy might work for them now too. But they're not. They're competing in an established market, where the market leader nets the vast majority of sales, and where the market leader has an established/loyal following.
I guarantee you if Sony and Universal music were not available in the Zune store, you'd be sitting here laughing at Microsoft because their music selection was non-existant. And you wouldn't buy one. And neither would anyone else.
So, they made a choice that sucks, but still puts them (worst case) at feature parity with the market leader. Scenario 1 is still FAR better than scenarios 2 and 3. In fact, you could even argue that the companies preventing their music from being shared will sell fewer songs than the companies that do, meaning that eventually they'll see all the money they're losing and ask to turn it on.
I'm not arguing that DRM doesn't stink, and they got a crapton of things wrong with the Zune. But regarding the DRM crap, everyone is throwing the wrong party under the bus. I guarantee you they didn't WANT to waste time, money, and effort putting this crap into a device.
Spend 5 minutes running through the various options in your head; consider the market environment, consider what (normal) people want, consider the demands of the music companies, consider what the law allows, and consider what kind of negotiating leverage you have available.
Your suggestions so far demonstrate a lack of understanding of the market environment and the kind of leverage Microsoft has available.
You just described the RIAA's wet dream -- an excuse to sue a company with $50B in the bank for copyright infringment.
Could you please be so kind as to provide a link to one of these? I've been looking for one, and I can't find a good one.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
To clarify, AoMP3 claims that it pays the artist a royalty. That statement alone makes it very unclear if royalties are distributed to all artists deserving royalties for a particular piece of music (songwriters, musicians paid via royalty.) Royalty distribution is almost never as simple as "100% of the artist royalty payments go to person X", and rules of distribution vary widely by country.
How does AoMP3 know how the artists with rights to a piece have decided to divide the royalties?
Nobody cares what it technically is or isn't, or what it is or isn't being marketed as. The only thing the record labels care about is what it does. If it's a mobile device that can transfer music wirelessly it'll probably be subject to the same restrictions as the Zune, and then some if Cingular see any (more) money to be made out of it.
There's no reason why the big 5 should have one set of rules for Apple and one for MS. The success of iTunes has nothing to do with it - Microsoft are clearly in this for the long term and only a fucking idiot would think otherwise - yet they're still getting screwed six ways from sunday. Why should Apple be treated any differently?
Japan, where Sony first balked at working with Apple, *was* an established market when Apple decided to launch without Sony. Almost everyone had a music-phone, and people in Japan actually *used them*, to the point that a lot of analysts thought the iPod was doomed in Japan even before they knew Sony was holding out. Apple still has only about half the market there, as opposed to ~80% in other areas, but they eventually got their songs, on nice consistent terms.
The fact is, people want a product they can at least pretend to understand, and *consistency* gives them that. The average person doesn't even use the online music store associated with their player, beyond perhaps buying a handful of songs to try it out; most people won't even notice if a store has 1 million songs rather than 1.3 million. It's just not nearly as big a deal as you're making it.
The loss of a few hundred thousand songs is a temporary hiccup that will eventually correct itself if the product is impressive enough in other terms (it isn't quite yet in this case imho, but MS has to address that problem anyway if they want to gain market share), the loss of consistency in what is allowed by DRM will mar the system permanently.
You say:
I guarantee you if Sony and Universal music were not available in the Zune store, you'd be sitting here laughing at Microsoft because their music selection was non-existant. And you wouldn't buy one. And neither would anyone else.
The thing is, I'm *already* not buying one, and neither is anyone else for the most part. MS needs to *improve* their products to change that, not cripple them further so they'll have access to more songs to fail to sell. If MS can make a system slick enough to beat the iPod at it's own game, signing on record labels will take care of itself; if they can't then no number of songs will gain them market share.
If MS is ever going to take market share from the iPod, which is clearly their goal, they need to build a consistent, easy to understand device with at least one major advantage over Apple's offerings to overcome people's general tendency to stick with what they know. Wireless could have been that advantage, but they lost their focus and DRMed it into uselessness, and now they're destroying their chance at consistency as well.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge