Slashdot Mirror
EMI May Sell Entire Collection as DRM-less MP3s
BobbyJo writes "According to the Chicago Sun-Times, EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ... without Digital Rights Management protections. According to the article, several other major music companies have considered this same route, but none as far as EMI. The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes. Those competing retailers include RealNetworks Inc., eMusic.com, MusicNet Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. People familiar with the matter cautioned that EMI could still abandon the proposed strategy before implementing it. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as today.'"
Recently, I learned that EMI will be allowing music videos to stream freely to UK, German & French users through AOL.
Also--possibly in relation to this--EMI's top legal counsel, Charles Ashcroft, has stepped down after ten years with the company. There's been a lot of internal restructuring so I wonder if these no-DRM propositions are on the way in or on the way out.
From the article linked above, I'm assuming that those profits are primarily music based so what amount would you have to offer the world's largest independent music company to be able to release their MP3s without any form copy protection? It's difficult to consider anyone being able to afford this.
My work here is dung.
One of the big four has to be first. Maybe if one takes that big first step, the rest will realize the folly of DRM and follow.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Aim for a decent rate with a good encoder? lame with q=2, 256 kbit/sec joint stereo should be nice.
None of this q=uber_fast 64 kbit/sec stereo please.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This is a good first step. Now start selling the tracks without lossy compression! 99 cents per track for FLAC downloads and even *I* might be interested.
I have never bought online music simply for the DRM. If this is available (at a good bit rate)
and the price is fair, there are a lot of songs I've wanted to buy. I only liked one or two
songs from the album so I was never going to go buy the whole CD anyway.
You want my money? You sign up with eMusic and so will I. Deal?
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
"My father sold his entire music collection to the public in MP3 form without Digital Rights Management restrictions... ONCE."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I thought I heard someone say something about one of the music majors actually wanting my money. Well, you know, without tying me down with a bunch of crappy DRM. Which I can't use anyway since I'm dumb enough to be a Linux user.
I'm confused, and I think my wallet's a little frightened. I might actually be able to spend money on new music. How strange.
Cue the complaints about advocates of open source formats, but: As long as unencumbered MP3 is going to be used, why not use a format you don't have to pay to use? Ogg or Flac please. Although admittedly asking for full blown flac might be a bit scary to them, how bout some 160 or 192kps ogg files? I'd be totally groovy with that. It might force Apple to implement the fixed point Ogg decoder on their ipods, which would be great.
Maybe they should buy AllofMp3.com, because that store was/is rivalling iTunes in the UK and that is despite being it on an iffy legal basis and requiring giving your credit card details to a dodgy Russian outfit.
I know the common perception is that they shoveled product at dirt cheap prices, but the prices were not that cheap (albums cost around $3) and they were easily able to get the sale price EVEN THOUGH THE P2P NETWORKS HAD THE PRODUCT FOR FREE
Plus they were working on download managers etc. and have the experience of running a major store.
EMI could sell their own product through their own store (allofmp3 mk2) and make their own money and even sell it to iPod users.
For crying out loud! iTunes music purchase can be played on more than just Apple's iPods. I'm able to play them on (among my numerous Mac computers) my HP PC desktop (not made by Apple and not an iPod). I'm sure there are many people playing iTunes songs on a wide-variety of computers from various manufacturers as well as some people even playing them on cell phones (not made by Apple) that run iTunes. Is it really too much to ask for the media to try to remotely get their facts straight?
Now that I've been a pirate for more than a decade, I don't care anymore. I'm used to getting what I want, when I want, with very little effort and no restrictions on use. If you can compete with that, you still have to beat the price. Well, not beat the price perhaps, but anything higher than $0.1 per song is not even considered competitive, and that price keeps falling. Get to it, time is working against you.
EMI would sell music without DRM to compete with Apple (ITMS). Why would they do this? They have a workable deal with Apple, and if they believe the RIAA of which they are a member they need DRM to combat all of us fair use advocates (read dirty rotten pirates). Even if they did sell non DRM music. They would have to get others to do the same thing to really compete with the selection that ITMS has. And if they are not happy with the Apple deal that means they are planning on charging more for the music. Kow much more are you really planning on paying for non DRM music?
..."we really are good people".
Also, didn't Apple (Steve Jobs) say last week that they would sell music without DRM if the record companies would let them. Don't get me wrong, it is NOT in Apple's best interest to sell non DRM music from ITMS so I think Jobs statement was more of an excuse. finger pointing if you will. "We would do what you guys want if they would let us" sort of thing.
This whole conversation sounds like a marketing spin version of she said, she said. "We both have the best interests of the consumer in mind..." As long as we control the market. And as long as we can squeeze every penny out of each and every consumer. Then
What a load of crap.
How about making tracks available in FLAC or some other lossless format? Right now, I am not aware of any service anywhere that makes lossless tracks available at any price. If I can buy a cd for $10-15 brand new with art and liner notes, I should be able to buy an equivalent product online. To me, that means at the bare minimum lossless encoded tracks without DRM.
Oh, and by the way, how about giving me a discount on the albums while you're at it seeing as how there is virtually distribution cost (only bandwidth is the cost) and I'm not getting a physical product that will last for years if properly taken care of. That should also be worth a bit of a discount.
Why ONCE? Why not zero times, given the music is also on P2P for free?
If you're saying you sell 1 copy without DRM and thats it everyone copies it, well dude have you check out those shiny discs they call CDs? Have you noticed they don't contain DRM?
Also have you check out what the independants are doing, they're selling like ONCE per customer. WITHOUT THE DRM.
There WILL be an unlimited supply...
(goodbye A and M)
If the dam breaks for audio, I wonder what the long term prospects are for unencumbered DVD? Will we see the collapse of most DRMed media?
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
Not according to the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/business/media/
EMI, which releases music by artists including Coldplay and the Beatles, has discussed various proposals to sell unprotected files through an array of digital retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Real Networks and Yahoo, said the executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Don't be confused by the submitter's opinion. Moral reasons vs competition was mentioned nowhere in the linked Associated Press article...
In the manner of Steve Ballmer "FUD! FUD! FUD!"
iTunes was critical for iPod to become dominant and fend off challengers, but now that both iPod and iTunes dominate in media players and media downloads, iTunes is more of a limitation than a defense for iPod.
Apple will greatly benefit from the destruction of the iTunes "one price, everything DRM'ed" model for music. As Jobs pointed out in his essay, only a tiny fraction of music on iPods is bought from iTunes. If iPod is to continue to grow as fast as it is now, ripping CDs will become a bottleneck. A multi-supplier, competitively priced, flexible, compatible, user-friendly download business is needed for the media-player business to reach the next level of expansion.
What will prevent piracy? The same thing that made phone phreaking obsolete: Music, like long distance phone service, will become too cheap to steal. $0.10 to get a high quality digital recording vs. swapping sketchy rips with sketchy people - the choice is easy. The other side of the coin is that $0.10 is too little money to support the customer service required when people migrate a DRM'ed music collection from one computer to another or one player to another.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Thank you
lame --vbr-new -h --preset standard
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Because there is a reason why.
I see your point, but what about the economics of legal movie downloads? Business models for burn-to-DVD downloads are ramping up and those are much, much larger. A 4.7 GB DVD movie is equivalent to 87 of your 54 Meg FLAC tracks. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper these days anyway.
What is the per-track cost for compulsory licensed music in the US? About 6 cents (6.1c IIRC).
Compared with allofmp3's 5c per mp3 compressed download, there isn't much difference, is there. If you buy a FLAC recording, you pay more. Just because your artists' royalties arent being collected by his agent isn't allofmp3's fault.
The big step is dropping DRM, and MP3 is the best first step as it is the only one most people have heard of, and the one that will generate most publicity. Later, they can add support for other formats.
How about you just *continue* to release albums in the best digital sound quality possible (i.e. on CD) and just make the price of those a lot more reasonable?
Then all of us out here in Consumerland can rip the CDs to whatever format is appropriate to us and not go into fits of hysterical laughter when a Beatles album that was recorded 40 years ago appears in a shop with a £15+ price tag.
If people want the option of picking tracks from albums in a lossy format, then let them have it - but if theire lives are so damned hectic that they cannot find the time to listen to an album from start to finish, then they are not the true, CD-buying music enthusiasts anyway.
And if people start whining about "only 2 or 3 good tracks on an album" then suggest that they do a little more research into music and go find some better music.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"EMI would sell music without DRM to compete with Apple (ITMS). Why would they do this?"
Because iTunes is a flop. I know it doesn't seem like a flop, it's only clear it's a flop when you compare it to the potential market. They've sold less than 2 albums worth of music to each iPod MUSIC ENTHUSIAST (enthusiastic enough to buy an iPod but not the music?). Sure it looks successful next to Zune marketplace, where the DRM's so restrictive, it gets applied when you squirt your own works... but that just shows you that more DRM = fewer sales.
So what is holding people back from buying from iTunes? I can think of a 3 letter acronym that sums it up, DRM.
If you bought an iPod, and music from iTunes, and knew that forever and ever you would have to buy an iPod because the music you bought won't play on anything else, would you be happy to buy? It's not difficult to see why the iPod is a huge success, but iTunes relatively unsuccessful.
Oh I'm ok if it's your tax dollars- just as long as it's not mine.
No, actually, it was collapsing prices that ended widespread toll fraud.
When blue-boxing became obsolete, phreakers would hack into PBXs with out-dial capability, or they would hack into conference bridges with toll-free access. Toll fraud was alive and well into the mobile age when cell phones were being "cloned" to sell overseas calls on New York City street corners.
Now you can just Skype nanna back in the Olde Country. Toll fraud is like stealing pebbles off the beach.
So, toll fraud prevention technologies never prevented much toll fraud. Just like DRM is a waste of time and money.
Only a price collapse in digital media will make p2p swapping economically insignificant.
I wrote parts of this stuff
At Buy.com, your privacy is a top priority. Please read our privacy policy details.
...
...
Except as limited below, we reserve the right to use or disclose your personally identifiable information for business reasons in whatever manner desired.
An opt-out option is useless as the cat is out of the bag before delivery of goods and often the opt-out is broken or they opt you back in, or you don't know the extent of the abuse 'til later*. Many online stores essentially say, "We value your privacy... read on to see how we really don't and were just joking."
I know being AC and this is /. with its masturbatory hatred of ACs and DRM, but IMHO, this is a concern of equal if not more serious concern.
*I opted out of receiving a woodworking catalog after buying a $10 doodad. The online company had sent over a dozen catalogs based on one $10 purchase. After "opting out", I promptly received another half dozen catalogs from OTHER woodworking stores with whom I had never done business. That is how opt works. Fuck us? No, FUCK YOU!
First, before I buy download music, I want a clear, specific and binding assertion that what I buy remains mine. No more of the RIAA propaganda claiming that purchasers only buy the media and then "license" the music. Horse-hockey. If I give a distributor cash for a 45/LP/CD/Download then I have purchased it, all of it (media and music). I'll consider limited restrictions on reproduction, oriented toward commercial resale.
Second, under no circumstances will I purchase something that I can't:
- move to new media, as technology changes.
- put on my home server and listen to on any PC/Player on my network, WIFI included.
- put on media for my automobile CD player or standalone MP3 player.
I am firm in what I want. If they want my cash, meet my terms. Otherwise, I'll spend elsewhere.
Selling MP3 competes with only the iTunes Music Store. That would take some revenue from Apple, but they would continue doing just fine selling iPods. In fact, I bet a lot of folks would stick with iTMS anyway because it's easier to keep coordinated. Songs you buy through Apple are automatically added to your song library. The average consumer might not be up to the task of importing MP3s from some other service into their iTunes library.
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
I'd really like to get all those albums I always wanted, but my local CD store just never had. The only thing that stopped me was I'd have to get locked into a crappy DRM laden store to do it.
It won't be like when people bought CDs to replace Vinyl, it will be different, people will have access to a much wider catalogue, and they'll backfill their purchases with all those CDs that were never in the shops when they had the money to buy them.
EMI would sell music without DRM to compete with Apple (ITMS). Why would they do this?
Because they want to control the price. Specifically, they want to sell new "hot" tracks at $2.99 and older ones at around the current price. Apple is being mean and insisting $1 per song is enough.
Don't get me wrong, it is NOT in Apple's best interest to sell non DRM music from ITMS
How does Apple not benefit in every way from a huge surge in online sales that DRM free sales would bring? More music means more iPods. More music for people that have iPods means buying larger iPods (to a more limited extent). When Apple is making only a penny or two per song sold vs. a 30% margin on iPods, which do you think they'd rather sell a lot more of? Every iPod sold equates to the same profit as a few thousand songs!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He made a statement that Apple would sell music without DRM if the labels would let him and people accuse him of being a cheat, looking out for his own interests. How would selling DRM-free music benefit Apple at all? It wouldn't. It would level the playing field on both online stores and music players. Apple has about 70-75% of the market with DRM. How could they sustain this market with DRM-free music? I don't think they could. So for Jobs to say he wants to drop DRM is a big statement.
I hope EMI follows through on this. Without DRM, now we'll have real competition. Stores will differentiate on quality of music, artists available, and price. I think in the end, FLAC will become the format of choice so player compatibility won't be an issue at all.
And I still think Apple has something up its sleeve. Now that they've settled their feud with Apple Corp., they are free to enter the music business. At some point, they will have an agreement with a major artist to sell the artists music on iTunes without one of the Big 4 labels being involved. This could signal a major shift in artists way of thinking. Who needs a label if you can distribute your music through iTunes?
This will also start a new industry of marketing agencies whose primary business will be marketing recording artists. They will become the promoters instead of the record labels. In 10 years, the labels will either be transformed into promoters or be out of business.
I refuse to pay for lower-than-CD-quality tracks when I can get the CD quality track for nearly the same price. Digital delivery is cheaper than actually pressing, shipping, stocking, and eventually selling a CD, so FLAC tracks for $1.00 each should be quite profitable.
Buy.com started out as spammers; the first I ever heard of them was some spam. It's no surprise to hear that they haven't changed much.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Hello, A&M.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
All you people need to maybe STFU for a second. They're offering an inch and you're turning your noses up because you want a mile. I say take the inch, wait for the **AA to get comfortable with it, then ask for another inch. Or a foot. But just like moving a wheel, the hardest part by FAR is getting it from the standstill to being in motion. Let's just get that first, and -then- we can worry about setting the land speed record.
Unpleasantries.
While I'm really glad that some in the industry are beginning to realize that it might be smart to dump DRM, I'm a little disappointed to see that MP3 looks like it's going to be the format of choice. Newer formats, like AAC and hell even WMA, offer better sound quality at lower bit rates, and hence, filesizes. If iTMS started selling non-DRM AAC, you have to wonder whether the allegations of lock-in would really go down. AAC, although open, isn't widely supported on non iPod players, is it?
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
How many players out there will even support ogg vorbis files? Not many. Just about anything made by cowon does (I have a U3, that's why I bought it) but those are all I know. And they don't even support ogg ID3 tag browsing yet. How do you establish the demand for a file format?
EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ... without Digital Rights Management protections.
.mp3 files, but haven't they, since the beginning, sold their entire music collection to the public without Digital Rights Management?
take out the 45 second step that they're saving me by pre-converting the sounds in
All the EMI cd's i have are...
I think steve missed a critical moment in his letter. He should have pointed out with a LOT more punch that they are all ALREADY selling their ENTIRE music collections without DRM in physical stores... and that we're simply talking about making the same possible on online stores.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Consumers want convenient, cheap, quality music. Labels want money, but high cost, complexity/incompatibility of DRM, etc. angers consumers, driving them away from the labels and into filesharing.
Solution:
Labels should make two versions of each music track. One (really) low quality version, one high quality version. Take the low quality version and spread it all over the filesharing sites in multiple file sizes with multiple names (like "High Quality Version Guaranteed"). Maybe let it skip a beat here or there. The point is to flood the "free" market with a version of the song that is essentially only good enough to be an advertisement for the song. Now, take a high quality version of the song and sell it for download from walmart/amazon/iTunes, etc. for $.75 to $1.50 each (depending on demand).
Think about the consumer's options under this scenario:
1.) s/he can spend 4 or 5 hours downloading free copies of the song (and still never find a good version),
2.) s/he can get it from a friend, or
3.) s/he can buy it for less than a dollar within a few minutes.
Think about the implications:
Option 1: takes too long and isn't guaranteed, and record companies could continue their current lawsuits against websites sharing the high quality version (but the more anonymous the sites become, the easier the labels will be able to flood the sites with the low quality version).
Option 2: has been happening for a long time (mixed tapes), requires some technical skills many don't have or are too lazy to use, and is not worth preventing via DRM due to consumer backlash. I've never downloaded music b/c of fear of spyware, detest of advertizements, and ethical reasons. DRM tempts me though.
Option 3: So cheap it makes it worth it to the consumer, and importantly, the online sites could provide services that would make it more attractive, such as connecting with the band, finding out concert dates, similar music, etc. Can you immagine a facebook-iTunes type relationship?
Conclusion: The label executives need to take a vacation from their offices and find out what the consumers really want.
Prof.
P.S. The above idea is Copyrighted, Trademarked, Patented and protected using the latest DRM technology. Mod me up Scotty.
By eliminating DRM, all music suppliers whose primary revenue is a monthly subscription will have to change their business model. Napster, for example: They sell you all the music you can download and you pay a monthly fee. But as soon as you stop paying the fee, the DRM attached to your music prevents you from playing that music anymore. Thus, if music is sold without any DRM, then Napster and the like won't be able to offer a monthly subscription model. So the new choice in online music will be something like EMI music at iTunes with no DRM, or EMI music at Napster with an 'old fashioned' DRM and lower value to the consumer. Furthermore, since the lack of a DRM gives the music more value to the consumer, Apple might allow a higher per track price. This is something the big music companies have been shouting for. It might be used as a bargaining chip in Apple's next round of negotiations with the music companies.
EMI wants to release DRM free music and charge a premium for it. Now the consumer can decide between a DRMed track for $0.99 from iTunes or DRM free for $2.99 from the EMI store. Don't forget that EMI is one of the companies that is trying to pressure Apple into allowing flexible pricing on the iTunes store. This is what they mean by competing with the iTunes store.
He did exactly that:
To be honest, I love the new WMA DRM services out there that download as much as you want for $10/mo and have our time bombed songs. Because we can all easily rip out the drm with fairuse4WM and then we have them all to keep. They get to keep up the pretense of protecting their content and I'll gladly pay $10 a month (or unlimited free trials) because new content comes out all the time. Going to a system where we pay per song is going to be a financial step back for anyone with a brain and a victory for everyone who's too computer illiterate to strip the protection out. I mean finally we won't get arrested for downloading to your hearts content, because you downloaded them legally, you just stripped out the protection locally on your computer, meaning no one can find out unless you tell them. And no need to share the music with the community because they can all download their own and strip the DRM. So you people need to stop bitching and realize that music paradise is already here.
...why do we even still need record companies? When the only way to get your music out there was to mass-produce a physical product and then distribute and market it, yeah, it would have been virtually impossible for any band that didn't already have loads of money to survive. So, you get record companies. They distribute and market your songs, you go on making music, everybody gets paid. We're in the situation we're in now because artists couldn't survive without record companies, so the record companies made far too much money. But that's not true anymore. Now, I could easily make your music available to literally millions of people for a few thousand dollars a year. We don't need record companies to wise up and start selling music online - we need artists to kick the record companies to the curb and start doing their own digital distribution. If you get a million visitors a year, and half of them buy one song at $0.10, hey, you just made $50,000.00. Okay, so half those people thought you sucked. Whatever, the other half liked the song and downloaded a full album for say, $1.25. That's over three hundred thousand dollars that you can take straight to the bank, laughing at the record company that told you your demo sucked a couple years ago all the way. If even a tenth of your 1 million visitors like you enough to buy your album, you're walking away with more money than I make in a year. You know what? Who wants to start a band? Let's do it.
Of course, I'm now too old to appreciate the higher quality, so CDs are about as good as it gets for me ...
And yes, I have purchased entire albums (vinyl or otherwise) for one good track!
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
My first thought was:
- offer MP3s at 64Kbps
- profit!
- offer MP3s at 96Kbps
- profit!!
- offer MP3s at 128Kbps
- profit!!!
and at 160 and 192, and whatever other bit rates, profiting each time.And that's with a decent but not top encoder, like, say LAME version 3.90. Then they can do it all over again with LAME 3.96, LAME 3.97, and each time there's another tiny improvement in the encoder. And again, with Ogg Vorbis for each tiny improvement in that encoder. And do it again for whatever other audio formats are out there. Could even do it with FLAC. Sure, FLAC being lossless means can't offer all these different bit rates, but that doesn't mean FLAC can't be done over and over. Like, new FLAC audio with improved recording equipment that samples at higher rates! Or, improvements in FLAC could reduce the file size, and there'd be a great reason to release everything all over again.
Note to music execs reading this: I've just about stopped listening to music for two reasons. One is DRM, and of the incredible disregard of our rights and the insanity exemplified by the idiotic stunt Sony pulled with those root kits on their music CDs! The RIAA should have slugged Sony hard for that, but stupidly backed Sony instead. What part of "DRM can't work" can't you understand? I feel uncomfortable buying from paranoid morons who might cheat me, and even possibly come after me in court. You guys are like drug dealers who have the law in your pockets and who sell adulterated drugs and then beat up your customers (or have the cops do that dirty job for you) if they complain.
The other big reason it's because the stuff I like, I've heard over and over. I won't buy a pig in a poke. I won't spend lots of time sifting through crap to find the occasional song I like even when I can do so for free. There's still music I don't have and want, but often I can't find it because I know what it sounds like but do not know the name, artist, lyrics, and so on. If only I could hear those on the radio again I might be able to ID them, but I never do because the typical radio station sticks to such a small play set which of course doesn't include the songs I seek. In that case it's 100% certain I won't buy these mystery songs, because I can't. And the miniscule play set gets old, fast. I really want better new music. I think a big reason music sales go down with age is not because older people don't like music but because they've run out of quality music they haven't heard before.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Provide full quality WAVs or FLAK and I am there. Provide it at a reasonable price and they'll have 25 years worth of pent up music buying desire snatching up everything I always wanted. If they hit 50 cents a song or $5/album people will be stocking up on the full sets of all the artists they ever liked.
But until then, I'll stick to buying CDs from local & visiting bands with the occasional on-line purchase (or donation) of DRM free, full featured music.
Why is Apple the focus? Of the dollar Apple charges,the record companies make most of it. THey are only competing with themselves.
They could watermark files as part of the download process. Then they could track the origin.
This allows a fair amount of freedom while at the same time allowing the company to track down the pirates.
Why, and how? FLAC is a lossless codec (see the "L"). Lossless means that you can uncompress this file into the very wav file that is stored on a normal CD. Assuming you have a processor or chipset capable of performing this transform in realtime it cannot sound any worse than the equivalent CD since they contain the exact same information.
Isn't that the actual point of audiophiles ripping to lossless codecs? That you can get the exact original file back???
Good job mods.
the music industries sells mp3s without any restrictions BUT with signatures, so it is possible for the owner to show his ownership.
Middle schoolers can't get into the bars where independent bands perform live.
How can I not consume what is played inside almost every grocery store? How can my younger cousins not consume what is played on the radio on a school bus?
In the United States, "Internet service provider" refers specifically to the service of routing IPv4 packets between a customer's premises and the Internet. But in some countries, the phrase that translates literally as "Internet service provider" has a broader meaning: one who provides an Internet service. Baidu is such a provider in the latter sense.
You shouldn't know what label an artist is on? Music geeks would beg to differ. From Motown, to Atlantic or Stax, or Creation, or IRS, Matador or Bloodshot, labels were and are important as a guide to what to expect.
I suspect the indie revolution that's happening is what is really scaring EMI - if everybody who bought a Dixie Chicks record heard Neko Case, they wouldn't sell another record or download. In some ways I hope emusic is unsuccessful in obtaining EMI's catalog - all the EMI dross will make it that much harder to dig the gems out of emusic.
I agree, please mod parent clueless.
Why don't the record companies simply encrypt the mp3 files with the consumer's credit card number, and supply a decrypt-play-encrypt program for free? No consumer is going to give his / her credit card number away to others; thus end of "piracy"