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Music Companies Mull Ditching DRM
PoliTech writes to mention an International Herald Tribue article that is reporting the unthinkable: Record companies are considering ditching DRM for their mp3 albums. For the first time, flagging sales of online music tracks are beginning to make the big recording companies consider the wisdom of selling music without 'rights management' technologies attached. The article notes that this is a step the recording industry vowed 'never to take'. From the article: "Most independent record labels already sell tracks digitally compressed in MP3 format, which can be downloaded, e-mailed or copied to computers, cellphones, portable music players and compact discs without limit. Partially, the independents see providing songs in MP3 as a way of generating publicity that could lead to future sales. Should one of the big four take that route, however, it would be a capitulation to the power of the Internet, which has destroyed their monopoly over the worldwide distribution of music in the past decade and allowed file-sharing to take its place."
Digital music sales are flagging? Looks to me like they're still growing.
What the linked article doesn't tell you is that they're counting all music sales - not just online store sales. Overall, music sales are still falling, and the increase in digital music sales isn't offsetting the collapse of CD sales. Record companies are looking for anyhting that will open the field up and get people to start spending money on any delivery format for music.
Of course, don't tell the astroturfers who write articles like this. You might bring them a little too close to reality.
Digital Music Sales Doubled in 2006
Digital Music sales to more than double in the next five years
\puts on tinfoil hat
Perhaps M$ want DRM to tie down the PC hardware market to The One OS. The whole: "its the content providers that made me do it", is just the PR department.
So it goes like this. In the future to buy something online your bank needs you to have a certified trusted computing OS. To get certified reqiures 50,000 US dollars, so there is no free certified version of linux that would work. Then the hardware won't even run a non certified OS because of the "dangers" of uncertified drivers and code running on the hardware. It will be call Genuine Lockin.
\takes of tinfoil hat
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Apple has been given permission by indie labels to sell their music without DRM, music said labels sell without DRM in places like eMusic.com. Apple refuses to sell unprotected AAC files, even at the request of copyright holders.
On a side note, it's not "their format". AAC was made by many of the same groups that put together MP3, and it's just as standard as MP3, but actually less patent-encumbered than MP3 (though still not patent-free), and with generally superior quality at the same bitrate. Apple's DRM is proprietary, but the AAC format is not.
And no, they won't switch. There's no compelling reason for Apple to move to MP3, and technically Apple would have to pay patent-holders to distribute MP3s. According to the wikipedia article, AAC doesn't require licensing fees to be paid to patent-holders for content distribution.
AAC or OGG please, but not MP3 - you need twice the bitrate for comparable quality :(
h tm
Can we please just put this myth to bed once and for all? I mean Christ, this test was posted right here on this site, years ago: http://www.listening-tests.info/mf-128-1/results.
Scroll to the bottom - the difference in quality is negligible at the same bit rate. It always has been (well, ever since LAME popped up). And given the tradeoff in convenience and industry support, I'd take mp3 any day of the week.
That sounds fishy. The MP3 decoding algorithm is specified to the bit level, within certain tolerances (according to Wikipedia). All of the audio tweaks are supposed to happen on the encoding side.
Eh, China's "average income" is a tricky thing to measure though. The vast throng of peasant farmers don't download digital music anyway because they don't have a computer. The moderized city dwellers however have the disposable income to spend on CDs/online music if they wanted to, but don't because pirated stuff is available everywhere and the legitimate stuff can be difficult to find. By offering people a way to buy stuff legitimately the labels aren't planning to wipe out piracy, but rather to actually make some money in a market where they've previously done almost nothing. You might say "but why would I buy something I can pirate for free?", but I'd point you to the iTunes Music Store and how much money it has made despite being in a very similar situation.
I read the internet for the articles.