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Steve Jobs Announces (some) DRM-free iTunes
Fjan11 writes "Steve Jobs just announced that starting next month on you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs for $1.29. Upgrades to songs you've already bought will be available at the $0.30 price difference. Currently EMI is the only publisher participating, accounting for about 20% of the songs available." There's also reports from Reuters and ABC News. The deal excludes the Beatles. You can also read the official press release from Apple if you still think this a late joke; this story confirms earlier speculation.
If you were one of the thousands of bloggers/netcitizens demanding DRM free music, give yourself a hand. This is a win for us.
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
.. everyone who wanted DRM-free music put your money where your mouth is!
So you can pay more for the service that you should have had in the first place? What a bargain.
But to be fair a step in the right direction.
There's also an EMI Press Release.
Just like McDonalds you can Super size for $0.30 more that gives you more than you actually need to consume.
DRM is *very expensive to produce. There's the R&D costs, programming, buying up congresspeople. How is the DRM going to make a profit if their product's marginal utility (apparently) is -$.30?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
let them be a relic of the past, if they dont get along well with what the current day extensions if "68' revolution" that they have so happily joined, brings.
and again, kudos to emi, and steve jobs and apple crowd.
Read radical news here
The article forgets to mention that full albums will still be 9.99. So for album buyers, this is even better news.
I didn't see it mentioned in a brief look at the articles above, but albums will automatically be 256kbps and DRM free at the normal price. This should help encourage album sales. Ideally, they would offer the lower quality songs without DRM as well, but this is undoubtedly prevented by their current contracts with the other labels. Only by offering a new "product" were they able to remove the DRM. This is the same reason that they are unable to remove the DRM from songs released by indie labels that requested no DRM.
In May, go buy some of EMI's DRM-free catalog. Even better, when the indies get on board, go buy some of their stuff on MP3 as well. Encourage others to ask other labels for DRM-free music. With any luck the RIAA will realize that DRM != Sky falling over their heads.
Also, thanks to all the people and organisations who've worked tirelessly against DRM so far. DRM isn't just bad for customers (cf Stallman's Right-to-read), it's also bad for business. The software companies figured this out in the 1980s, lets hope RIAA (and then the MPAA) do too.
Go somewhere random
I hereby rescind my Apple-phobia. Jobs has achieved a BIG GOOD THING. /you'll still have to pry my iRiver out of my twitching, techno-spazzed fingers.
Good on ya, Steve!
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
No, it isn't what you're paying for at all. You are paying for a 256kbps file instead of a 128kbps one and the extra bandwidth and distribution costs associated with higher quality files.
So what exactly is their justification for leaving DRM on the $0.99 tracks? It can't be that they are afraid people will release them into the wild if the higher quality tracks are now DRM free, so why not remove it?
I don't think the Beatles or their heirs are doing anything radically different from the 60s, at least in terms of business. They are still charging for music.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
No, it doesn't. As others (who have read the article) said, the .30 price increase is due to the doubled bitrate. It might be a convenient cop-out, but it still doesn't give anyone the right to distribute the file.
Starmen.net
This is excellent news! I love that they are offering the option to upgrade any previously purchased songs to the 256 kbps DRM free version for 30 cents a track. I plan on upgrading all of my tracks as soon as they are available. While I think that $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release [apple.com]:
First, it's stupid to make it cost more. Second, I tried PureTracks for a while, and having DRM content mixed with non-drm content is a real pain if you are only looking for non-drm content. Finding the non-drm content can be a real pain. I've gone with eMusic for now for my download music needs. It's not the best, but I buy most of my music on CDs anyway.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Since the AAC files are DRM free, you can just transcode to MP3. And there are a number of players which can play AAC, including the recent Sony players. So this in no way keeps you locked into using the iPod only (a point Steve even touched on at the event, saying that Apple wasn't worried about it because they compete based on having the best platform, not based on having people locked into their products).
you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs
Because iTunes had DRM, and I don't do DRM, my choice of player did not include the iTunes format. Now that they don't have DRM, I still can't shop there. My player is MP3/non-DRM-WMA. I wonder how long it will be before they move to more popular formats.
I have a feeling that since AAC is a "Protected Patented" format, that P-P sites will be very closely watched for the sudden popularity of AAC files. A sudden rise in the format in P-P may be a good indicator of the amount of non-DRM loss to piracy. Do buying customers pirate? I would also be cautious. The file format may contain a watermark. If your copy is on the net, there could be problems. Keep your eyes open for watermarks or other embeded spying.
The truth shall set you free!
My current music collection is high quality MP3s (192-256Kbit) I've ripped myself which I listen to on Slimboxes connected to quality speakers.
I never bought any music from iTunes because:
- Apple's DRM protected files were too low quality for me to bother with (I would have to rip to CD then reencode to MP3 which usually meant hearable artifacts.)
- DRM meant that the music I bought would never be 100% protected from "upgrades" forced on me by the RIAA (much as Apple already reduced the number of authorized hosts).
- I've already bought the same album in 3 formats: Vinyl, Tape, & CD. I refuse to pay a fourth time unless I am sure that it would be the last time.
I'm not overenthused about the premium over itunes normal pricing, but there appears to be enough goodness in this announce to finally get me onboard.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Many portable players actually support AAC. The real problem is with GNU/Linux; AAC's patented, so there's no legal decoding free/open source decoding software. I already asked them to offer Ogg Vorbis. Either way, though, it's a lot better than DRM and I intend to partake..
The format is still locked to the Ipod, which is entirely the problem!
Ummm, no it's not. AAC is a fairly standard format (though not as ubiquitous as mp3). Many players out there will play non-DRM'd AAC files with no problem. The Zune comes to mind. Hell, my Samsung phone will play them. This is a good thing all around. And since album prices are staying the same, I can only view this as a good move.
This guy's the limit!
Are you sure? My PSP will play un-DRM'd AAC files as will the music player on my N800.
Yeeeha! Now, if only I knew who EMI was or listened to mainstream music anymore, then I might buy something! Maybe I'll buy a few songs even if I don't like them, just so I get a chance to vote with my dollars.
<pessimist>I wonder how long before someone spins this and says that the increased sales are due to customers demanding higher-quality files, and that the DRM didn't matter, so they can put the DRM back in and keep selling the songs at the same price.</pessimist>
Nope. Read the summary! You get higher quality sound too. 256kbps > 128kbps.
Man, say what you want about Steve Jobs. He's got a famous temper, he doesn't compromise, he likes closed systems, etc. and so on. But one thing he definitely has is balls, and sometimes we can benefit from it.
So, he apparently finally has convinced one label to drop the DRM, and yes, he's charging more for the content, but he goes and ups the bitrate, just so the content from the non-participating labels looks like shit in comparison. That takes some cojones, and I gotta say, I admire him for that. Could it possibly be that DRM will become one of those horrible memories from the past that we can all suppress? Time will tell, but at least today, I say this is relatively good news.
And, you know..."fuck the RIAA" goes without saying.
gameDB
now maybe you will announce an update to oh I don't know, the computers you sell? Seriously, it has been 5 months since Apple released anything new on the computer end. I could live without AppleTV, iPhone and iTunes, but I really want a new mac!
Off topic kvetch I know, mod me accordingly. And my captcha is "nothing" which is what has come out of Apples computers....
Monstar L
More money for something that costs Apple less to support.
Sorry, I'm still not seeing a deal. This actually makes it MORE expensive than a CD... and you get no album art either.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
A couple of other brands will plat AACs, and you can get players for handheld devices.
It will be interesting to see just how many AACs start appearing on the filesharing networks.
Personally, while I see it as a good thing from different angles (customer: music can be played on any software/player, reseller: Apple makes more money because people will come to them to buy DRM-free tunes, supplier: EMI makes more money from the higher per-song price, artists: still get screwed) I don't see it as jumping for joy news. I'm not much of an audiophile, so the higher quality would probably be lost on me, and I drank the Apple kool-ade years ago, so I'll be using iTunes/iPods forever so the presence of the DRM doesn't really impact me..
Question(s):
1: If you buy music through iTMS, will you spend the extra $$$ for the higher-quality DRM-free versions?
2: Will you spend the $$$ to take up the offer to "upgrade" any existing music you have previously downloaded?
3: How long will it be until major label #2 makes a similar announcement?
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Hey the 90's called. They want their format (mp3) back.
Seriously, AAC is so much better than mp3 that it isn't even funny. Get with the program. There are several free/open AAC implementations. If you don't like your 256kbit AAC then you can easily transcode to whatever you want since it's DRM free.
TCAP-Abort
The Press Release gives a few more interesting details... saying they will have their worldwide launch by may, they will have "half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this= 104&STORY=/www/story/04-02-2007/0004557706&EDATE=
p ple.ap/
year" (probably stemming from the many independents) and "All EMI music videos
will also be available in DRM-free format with no change in price."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT
"Consumers will pay a higher price for the premium singles, but the same price for albums either with or without the copy protection software."
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/02/emi.a
Wow, I'm not surprised that EMI is offering DRM free downloads (it's about time!) but I'm surprised they're partnering with Apple. I thought they'd want to "stick it" to Apple. I guess EMI realizes Apple is the best bet for selling music online.
Penny - plain text accounting
No, you get the ability to make copies, not the right. That and, as others have pointed out, higher quality recordings.
This is a great first step but I'd still need to convert the music in MP3 before I can do anything with it. The format is still locked to the Ipod, which is entirely the problem! I'll probably buy a song to help move things along but until the format is MP3 it ultimately doesn't change much for me. When next month and which artists? Will this be all ITunes stores or just The States?
No, its not just the iPod.
A list of players is available on wikipedia
Its a substantial list, and its an open format. Its actually much better than MP3, and at 256 kb/s its probably about the same as a 320 kb/s MP3. In other words, very good quality. Apparently you can even play it on the Zune, although I suspect that the zune will DRM it before transfer. Not that this matters, as pretty much nobody actually has bought a Zune.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Another advantage of the higher bitrates is the ability to slip in watermarking. Thanks to perfect digital replication the instant this appeared on P2P they could trace the file back to the person that purchased the media.
Think about it. Apple has not released the details of the tracks other then "256kb aac" w/o DRM. They don't say that it will be delayed downloading (rather then the buy, download, listen now) could be "Thanks for purchasing. Your music will arrive shortly in you library and purchased media areas." Then about 5 minutes later the track downloads. And seeing how apple doesn't allow for a redownloading (i think) they simply add the watermarking into the database and delete the track.
EMI find a DRM free version of the music on the internet (Coldplay-Clocks.m4a) and downloads it from people. They compare the watermark, it comes back to you, you get sued like no other on the planet as an example.
(the old tired method of this but):
1) Announce DRM Free media
2) Release DRM free media w/ Watermarking
3) Download version from internet
4) Link watermarking to individual
5) SUE THE PANTS OFF OF THEM!!!
6) ??? (Repeat?)
7) Profit somehow.
Its a possibility. Don't just celebrate yet. I've got a feeling this wont be with out some strings
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
So Yay, DRM-free, goody gumdrops.
Ok, brass tacks. I track music, I mix music. I have worked at big mastering studios. I'm no platinum producer, but I have worked on things on iTunes. I've watched artists come into a mastering studio and listen for balance and tone, producers bring 8 versions of a song and stems to find the right sound. Basically, I've seen lots of people _care_ about how their art sounds.
No artist would ever want their fans to be tiered into those who get to hear their art how they intended, and those who get to hear it how they sort-of intend it. Sorry, but I think the DRM-free fanboys have forgotten where they put it. It's still insane that you become a second-class (or third now!) citizen of art if you cant afford it. If this music is now DRM-free, where's the argument for the lower bit-rates still being DRM encrusted? What's the argument for the lower bit-rates at all?
This is another way to get you to "upgrade" your music collection. This is business meant to screw you over (what portable players play non-DRM AAC the don't play DRM AAC anyway?). This is not a victory, or at least one not as large as the kiddies would have you think.
Paying for your consumer rights considered dangerous
-mix
F*** you and your ilk, Steve Jobs. Why should I have to pay more for DRM free music? If we're getting *less* than what we would get with your DRM laden crap, we should be paying less too.
I'll be upstairs ripping my CDs, thanks.
How dare you suggest Apple has anything other than the noblest intentions. Pistols at dawn sir!
256K DRM free? I think I'm going to start buying music again!
Does anyone know if these songs will be watermarked with your AppleID?
It's a shame they don't give you a choice of AAC or MP3. My iPod plays AAC, but my Cowon does not.
It would also make the other big music companies sit up and take notice, when they suddenly start losing their golden-egg laying geese.
My sig has been answered.
Good for EMI. I'm really tempted to go out and buy a copy of Pink Floyd's 'More' (on EMI), since I don't have it on CD. It's like a missing tooth in my Pink Floyd collection. But I'm afraid they, and the rest of the big music companies, need to do more than that to restore my faith.
Still, for anyone who's using iTunes: if you're deciding between an EMI tune, and a non-EMI tune, I'd suggest picking the unencumbered EMI one. The music industry, like any industry, listens to our dollars more than our words.
After Jobs made his "get rid of DRM" speech a month or two ago, they were coming out of the woodwork blasting him for being a hypocrite. Maybe these know-nothings will now realize that he couldn't make these changes on his own, he needed the labels themselves to come along.
NOW that one of them is promoting anti-DRM versions, expect the indy stuff to follow suit. These same anti-Jobs people will lament the fact Jobs didn't do this with indy bands 1st. It's called negotiations people. Getting a major label to do this is 10 times better than having ONLY the indy bands DRM free. This is a major change in thinking for the big labels. And that made it well worth the wait.
Maybe if the anti-Jobs people would focus more on Microsoft and their disabling of the Zune wifi for a change, even more progress can be made in the DRM free world. But I'm guessing that the anti-Job reaction to his speech wasn't atually about his speech, it was more about being Microsoft lap dogs.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Yes it's locked to an iPod, but only if your audio player of choice doesn't support the open & non-proprietary AAC (and remeber kids, no licensing fee to make a player support AAC vs MP3). Large numbers of phones being made today support AAC. Theres no good reason why companies like Creative & Sandisk don't get on board.
Makes perfect sense to me, in the "big picture" scheme of things. As another poster said, Jobs isn't stupid. This price increase is at just the right price-point to where it doesn't seem like you're paying "a lot more" for these DRM-free, higher-bitrate tracks, yet it's a significant enough increase to potentially give a big boost to EMI's sales figures of purchases made from the iTunes store. Give this a little while, and then watch as analysts start comparing the relative quarterly profits of EMI vs. the other record labels selling on iTunes who still embrace DRM.
It's going to be a powerful incentive for others to switch when they look at the dollar figures and say "Woah! EMI is kicking our butt in sales!"
Garbage in, garbage out. Converting between lossy formats will degrade sound quality.
Some of these comments make me wonder if Slashdot has been overrun by spoiled, bratty teenagers. It's like they've been given a brand new car and they're accusing their parents of ruining their lives because it's not the right color.
Crap--I just accidentally made a car analogy.
The press conference has only streaming WindowsMedia and Real, no Quicktime?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I think you are confusing standard AAC with Fairplay. Fairplay is AAC with Apple's DRM applied. AAC itself is an open, non-royalty based standard which was developed to be the successor to MP3. See the wiki article. Many different media programs like WM, RealPlayer, Winamp, and iTunes will play AAC without the need for conversion as well as many MP3 players like the Zune and some cell phones. Sony uses it as the standard audio format for the PS3. If you want to convert to MP3, it can be done but time consuming and you would be decreasing the fidelity. I suspect that eventually most devices will use it instead of MP3 as there are no royalties on it whereas MP3 has a royalty.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
My understanding is that they allow others to license AAC.
"Contractual Obligations"
I'm sure that even though Apple has a crack team of lawyers ready to go at a moment's notice, they would much rather not have to use them in an actual courtroom if they don't have to.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
From the format's wiki entry:
That lock-in is softer than a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. Probably about as easy to escape, too.
we already pre paid for DRM free music. Hail the all mighty blank recordable media levy. Now you people just make sure its available on your end.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Ah, yes. The comments wouldn't be complete without some idiot bitching about a lossless format and demaning that tracks be priced at such a low price point as to not be profitable for the store in question. Nobody wants a FLAC or SHN file for a dime or a quarter. Most consumers don't know what FLAC or SHN is. Further, spending couple of bucks for the 256 kbps AAC version of the few tracks you want from a CD instead of having to buy the entire thing is a savings for most consumers. Don't be such a geeky little bitch.
They are locked to iPods because of the other digital audio player manufacturers. All these things use the same chips in them. Enabling AAC on another player is simply a matter of paying Dolby Labs and updating your firmware.
If a second label agrees to do this on iTunes, I guarantee you we'll see a bunch of firmware updates for MP3 players to add AAC support.
The good news is that this now provides a way for people to purchase EMI's music DRM-free. This should not be understated, as EMI has led the DRM-war in Europe with copy-protected cds.
Does this also mean a reversal in policy regarding copy-protected CDs? Will *normal* Phillips-compatable cds now become available on shelves?
Apologies: the above blockquote should have carried the following reference.
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
No more than an MP3 is a "soft lockin". Except AAC is completely open unlike MP3.
Unless you're trying to imply that MP3 is more open simply because it was here first.
There, fixed that for you.
However, at least they are making the association of DRM free being better, by associating it with the higher quality encoding.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
"EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice."
So if you're too lazy to convert AAC to MP3, wait a few weeks and go buy it in MP3.
My last two Nokia phones could play AAC files as easly as as MP3. I would guess this is common as 3GP files can be AAC anyway (AMR is only realy passable for voice).
You must reallyhate OGG, since it is substantially less popular than AAC on music players.
wouldn't it be better to buy the single* encode it at 320Kbps and get the B-sides too?
*Provided you get find the single in HMV, otherwise you're stuffed
Summation 2
Doesn't anyone use Google anymore? Do a quick search on AAC and do a little reading; you'll find that the same wonderful people who created MP3 also had a huge hand in creating AAC. Like MP3, it's a technology available to anyone who wants to pay a licensing fee. And like MP3, you should be able to create a LAME-like codec that doesn't infringe upon anyone's copyright. Suspecting you won't take the time to look this up either, I decided to do the research for you.on this point too. Guess what? FFMPEG has an AAC decoder and the code is non-infringing! Moreover, the iPod isn't the only portable player supporting AAC -- there are lots of them. Heck, even the Zune supports AAC! Do you think that would happen if Apple owned all of the rights to file format?
The nerve of Steve Jobs is incredible. He is asking people to pay again for songs that they already bought!
Other services have been selling songs at a more reasonable bit-rate all along (eg. Yahoo was selling songs for a while at 79 cents for 192Kbps), only Apple was selling at 128Kbps. Even the NYT writer (who loves Apple) wrote that 128 is insufficient and that people were making a mistake to spend money on stuff at this quality. The loyal defenders insisted that when and if a higher quality became necessary and available it would be free for everyone who had already bought it.
Now you have to pay again just to get decent sound quality!
I think I'll stick to ripping from CD's.
New albums from EMI are $9.99, 256kbps, and DRM free. RTFA.
Now, sure, if you build a MIX AND MATCH album of you're fav singles at 256kbps, it would wind up costing you $20. But name me a music store where I can go in and buy a mix-and-match CD?
You're comparing apples to oranges there.
There are all kinds of players that can play AAC besides the iPod.
And lots of other players are format-upgradeable , and thus will probably support AAC soon now that DRM free tracks will be on the iTunes site.
AAC is an open standard. Sure it is patent encumbered, but so is MP3.
If you bought some WMA/MP3 only player that's not upgradeable, that's your own fault. You locked yourself in.
Hmmm.... as has been pointed out several times above: AAC is an open format, AAC is technically superior to mp3, mp3 has patent parasites, and many players (including the Zune) already handle AAC. Shucks I thought all of this was common knowledge amoungst the folks who hang out here.
I gots to wonder is all of these AAC soft lock-in type posts are just paid trolls... the kind that always seem to pop up when there are discusions relate to a certain company's strategic interests... now where'd I put that tinfoil hat.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Soft lockin? Is that like chocolate handcuffs?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I like how the deal excludes the Beatles. Oh no! What will the iPod generation do? Guess what Beatles - you aren't that hot anymore. Nobody with an iPod gives a fuck if you don't come to the party.
Three things occur to me here.
1. Critics have maintained that Apple should allow independent artists to offer their music iTMS without DRM, but the standard response is that this would be technically infeasible. Now that this is not the case, I hope to see Apple offer DRM-free music from independent producers soon.
2. The Big Studios have been pushing to get Apple to charge a higher rate per song for years now. This outcome has Apple saying, "Hey, get rid of DRM and we'll do it." I wonder how tempting that will be to the other studios.
3. Anti-DRM advocates need EMI to be very successful; a rise in sales will allow the initiative to grow, while a drop in sales will herald calls of piracy. This is one case where giving money to a large company may actually do some good. (I know many purists would scoff, but big corporations are like big, very cunning animals: they are dangerous, but perhaps can be trained.)
It's called "convenience." Is the fact that you have to pay more to pick up a six-pack of beer when you're paying gas a huge injustice (You know, 7-11 could put their logo on a piece of dog poo!1!11oneoneoneoneeleventy) than when you go to the grocery store.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's probably more expensive than it should be. In fact, I was of the impression that we wouldn't get DRM-free music on the iTunes store unless the labels would agree to sell it at the same $.99 price point, which would mean Apple and the music labels would never get past their impasse. Obviously, I was wrong here. And I personally think that yeah, $1.29 for a single is high and it should be cheaper. But that's no reason to be a dipstick and insist there's NO advantage to buying music through iTunes over brick-and-mortar. You make reference to the time it takes to download the music. Compared to the time it takes to wait for Amazon.com to ship it, or for you to drive to the nearest record store? It's all but guaranteed to be much shorter.
If you want instant gratification and DRM-less music there are NO other *legal* options for this than eMusic and iTunes. That's a combination that neither filesharing, brick-and-mortar, music catalogs, or other online stores offer. You can either take a cheap shot at Apple's customers or realize that this is in fact a big deal.
and for what? I can already make my Apple iTunes songs DRM free. The higher quality? I have been wondering when 256bit was coming. That was the rate used by the local radio station (pretty sure most use it). So Jobs can now increase the price and make us feel good about it.
:)
I guess he is magic
He could probably sell a Hummer to a Greenpeace activist
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This is a definitely a step in the right direction. What they should be doing, though, is removing the DRM-infested tracks from iTunes and replacing them with DRM-free versions. That way, you'd have two tiers of DRM-free tracks: the “standard” quality $0.99 tracks and the higher-quality $1.29 tracks.
However, I will not yet be able to directly benefit from this announcement, because:
Again, this is good news, but it seems to me that Jobs and his cohorts are taking the tiniest baby steps possible.
If iTunes were available for a GNU/Linux distribution (without using Wine), and if iTunes tracks were available in a free format, such as Ogg Vorbis, then I might even consider making an exception and using iTunes on my system.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
Ha! It doesn't cost 30 cents to send the entire file. This is just milking people for all they can get.
What players, besides iPod, support the non-DRM AAC format?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
How can I see what EMI albums are available on ITunes?... I'd like to restrict purchases to non-drm music, with all the drm crap filtered out? Can this be done?
Unless this contract with EMI prevents Apple from selling DRM free music from other labels, does this mean that anyone who wants to sell their music DRM free can negotiate this kind of deal? Or is Apple going to come up with some excuse as to why they can sell music from EMI with no DRM but cant sell music from ? Now that they have this DRM free music from EMI, they can't claim any technical reasons for why they won't let the small labels sell DRM free...
Does no one else wonder why the hell is this 30% more expensive?!
How does this respond to the pressure that Apple has been under in Europe about the close ties between the Apple Store and the iPod? Now that some songs can be purchased DRM free that can be played on any player, is Apple home free?
It will have a higher encoding (256 kbps), so that means it will cost Apple more to store it and more in bandwidth charges. Since they also probably have to product differentiation for contractual reasons, this is a way to keep the other labels from screaming bloody murder (it offers a carrot instead of just a stick for bringing the other labels on board).
Just because PureTracks has a sucky interface for it does not mean that Apple will.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Moderator, what if this was just some guy who enjoys listening to music released at no cost? There IS free music out there you know.
There's no Search by Label option. D'oh!
Will I be able to still buy them at 128 if I choose? 256 is quite a waste of bits for a guy who can barely hear over 16 kilohertz. :D
Exactly. Case in point: Previously, I wouldn't buy songs from ITunes because I like to stream my music from ITunes to my Tivo box. Tivo couldn't play the encrypted AAC files, so instead of buying songs from ITunes I would just go there to sample a track and then download the song using LimeWire. Now I WILL buy songs from the ITunes store because Tivo can play unencrypted AAC files.
People are foolish to buy from iTunes. You get half the music, the hassle of DRM and are locked to one hardware device - the iPod. Now Apple is trying to pawn off higher bit rate AAC as "premium" quality. "Premuim Quality" is lossless - just go buy a CD and rip it yourself.
www.itjerk.com
If you want instant gratification and DRM-less music there are NO other *legal* options for this than eMusic and iTunes. I just walk down to my friendly local neighborhood used CD store and buy them there. No DRM, much cheaper prices, and much better quality. But I guess in the current Big Box consumer culture of the US, if you can't get it at Best Buy, then it doesn't exist to most people. Sad.
I don't respond to AC's.
When will these fuckers get it? a buck a song? Fuck THAT. I will pay up to 8$ for a physical CD and 1/2 that for high quality compressed files. PERIOD. Until these assholes get it, I will get my music elsewhere.
Cheaper than most CD's? Where do you shop, Best Buy? I don't remember paying more than $10 for a music CD any time in the last decade. Besides, everything in my life doesn't come with an Apple logo (my car, for one), so I still use physical CD's.
I don't respond to AC's.
I swear that if Steve Jobs announced tomorrow that all iTunes music would be available DRM-free and would be given away at no cost, people would log on here to complain that Apple should be sending hookers to everyone's house to give them a free blowjob while the music is downloading.
Life needs more saving throws.
1. Critics have maintained that Apple should allow independent artists to offer their music iTMS without DRM, but the standard response is that this would be technically infeasible.
Complete the sentence: "this would be technically infeasible given their current contracts with the labels." You know, like EMI.
Uhm... I don't really know what to say, other than "I wish I could mod you uninformative." Most modern MP3 players also play AAC. It's an official standard, and a much better format than MP3.
And what's gotten up your ass. Yes lower quality music for the same price is a bad deal.
Yea, so they shouldn't care right, and we should all have rootkits on our computer too. Just because most people don't know what flac or shn is doesn't mean they don't want it.
So the labels, at least EMI, see the plummetting sales of CD's without a concurrent uptick in revenue from online sales and think "we should do something". Steve Jobs thinks "hey, I can squeeze a bit more revenue out of iTMS AND totally hose my competition AND deal with those pesky socialist French leftist coward Europeans ath the same time. Great!"
It's a great move for Jobs. It costs almost nothing, is a huge PR boost, and you can expect that revenues(not profits) from iTMS will rise.
The nerve of Steve Jobs is incredible. He is asking people to pay again for songs that they already bought!
No, you don't have to buy the music again, you just have to pay the price difference between the new format and the old.
The loyal defenders insisted that when and if a higher quality became necessary and available it would be free for everyone who had already bought it.
I won't say that's a complete fabrication, because no doubt someone somewhere said something like that, but I've certainly never heard that argument raised... so it's at the very least a straw man.
Why should I pay more for these tracks than I would pay for a higher quality track from an actual CD (which has higher distribution costs)? I'm sorry, but $1.29 is not "very reasonable". It's a complete and utter money grab. One of these companies realized that if they broke away from the oligarchy, they could charge more for their music than the others and make more money without seeing an increase in piracy.
Kudos for them, but I'm not rewarding anyone for screwing me over a little less than the other guys. This should prompt their competition to follow suit, at which point hopefully we'll see some competition in price. Until they're ready to offer a deal that doesn't make me want to laugh in their face, they won't be getting my money.
or even TFS. You're getting double the bitrate in addition to no DRM. Whether you feel like this is worth it or not is up to you. The only thing you're getting *less* of is DRM, which I suppose, if you want to complain about, is your prerogative.
Dear Slashdotters,
Before you go off on another rant, stigmatizing and denouncing DRM-free downloads from Apple and EMI for being more expensive than the DRM versions of the same songs, please consider that this was an unthinkable turn of events 18 months ago. Accept this news for what it is, an incremental improvement in digital music offerings. What, did you think that the entire music industry was going to turn on a dime to meet your whims? Regardless of the merits of either side, expecting either position to completely fold in one fell swoop is, at best, naive.
This is a WIN!
Just because the consumer side didn't get everything they want doesn't lessen the benefit of this win. This news can be celebrated without criticism while still pointing out that more is needed. If one considers this news from a more expansive perspective, one might see that this is but one of many events in this ongoing debate, not the last word, but one of the first.
Please, please, please, be patient with the music industry, where many seem to be coming around to the idea that consumers need to be satisfied and respected. In other words, exercising context, perspective and patience needn't blunt one's ardor and focus on the issue, but, perhaps, they might blunt the strongest voices denying the benefit gained because their demands were not completely satisfied.
You'll catch more flies with honey
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.
I'm really curious what the future holds for other labels now that we've had a major break in the DRM ranks. Several independent labels, most notably Nettwerk, have gone on record as being willing to sell their tracks DRM-free (and AFAIK they do on emusic.com), but have been unable to get Apple to do so, citing Apple's desire for "user consistency" or some other bullsh*t...so I wonder if we'll see DRM-free tracks from those labels as well sooner than later given this mornings news.
EMI: We'll let you sell non-DRM tracks, but only if you pay us more.
Jobs: Hmm, customers won't like this price jump, better do something to increase the value of the non-DRM tracks. I know - the same people that complain about DRM also complain about the compression, so lets increase the non-DRM'd songs to 256kbps. But we better keep the old 99 cent tracks around for people who don't want to pay more.
You aren't paying 30 cents more for higher bitrate, you are paying an extra 30 cents for the priviledge of being able to exercise your fair use rights, the bitrate is just an inexpensive value add-on.
So the EU has been pressuring Apple to open up its DRM -- but now iTunes offers non-DRM music. EMI is headquartered in England, I believe, so this seems to be a big "spppbbbt!" from Jobs in the EU's general direction.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I hate the big box culture of the US, and when I stopped in my local used CD store the other day, they didn't have the particular CD I was looking for. I went home and bought it on iTunes. This is a sad reality of the digital age (like Netflix putting the local video store out of business).
It's not the DRM that makes the iTunes Store popular enough to let Apple stick it to the labels. Not one of the customers of the iTunes Store have bought their music there because they decided the DRM was a must-have feature. The iTunes Store is popular *despite* the DRM.
Fuck the RIAA, except for EMI. We do have to hand it to them for taking the courageous step, breaking rank from the other big labels, and taking a chance on selling standard format music. Now if they can just distance themselves from the suing of little old grandmothers, I might even be motivated to exclude them from my RIAA boycott, provided they have music I'm interested in...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
... for finally doing the right thing.
I know it is hard for those of you into person or brand name worshiping to understand, but it is quite possible to compliment people or companies for the good things they do, and at the same time criticize them for the bad things they do. Just because you define your world into personal (or brand) loyalties, it does not mean the rest of us are similar restricted.
"Cheaper than most CD's? Where do you shop, Best Buy? I don't remember paying more than $10 for a music CD any time in the last decade."
The phrase usually mentioned on Slashdot is the "$20 for a CD." Not in the sense of "I used to have to pay $20 for a CD; at least they're down to $13 or so nowadays," but usually in the context of "How dare the record companies charge $20 for a CD!* This give me the moral justification to acquire my music with BiTTorrent**."
* Not true. ** Not true, either.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Then he wouldn't have "quoted" the word free to indicate he was being sarcastic.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _>8
Too many errors in one post (make fewer).
That's okay, I've already got my DRM-free complete Beatles collection, which is just about all I listen to these days. No worries, EMI!
From what I understand of AAC audio, an essentially lossless CD rip of most CD's can be done in far less than the 320kbps used by mp3.
In fact, some have said that 128kbps is almost as good as 320kbps.
Couple that, with the fact that that you can sample AAC up to 96khz rather than just 48khz, you can encode up to 48 separate channels, and that EMI encodes their tracks from the digital masters rather than a lossy CD.
I suspect that the quality of these tracks may actually rival that of CD's... perhaps be superior in some regards.
I especially like the multi-track encoding idea. Labels could release the music so that the lead vocal, background vocals, and music were all on separate tracks... instant karaoke and instant remix ability. I don't suspect we can expect anything like this very soon, but the AAC format allows for it.
Can anyone confirm, is 256kbps enough for an AAC file to be indistinguishable from a CD in a true double blind listening test?
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
... is, of course, E.M.I. by the Sex Pistols.
...it's easy if you- what? You want to pay how much for rights to the Beatles catalogue?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So they should sell vinyls, right?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I am 38. I also pay for my music. I buy it off russian websites where they hit the correct price point. I am willing to open my wallet, but I am unwilling to pay the RIAA's inflated monopoly position prices. When will the labels get that they will sell 10x as much product by reducing their prices 1/2? And when will pricks like you come tumbling down off their high horses?
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_sig ned_to_EMI
FYI, Capital Records is an EMI label.
Here's to having a 'Search by Label' option in the next iteration of iTunes!
Everything you just said, and by that I mean EVERYTHING, has been refuted by actual sales and well reality.
1. iPods and iTunes. iTunes drives sales of iPods. The iPod dominates the market. Its because of iTunes. I mean I don't know how to make it any simpler than that.
2. Macs and Mac OS X. Mac OS X drives sales of Macs. Even iTunes and iPods drive sales of Macs. Apple's Mac marketshare has been on the upswing ever since the iPod was introduced. The "Halo effect" is in full effect. Apple is selling more Macs now than it has in over 15 years. They can't make the things fast enough.
Basically I don't know where you got your thoughts from because they are just completely and totally in the realm of wishful thinking.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
1. People buy the 256 Kbit/s DRM free songs, 2. iPod memory fills up 3. iPod upgrades galore 4. Profit!!!
http://frank@franklinharper.com/
Are you asking them to sell 24-bit raw data? Any other type of compression (including the 16-bit CD format) "degrades" the sound quality. Although, that will make several MP3 players to disappear, since you'll need tons of megabytes for a single file. What are you asking for?
The truly brilliant thing about the $1.30 option is, that it acts as a carrot to draw other studios in - Apple can point to EMI and how they are making .30 cents a song more for songs than the OTHER labels are. Music studios have been chomping at the bit for a price increase - well here it is, however slight. They could have piles and piles (more) of money, if only they drop DRM... who can resist?
It also extends Apple's lead as the foremost online outlet for music from a quality, availability, and ethical standpoint.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
There are several free/open AAC implementations.
But are there any good ones? Not all encoders are the same, and last I checked libfaac kinda sucked.
If you don't like your 256kbit AAC then you can easily transcode to whatever you want since it's DRM free.
Please, just don't suggest transcoding lossy compression schemes. It's just off the table.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"How dare the record companies charge $20 for a CD!* This give me the moral justification to acquire my music with BiTTorrent**." * Not true. ** Not true, either.
Well, I don't remember seeing single CDs for $20, but for quite a while they were in the $17-18 range, at least at many places I shopped. I never used it as moral justification for downloading the tracks -- it essentially just meant I didn't buy the albums that cost that much, or found cheaper places to buy them (the early days of amazon were very helpful in this regard). But even now I'm skeptical of the GP's claim that "most" physical CDs are not more than $10 -- I mostly buy from iTunes, but when I do get physical CDs they're mostly more than that. Perhaps it is possible to find most CDs for $10 (at least if you ignore shipping charges -- but why would you?), but that's not the same as saying that most CDs are $10 or less... not everyone has easy access to cheap in-person music stores with a wide selection.
I am the man with no sig!
Would you care to explain how having DRM-free indy bands' tracks on iTMS would have made such negotiation with major labels somehow more difficult?
Why certainly.
Having indie labels sell DRM free music first, would have had a different structure than the current deal. Apple needed a way to figure out how to move forward with DRM free music in a way that labels would accept - so they had to work through negotiations with EMI to see how the could arrange pricing and quality options in a way that would appeal to them. Once that framework was laid, then other indie labels could get the same deal, only now there is a single clear option for DRM free music going forward and also a clear path for other larger labels to follow down a road that one has already found to be acceptable. It took a little longer but now everything is simpler both for the consumer, and the music studio large and small.
How many contracts with giant paranoid music studios have YOU managed, Mr. backseat negotiator?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"NOW that one of them is promoting anti-DRM versions, expect the indy stuff to follow suit."
Most of the indie stuff has been available in NON-DRM MP3 format at about a quarter of Apple's price for many years over at Emusic.com.
I can't believe EMI gave into Jobs; this is the first smart thing big music has done in a decade. I just bought my 1st album from ITunes this morning, and will be spending a LOT more.
I'm probably not the average consumer but they just won me. I don't like CD's because I don't like going to the store, or waiting on Amazon; I haven't paid anything for music in a loong time. The ITunes store isn't perfect, but for me it's easier than P2P, and I can afford to compensate the artists. Cheers to Apple/EMI.
At $1.29 per song? You must be kidding.
It looks like allofmp3.com will be in demand for a long time.
There is still a missing piece for us "Indy" people. AFAIK, Apple still expects us to be exclusive to them i.e. they demand exclusive online distribution. Which still runs afoul of what many of us believe in. We're not especially interested in having 1 big bully distributor dictate all of our terms to us. Having spend time fighting the stranglehold of the majors, seeing the whole thing consolidated to one jumbo major is a step backwards arguably. This betrays the real promise of internet distribution in a big way.
I would (1) always buy the higher quality DRM-free option, and (2) upgrade every song I own the day of release.
As for the other studios, I expect the next one in about six months. Probably Sony last, though they could surprise us.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> mp3 has patent parasites
aac has patent parasites and mp3's expire sooner
If we're getting *less* than what we would get with your DRM laden crap
What your argument boils down to is that you feel should pay less because you were paying for DRM before as a "bonus" feature.
Did you honestly enjoy paying for DRM before? You are paying a little more, for a little less, where the reduction is in trappings no-one wanted. Rejoice they are gone!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your point about used CD stores is spurious and irrelevant to probably 3/4 of the population. If you have one nearby, great, take advantage of it and save money. When I have to spend $3-4 on gas (~40 miles, at ~25 miles per gallon = 1.6 gallons of gas... at the 3/26/07 national average of $2.61 / gallon, that's $4.18), plus a couple hours of my time just to get to a store to save $5 on a CD, the economics you're speaking of become remarkably unappealing. Which is why most of my music purchases are online through Amazon, or direct from the artist. iTunes has now just made the list of places I'll check for music, too, because of this announcement. Good bitrates (I don't have gear that anybody's likely to hear a difference on betwen 256kbps and any "lossless" format), and no DRM at pretty much the same prices as I'd pay to get the CD through Amazon? That's not a bad deal.
Will it cost me 30 cents per track to upgrade my full classical music albums?
That is all.
Physicists get Hadrons!
While I had a Mac, I ripped most of my CDs as AAC. My Sony/Ericsson phone will play them just fine, too.
In fact, if it wasn't for that phone, I'd have re-ripped those CDs in another format by now. (as I believe 128k AAC sounds better than 128MP3)
I haven't posted in a long while, so forgive me if I am explaining the obvious.
Open Audacity, set your sound card as the input, hit the record button and then play your song. Save the recording. Instant DRM removal.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
You fucking bastards!
Quit whining about price, we are talking about a couple of cents here!
My bet most of these whiners are over 21 and still live with their moms, and no decent job.
Only a cheap bastard would whine about this. If you do not like it, don't buy it!
I pay for commodity, and that is what itms gives me, commodity.
Anyway the only free for sure thing in this world is FRESH AIR and look how bad it is right now!
Doing open source projects also consume time, and people; time is money;)
Down in the chain there are costs.
For those of you that want it all for free, I give you a challenge.
Make an Open Sourced iTMS (or some sort of thing like that)with an entire ecosystem,provide free bandwidth,create an open source player(starting from scratch,soldering,adding software,opensourced diskdrive, and every component made on your own), and try to make it successful.
At least linux is already done and an excellent choice, and some other and good audio libraries like OGG are available.
If this thing is successful I'll eat my words, and even have my ass penetrated. But that Will never happen!
Thank You
I.C.Weiner
A: Enjoying the tasty crow.As people has pointed out, one of them is FSF. I am betting that it was the subset of FSF people who are so anti proprietary IP that they hate Apple just as much as they do Microsoft. Moreover, there are people who simply hate Apple with a passion for daring to do thing differently and to still be successful in their niche (like those who called GUI == toy but can't part ways with their mice now and can't admit they were wrong). They are not necessarily MS lapdogs.
I have been a big fan of Apple hardware although I didn't like their lock-in on some devices. This will get me to start using iTunes and buy some albums (DRM-free). The quality is HIGHER and WITHOUT DRM. I'm going to invest in an iPod now.
Please people, support this decision. At least by 1 (one) song DRM-free. If everybody would at least do that, then the message would be clear and we might be getting cheaper and more DRM-free music and maybe even video, movies...
I'm building a home mediacenter, even thinking about commercializing and open sourcing it (kinda like Myth-frontend but better, for smaller/integrated devices) and until now, my progress has been stiffled by DRM-infested media.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I don't own Windows or a Mac, so I wouldn't be able to buy. If Apple created a web interface to purchase DRM-free content and plugged iTunes as "a more integrated way to manage DRM-free and DRMed content and a way of getting DRMed content" they'd be able to capture the Linux market and capture the market for Windows users who don't want to install random software on their computer (e.g. people who don't have an iPod so don't want some other software messing up their music player music loader).
and I WON! somehow that just seemed appropriate
You're assuming that the AAC files won't remain wrapped in a proprietary Apple format. Apple has said nothing about how the files will actually be distributed, only that the encoding will be AAC.
It would amaze me if they didn't remain wrapped in Apple's proprietary format. My bet is that it'll keep the AAC wrapper with an added unique ID tagging each file to the owner (in addition to a watermark, of course), keeping it locked to iTunes and iPod.
Haven't seen this in the postive column, but aside from other players that can do AAC (PSP and PS3 which would be nice for Sonyphiles) unshackled locked iTunes is a biggie. I'm at 3 mac-clients now and won't have to worry about additional client-swapping and other rigermoral (like limitiation on how often I can do this etc) as I upgrade to new macs in the future as more of the library migrates (if Apple's Press Release is on target with their library hopes). People with an obscene number of iTunes clients should be quite happy with this development.
I haven't even checked into how AppleTV fits into all this - is it regarded as another client?
whereas Microsoft happily licenses their DRM scheme to whoever asks for it in order to encourage interoperability.
Bull -- they license their DRM scheme, but not to foster interoperability, they do it to solidify their monopoly into a new realm. They want to own digital music as thoroughly as they own operating systems, and this means that they need to get all the hardware manufacturers on board.
They have no interest in interoperability, except where it furthers their power over more hardware and software; look at how quickly they abandoned PlaysForSure with Zune. They were all set to pull the rug out from under all their "partners" that they had licensed PFS to. (Of course, Zune was a flop instead of the amazing success that Microsoft apparently hoped it would be, but had it been successful, SanDisk and all the other makers of semi-generic WMA players would have been left out in the cold, quite by design.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is a stupid thing. The music industry, it appears to me, is trying to get consumers used to paying substantially more for music than they already do. Does the industry, long-term, plan to phase out CD's and use the new, more expensive, pricing model?
A thirty percent raise in price is huge. It doesn't sound like much when you look at the cost of a single track - $1 vs $1.30. But, who's buying one track? If I buy a music player, and want to fill it up with music, I'm probably going to want to purchase on the order of 100 songs, *at least*, over the life of that player, (and some people will want to buy many more than that).
So, for every 100 songs I buy, instead of paying $100, I'm paying $130. Honestly, this is a move in the wrong direction. The music industry is trying to increase the marginal price (that is, per-unit price), of goods that have a marginal cost (per-unit cost to 'produce' and send to the user) of a few cents. They should instead be lowering the costs, and trying to push large volumes. I can still see it being reasonable to have a price differential between the DRM'ed and non-DRM'ed versions - for one thing, Apple makes money on Ipods for the DRM'ed version - the unencumbered versions will likely often be used with competitors players, so it seems reasonable for apple to take some kind of premium on them - but 30 percent? You gotta be kidding me. I don't really think this 'premium' is going to Apple, but instead to EMI, so I realize Apple would probably price it cheaper if it was up to them. As far as this 'premium' being to offset losses to piracy, that seems kind of silly to me - people who don't pay for music *don't pay for music*. The people who are paying for either the DRM'ed OR non-DRM'ed songs are the kind of people who pay for music because they feel it's the right thing to do, to make sure that musicians and record labels get compensated for the music they produce. By making the non-DRM versions more expensive, you aren't either deterring piracy, or even really significantly offsetting the 'extra costs' of releasing a non-drm version. You are just penalizing the honest customers.
If you look at the Open Letter that Steve Jobs, himself, posted about this issue, he points out that:
"Today's most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats."
In the early stages of trying to encourage users to transition to a new model/product, it is typical for an industry to operate at very modest profit margins, or even to take a loss, in order to build the market. If the market for downloaded music, currently, is only 3 percent of the overall music market, it stands to reason that there is virtually unlimited room for growth (but at the expense of the existing market). Now, they don't have to give the music away, since music, as an industry, isn't in its infancy, but if they want people to adopt downloadable music, they should at least not make the downloads *more expensive* than the CDs. At the current pricing, the DRM'ed iTunes are about the same as you pay for the same songs on a CD, and sometimes more expensive. With the thirty-percent premium on the non-DRMed song, it's become *definitely* more expensive than the CD copy.
It's my understanding that the production/distribution costs for downloads is cheaper (not non-existant, but cheaper) than manufacturing CD's, cover art, lyric books, jewel cases, and shipping a truck load of the CD's to a store halfway across the country.
Downloadable music is in the music industry's best interest, because people are more likely to make an 'impulse buy' on their computer, than they are to run to an actual store to buy an album or single. But, the music industry should, for now, be passing along the savings of digital distr
Not to mention you can right-click just about any song in iTunes and (assuming it's not protected) and have it automatically convert it to MP3. It's always been a pretty cool feature. In summary -- you buy these songs, you can get them to play on anything WITHOUT having to download some potentially illegal 3rd-party app.
Only if you view DRMed and DRM-free music as the same product. I don't. They're different, in terms of what you can do with them, and the DRMed track has far less value to me.
I would pay $1.30 for an un-DRMed track; I wouldn't pay $0.99 for an DRMed one. The price they're charging for the DRM-free track isn't that far from the mark, IMO the DRMed one is, but I guess I'm in the minority there since they seem to be doing okay.
I don't have a problem with the labels making money, as long as they offer a product to me at a price that I think is worthwhile. With DRMed music, they weren't doing that. It's not a useful product to me, and the prices were extortionate. However, $1.30 a track, or better yet $10 an album, for un-DRMed music might convince me to buy a few albums worth here and there. I'm not going to be running out and dropping a lot of money, but I could think of a few really crummy, low-quality MP3s from back in the Napster days that I'd like to replace.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You have a point, but 256k AAC is considerably smaller than 256k MP3. If I was purchasing, that would be a nice advantage.
What I want to know is... why the hell not offer this in a lossless format?
The two major sticking points for me refusing to by digital-only tracks have been DRM (now mooted, yay!) and sound quality... there's no reason for me to settle for something that is lower sound quality than a CD, which is what 256k AAC is giving me.
(yeahyeahyeah, naysayers will argue that at that bit rate it's "essentially indistinguishable", and they may be right, but as long as a CD is comparably priced, I fail to see why I should give up sound quality...)
from gizmodo: "When asked if DRM would be removed from videos and movies from Disney--the company in which Jobs is a major stockholder--Jobs replied that he saw video and music as two different things, where video was never distributed DRM-free as 90 percent of music has in the past."
home video existed well before 1983, the birth of Macrovision. hell, the VHS/BetaMax war was over five years prior. it's OK for other companies media, but not for the one he basically owns? that's the definition of a hypocrite.
All the caterwauling about DRM (which I agreed with) and how Steve Jobs is Satan (which I don't.) Oh, yes, and how low-quality this music is. (Semi-agree: my ears aren't what they're used to, and my big old '80s stereo just doesn't get played so much anymore.) Anyway, now the big announcement, and is anybody happy? No. Their player doesn't support AAC. (Many do, including the Zune, and compatibility is just a reasonable license fee away -- not paid to Apple, but to Dolby Labs, by the way. With Microsoft's loss of that case to Alcatel, mp3 maybe isn't the universal, cheap codec that it once was, anyway. Dolby OWNS AAC.) Oh, and if anybody would like to pay the licensing fee for wma that Microsoft would charge Apple, they are welcome to do so. How about this scenario. You buy an iPod. You get iTunes. Your (unprotected) wma tracks are converted to aac. Then, you can upgrade all your EMI tracks, at the moment, for .30.
NOW how long before the indie labels are offered the same deal? Any other labels? I predict that EMI will make a bundle. Others will jump in. DRM, and the whole DRM business model, is on its way to extinction. Once Apple goes DRM-free, who's going to be any different? There goes Microsoft's whole business model. They will continue to sell 10,000 Zunes a year and paying a piracy tax to the crazy Bronfman kid.
One thing I predict, once the tracks are all available as cheap, protected tracks or slightly more expensive unprotected tracks: there will be browsers for the iTunes haters to interact with the unprotected part of the store.
Now get out there and buy uprotected tracks! Drive a nail in the DRM model! (If the other labels see a huge increase in EMI sales, the "we'll lose all our money" argument is shot.)
Do they realize that an entire album, which I can purchase at a brick-and-mortar or an online retailer, will now be cheaper. I can rip that CD using Apple Lossless encoding. Maybe I'm missing the point???
True, but it's worth a significant amount of money to me (and I expect a lot of other people besides) to not have to go anywhere near a shopping mall or other B&M retailer.
Going out to a store, round-trip, is probably an hour of my time, not to mention gas for the car, and is just a giant hassle. It means fighting for a parking space, and then getting into the store, and finding what I want, and waiting in line behind a bunch of teeny-boppers while some stoned clerk plods along through the checkout procedure. I can feel my blood-pressure going up just thinking about it. That's not how I want to spend one of my few free hours after work or on the weekends, thanks much.
If Apple charges a slight premium to allow me to buy DRM-free music from the comfort of my own home, where I can decide to buy something and have it on my computer to listen to, through my stereo, while drinking my beer, in five minutes -- that's value added.
Apple's real competition, at least for me, isn't B&M stores, it's online stores that sell physical CDs, particularly used ones (Half.com). There, it becomes a trade-off between how much I want to pay, and how long I want to wait. Although waiting in a line in a store gives me the urge to stab people, I'm not normally enough of an impulse-buyer to mind waiting a few days for a $4 CD. I could see buying particular tracks that I want to listen to right now from iTunes at $1.30/each, but it's probably not going to be the primary source of my music.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Never bought a file from the iTunes store, never will.
.99$, that's for sure...
With so many choices of cheap and/or free entertainment available, why even bother to horde music and film? You'll never have time to listen to it all.
And they want you to pay even MORE for the same file, with a higher bit-rate and no copy protection? Bullshit! It should be the same price, or Less, even.
Can you re-sell your music purchased from the Itunes Store? No? Then what is it worth, in the first place? Less than
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Interestingly, there is no support at present for searching by publisher in iTunes (wonder if they'll add that), but if you want to plan your purchases for next month, you can look at this wikipedia article for a list of EMI artists. With few exceptions (the Beatles, primarily, since they're still not available in any online format), the whole catalog will be available...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_sig ned_to_EMI
My faves from the list: The Beach Boys, Bob Seger, Coldplay, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Elvis Costello, Elvis Presley, Erasure (can't help it), Garth Brooks, J. Geils Band, James Brown (Hit Me!), Joe Cocker, Kate Bush, Norah Jones, Pet Shop Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead (pre-2003), The Knack, The Decemberists. They also have a very respectable classical music inventory for folks that that swing that way.
Personally, I think that people who are contining to grouse about quality are somewhat like those that swear by vacuum tube amps. When I did my own double-blind tests of LAME-encoded MP3, I found that the sweet spot was 192Kbps, but that there where occasional passages of very unusual music (orchestral or Peter Gabriel's Passion) where I could hear a tiny difference (a slight beating oscillation) that didn't go away until 256Kbps. So I rip lossless and downconvert to 192K for actual use on most players. Would I prefer lossless? Sure, but 256K AAC not only adequate, but excellent. I will buy extensively when it becomes available, both because I like it and to encourage other labels to do the same.
Final point: cynics may say that EMI is doing this partly because they've been seriously short of sucessful acts lately and will do anything to create sales. See this Forbes article for more. Whether that's true or not, I intend to buy, buy, buy. Scr** you Sony!
Cool feature, not so cool side effects.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Now, if they'll go just one more step, and sell lossless music with no DRM, I'll be one of the first in line to purchase it!!!
I want my 'source' to be as good as I can get it...and I'll transcode to lower qualities myself for poor listening environments like portable players, the car etc. I can do that and have the higher quality sound for my home soundsystem.
So close...so close....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In case you're reading this, Apple, I'm ready to be a customer. And a moderately large one at that (I have about $5,000 worth of CDs). Unfortunately I only have Linux machines - is there a good path for me to buy from you?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I'm not sure if your post is meant as satire or not. Assuming it's not let me suggest you are a `tard. Lossless compared to What? any recording of anything is "lossy" in that playing it back does not cause an experience indistinguishable from live music. Indeed some music an never even be played live. So what is lossy?
if the music sounds the way the artist meant it, and the artist is satisfied then that's the music. What you are buying is not "missing" anything the artist wanted you to hear. You are getting full value.
In this case if you are quibbling that 128bit AAC sounds jarring to you tuned ears, well know that they are going to offer higher bit rates too. Moreover, for the 12 people like you, just buy the CD and stop whining that he needs to sell something that satisfies your illusions before you will buy.
On the other hand if your post was satirizing those lossless whiner-clowns then good job. too subtle perhaps.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
this is /. after all. But, I agree this is huge. All other big media companies will look bad if they stay defending their old position on DRM. All it takes to brake an oligopoly is a single traitor, and EMI seemed to be it.
I hope people aren't naive enough to think that either EMI, Jobs or Apple Inc. are the "good guys". They simply showed a longer term vision than the other players. It is not unlike the stance on environment friendly production - the organizations aren't supporting it because they truly care about the environment, but instead they foresaw a chance in being different from the rest in the eyes and perception of the public. This anti-DRM stance is the same, and it would have happened much sooner if there weren't so few publishing/recording groups controlling the market. Now the ball is in the consumers court - if we flock to non-DRM formats, then the other publishers will be forced to play the anti-DRM game as well - the last one to jump in will be seriously hurt. If consumers react with apathy, then EMI might have to reconsider - it will be under considerable pressure from its former peers, pressure that only big money can justify.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
"For those that complain about the format, you can EASILY have it in MP3 format.
Howto Follows> Launch your iTunes..."
Not only is that NOT easy, it is impossible.
uchair@chair:~$ sudo apt-get install itunes
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package itunes
uchair@chair:~$ sudo apt-get install iTunes
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package iTunes
Double the quality and I can only fit half the amount of music onto my iPod.
Come to think of it - maybe that's the plan. We'll all have to go out and buy larger, more expensive iPods to replace the ones we already have...
My Journal
Who gave Apple a freebie on this one?
gum2me?
(IANAL, but I've taught myself to parse legalese and legislation, as it seems increasingly important in today's political climate...)
Chap 13, Sec 1323 of the DMCA `(a) DAMAGES- Upon a finding for the claimant in an action for infringement under this chapter, the court shall award the claimant damages adequate to compensate for the infringement. In addition, the court may increase the damages to such amount, not exceeding $50,000 or $1 per copy, whichever is greater, as the court determines to be just. The damages awarded shall constitute compensation and not a penalty. The court may receive expert testimony as an aid to the determination of damages. In other words, the court may award up to $1 per copy the infringer has shared, up to a total of $50,000 per item. The RIAA is meanwhile attempting to collect "$750 statutory damages per song file" (Wikipedia) in pre-suit settlement offers to supposed copyright infringers it identifies. Basically, the RIAA's settlements suggest that every infringer it threatens to sue allowed 750 other people to infringe the RIAA's copyright. Yet, both the RIAA's settlement pyramid scheme, and the DMCA's prescription of up to $50,000 according to the whim of a judge and expert testimony (rather than hard evidence) to "prove" the level of infringement the defendent is responsible for, seems dubious now that EMI is offering DRM-less music through Apple for only $1.29. One must now wonder if the true *compensation* cost per infringer is really $750-a-song as the RIAA typically claims (it's important to distinguish the cost of compensation, because the DMCA explicitely excludes a penalty, see my quote for that tidbit), if EMI is able to afford placing their songs in unprotected format online for only 30% more. Hopefully a suave lawyer will pick up on this, and point out that the RIAA is fluffing their claims to recieve more money than the law allows for pure compensation of infringement.
Oh, and yay! For once, my sig is on-topic!
DRM = Digitally Restricted Media. This is a viral sig, pass it on.
Perhaps the parent should have typed more slowly for you. Apple..doesn't..have..a..proprietary..format. AAC..is..an..MPEG..standard,..just..like..MP3, only..better..quality..at..the..same..bitrate. The..only..thing..proprietary..in..the..songs..App le..currently..sells..is..the..DRM. Without..the..DRM..it..will..be..standard..AAC.
I'm fighting it tooth and nail. I canceled my Netflix account a few years ago, and now go exclusively to my local video store (they're great... they have *everything*... even stuff Netflix doesn't have), and I buy all of my music from local stores, and generally buy it used. I'm not a masochist... I actually get excellent prices, and I have better service than all of this big box, mail-order stuff. The best part of it is that I get to meet actual people that are in my community. I feel bad for people who live in the suburbs these days. It's really desolate out there.
I don't respond to AC's.
Why exactly is this flamebait? Just because it is speaking against Apple doesn't make it flamebait.
Most of the studios had expressed interest in opening the formats up. Everybody was well aware that online music wasn't selling very well.
Why is this modded down?
I don't know, I spent the last twenty minutes trying to find one of these new, drm-free tracks on the iTunes store with no luck. Looked up artists that belong to EMI, but none of them seem to have any $1.30 songs for sale (as far as I can tell, the only way to determine what format it will be). I even tried searching by that price, but apparently searching for $1.30 breaks the music store. Oops, maybe Apple's interface does suck. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no way to search for these tracks... and I haven't even found any by looking at artists I know are on EMI. Can anyone point to an artist/album on itms that offers these new tracks for us iTMS-impaired people?
Of course, the Zune plays back AAC files just fine, so it should have full interoperability with these files. Hence reducing the iTunes Music Store DRM issue for Zune adoption.
My video compression blog
Another advantage of the higher bitrates is the ability to slip in watermarking.
I wrote about this a few weeks ago - current watermarking techniques are not significant with regard to quality compared with lossy compression.
Watermarking is a real solution to piracy - it enables Copyright Law to be the default mechanism for handing these problems, just like in the Old Days, before the Dark Times, before the DMCA.
To summarize my thesis: Watermarking solves piracy, DRM is about forced repurchasing. Links and more there.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
not everyone has easy access to cheap in-person music stores with a wide selection
Well, if you're into music at all, I'd say that that's a problem. I wouldn't live somewhere where my only place to buy stuff was at Big Box stores and chains. That's naaaaas-tay.
I don't respond to AC's.
Welcome to the Social!
For 30c a song can I have the DRM stripped?
This news is both good and bad. For one, firstly, it spells the end of DRM. Unfortunately, it may also spell the end of the "one price fits all" policy that has made Apple so popular. This sets a new precident, that at least in some form or another, Apple is willing to negotiate price for material. Also, if this is eventually kills DRM, then Apple's entire music library will inevitably be priced at $1.29, which is not nearly as convenient, in people's minds, as the $0.99 price of yesteryear.
This could be, eventually, very bad for Apple. I'm actually sorta amaized to see them go through with this, since it also means that other music players (like the Zune) will now have access to iTMS, which is not Apple's main money maker. Maybe this is a huge part of the price bump, which may help cover for the lost iPod sales that will result from this.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
A 30% price increase? Apple fans will forgive it,heaping praise and glory, others (me) will see it as a bigger ripoff.
There is plenty more to do, something for Linux folk, and there remains now less than no justification for DRM'd Indies.
Questions I am curious about:
Are the new non DRMers watermarked?
Who gets the extra money?
DRM vs nonDRM sales of same tunes?
How many new and old customers will buy mainly/exclusively non DRM material?
How many old customers will stick to the 99 centers?
Will EMI sales spike and sustain at iTunes?
How soon before 1.29 becomes the new fix, for everyone, DRM or not?
predicto-matic:
post deal spin: the 30 cent finger will be pointed at EMI, "who wanted more money, for the extra risk". Flamewars will follow.
Other sevices will offer "higher quality" with DRM pretty soon. It amounts to too much cash to leave on the table.
Jobs will in the long term get the credit, and merits the credit for negotiating the move that finally pulled the finger from the dike.
(videos of that to remain DRM'd for now)
I agree. It's not just Apple, there are people who will always hate (insert any company name).
The thing is, you can blame it on marketing all you want, but right now Apple is doing the best for consumers... sure, it helps their bottom line. What, are they only acceptable measures if they cost Apple money? That's insane. But as it stands, they're making significant progress toward opening things up.
And some people just want to shit on it because they're not getting 100% of what they want right away. Grow up, people. You don't get everything you want 99.99999...% of the time, and you get everything you want, when you want it even less.
This is the real world. Steve Jobs isn't hoarding apples, candy, unicorns and rainbows here.
He didn't steal your sunshine. I was just outside earlier. It is just as hot and glaring as it was yesterday. Grow up.
(/rant)
Everyone seems to be focusing on the technical aspects of AAC vs MP3 without considering what happens to that extra 30 cents that iTunes will be charging for non-encumbered songs. I suspect very little of that extra profit will be going to Apple, which means that EMI is probably pulling in about twice as much per track once expenses and royalties are figured in. Is any of that money shared with the artist? I can see EMI arguing that the 30% premium is intended to offset increased piracy, but in that case the artists should be compensated as well.
I only wish I hadn't blown my mod points 2 days ago.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Try next month. I suspect the fact that they're labelled 'Premium' and cost 30 cents more is going to be a big clue about which are non DRM tracks. Probably they'll put a big label on them and it'll be very easy to see which is which.
but I'm still going to keep buying music on CD only.
I mean, sure, mp3s, if you want to make sure none of your users even have the chance to be confused.
Or, un-DRM'd AACs, for probably the most reasonable size/quality on iPods.
Or WMA for Zune. Or Vorbis for Linux geeks. Or whatever.
I'd encode to everything, because encoding music is, at this point, a completely automatic process. Given an hour or two and a decently fast computer, you could encode an album in every conceivable format in every conceivable container, even vorbis/mkv.
But no matter how many you choose to do, I'd throw FLAC in there -- both for archival purposes (if you don't actually keep a multitrack recording somewhere), and so that if your customers are reasonably savvy and want a format you didn't think to support, or if they just want to make sure they encode it their way, they can do it themselves.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I hope that this means that a precedent has been set for independent artists who might also want to sell their work DRM free.
I have an old iMac and an external 160GB drive that I use as an iTunes server. But, I have about $30 (because of gift cards) worth of music from the Itunes store because I didn't want their low bit-rate and DRM crippled music. Now, if this 256kps w/o DRM thing grows, I might consider buying music from Apple, instead of ripping my own CD's.
Yes, I did miss that... figured if they were going to announce it they'd wait until they had something to offer. Ah well, I was going to actually buy something just to show support for DRM-free music, but by the time they actually offer any I'll have forgotten all about it. Guess I'll just stick with CDs.
You would not be saying this if we were talking about the Zune store making a similar choice, and only being available for Windows. Why bother going to an open standard if you have to open Internet Explorer and enable an ActiveX control in order to use it? Or worse, Windows Media Player...
It's an Internet thing. The stupidly simple thing to do would be to put the entire DRM-free store in a standards-compliant website. They can still have iTunes for the convenience on the platforms that support it, but frankly, even on Windows, I wouldn't want to use iTunes, and I neither have nor want an iPod.
And sorry, but $400 to be able to buy music for a much higher cost than simple CDs is just not a smart deal.
Darwin does play nicely with Linux. It does have rsync and ssh. But that's about all I can say about it -- most of my favorite packages are not there automatically, there's a complete lack of decent package management, and the filesystem structure is entirely different for no real reason.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Unless AAC is patented, I really don't. I can already play AAC on an entirely open-source Linux player, on 64-bit.
The only thing I could want beyond that is FLAC, which only matters much to me if I can tell the difference -- and from what I'm hearing here, high-bitrate AAC can actually be better quality than CD. Only other reason for FLAC would be if I ever want to transcode it -- but I don't, as un-DRM'd AAC is playable anywhere I care to make it playable.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I've read in other places that AAC is NOT patented, so would you please provide a link to something definitive that supports your statement that AAC IS patented. Thanks.
Heard any good sigs lately?
And ? The stuff's already encoded. The real question is: Does libfaad suck ? Can we decode the stuff and play around with it afterwards.
Please, just don't suggest transcoding lossy compression schemes. It's just off the table.
Completely with You there. I just can't fathom why anybody would want mp3's over aac's. The only thing better is the raw wav file but that's not on the table so far...
TCAP-Abort
Never mind. I found it.g #Licensing_and_patents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
Heard any good sigs lately?
its not Ogg Vorbis! :-)
"Microsoft's music strategy"
and I thought rap was a low point in Music History...
I don't feel like it...
Way to be! I will buy several albums from this, if only to encourage this sort of thing. DRM is a terrible idea and can never hold back file sharing, so lowering the headaches of legitimate customers is a wise business decision.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
I think you can play AAC files with amarok and as we all know it rocks!
I live or have lived around Amoeba, Rasputin's, Salzers, Independent, Reactor... in none of these cases would I expect my CDs to be less than $10 on average unless I was buying them used. When I order directly from record companies it's about $10, but then I have to pay shipping. Used CDs are great, but it requires a lot of time and luck to find what I want.
Until now I've only bought CDs because the non-DRM offerings out there were fragmented, sometimes of low quality and a pain to manage, but this could change things in a hurry.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
I love nearly everything about ITMS except the DRM -- but that kept me away until now. I've used ITMS for research and listening to music samples, then went and got the music from Amazon (CDs) or Usenet (MP3s). I've really been looking upon ITMS enviously. I just didn't want DRM-laden tracks infesting, or contaminating, my music collection. I can't even play DRMed tracks on my Roku Soundbridge, and I love my Soundbridge!
:)
Yes, I am going to start buying music from ITMS -- and not merely to make a political point, but more importantly because this is the service I've been wanting all along. This is why I tend to stand by Apple, even though they aren't perfect and sometimes do things I disagree with. They bring out products or services every once in a while that I really like and that other companies, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't come through with.
The other thing I see is finally moving from MP3 to AAC. I've pondered that before, but I always stuck with MP3 because it works with practically all devices, and because I was generally happy with the output from LAME. However. . . I expect the popularity and acceptance of AAC format to increase drastically. Now it will no longer be seen simply as a vehicle for foisting a DRM scheme, which is how I tended to view it in the past (fairly or not). It can compete more freely with MP3 as a non-DRM format: an apples-to-apples comparison, if you will. We'll really know AAC has arrived if people start trading them on Usenet.
And no, I don't feel guilty about Usenet. It's great for discovering new music that I had no idea existed. It's lousy for getting a particular thing I'm looking for. I see it being very complimentary and synergistic with ITMS. The real loser here is going to be Amazon. Now I'll finally have a source of digital music that is (to me at least) competitive with audio CDs in quality and price, and more than competitive in convenience.
1- Run an online DRM-infested music store at the price of 99 cents per track and ignore the geeks who demand the removal of DRM for a very long time.
2- After some years, write an open letter to giant music companies and declare the death of DRM, then secretly strike an obvious deal with one of them to sell "some" DRM-free tracks.
3- Prices can go up for 30 cents per track while you symbolize yourself as the guy who -once again- saved the internet.
4- Profit.
5- Repeat steps 1 to 4 as necessary.
Bullshit. The new DRM-free files aren't available until May.
Im sick of all these formats why have DRM free AAC or WMA?
.mp3 files simple
Just do everything with
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Heh. I'm fighting against you tooth and nail. ;)
I love the convenience of buying stuff on the internet. Fuck the local stores -- they never have exactly what I want, they consistently cost more, and I have to pay local sales tax. Why waste time, gas, and money when I can make a few clicks and have it delivered? It's on my hard drive in minutes, or at my door in days. Meanwhile, I have more time for life.
The only local, small businesses worth supporting around here are restaurants and service-oriented businesses. They've got the big chains beat by a mile, but for mass-market consumer goods, nothing beats the internet, baby!
St. Steve and St. Eric.
- peels-back-protection/2007/04/03/1175366170878.htm l
http://www.theage.com.au/news/digital-music/apple
Ogg Vorbis and FLAC have higher quality, are Free, and will never suffer from DRM.
Not only that, they take up less space.
I have an iPod, and I love it, but iTunes for Windows is the WORST THING EVER. Ok, maybe not ever. But at least in the last 10,000 years or so.
It is massively bloated, requires you to install the equally heinous Quicktime, tries to upgrade itself 14 times a week, doesn't conform to the Windows GUI standard AT ALL*, and tries to seize control of all of your music and video files and associate them with itself. Quicktime is apparently DESIGNED to fuck up your web browsing experience so that you no longer have the ability to download MOVs or anything in an Apple format, and instead are forced to watch it in a tiny plugin window with no real controls, which once again doesn't conform to any kind of Windows GUI standard.
There are alternatives for using an iPod (such as the reasonably excellent ml_ipod for Winamp) but there aren't any for using the iTunes store.
Please Steve, I'll consider giving you my money now that you've stripped away DRM, but for christ's sake, just make a web-only version of your store...
* seriously, how would Mac users feel if Office for Mac literally ran in a simulated Windows XP environment, complete with Windows-style widgets and the XP GUI skin layed over the top of it?
Read Pynchon.
DRM free downloads YAY! $.30 price jump for removing a major flaw in their sales model??? That's messed up. I dig the fact that they're publishing higher bit rates, but it's hardly worth 30 cents each song. It would cost me a small fortune to "upgrade" my itunes collection.
Perhaps a better model would be DROP DRM, price 128k songs at $.50 and 256k songs at $.99
Nice try Steve, but wrong again. I think there's a big place in the market right now for competing digital music stores.
-makoffee
AAC's patented, so there's no legal decoding free/open source decoding software.
1. True
2. False
It is patented, but the license only regulates players. It's allowed to distribute the source to the decoding software, but not the compiled binary. Yeah, it's stupid, but it's not as bad as mp3.
They might be trying to distinguish these new DRM-free tracks as being "Premium" so that consumers don't get confused about what the difference is between DRMed and non-DRMed music.
So, the difference is that the non-DRMed version sounds better, right?Why didn't you say so before?
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
i know aac is supported by lotsofdevicesTM but its valid to want to transcode without further degrading the quality. Also if like me you spend >$400 on headphones and/or >$1k on speakers (plus at least another grand for the amp) then you will hear the difference between lossy compression and cd, not to mention the new >cd quality formats, eg SACD and DVDA.
you seem inflamed by the notion that anyone can perceive any difference
between lossy formats and a cd, well perhaps your hearing is less acute or you have inferior equipment.
i find lossy formats introduce artifact noise (more like garbling) and aliasing artifacts that i find anoying and which totally defeats the purpose of listening through expensive headphones etc. (before you tell me i dont know what im talking about wrt artifacts, i have plenty of tertiary education knowledge and experience of the physics and maths behind these frequency transform families of codecs)
may as well use equipment thats 10 times cheaper. ironically sometimes cheap speakers disperse these artifacts and make them less noticeable.
i have plenty of friends that are younger than me (im mid 20's) that cannot hear some sounds at all, or due to another sound masking, but these sounds are clearly perceivable to me.
on your attempt at making a point that some music cant be played live; why bother having a lossy image format, after all jpeg is good enough, surely those jpeg artifacts and subtle degradation in images cant be perceived, cause a monitor will never reproduce the exact contrast ratios specified in the original digital signal of a synthetic image. why bother having digital cameras with the ability to save uncompressed images.
can you see the flaw in your logic now?
This is a silly argument. True, there aren't a lot of other players that do AAC now. But if being compatible with iTunes downloads is as useful to Apple's competitors as you imply, they'll all support it pretty fast. The notion that Apple should adopt an inferior format just to save its competitors the trouble of implementing AAC is frankly ludicrous.
g
In fact if their competitors plan on providing video in MPEG 4 format, then I hope they plan on supporting AAC. Not doing so is like supporting MPEG 1 video, without supporting MP3 audio, since in other words the relationship is the same: they are both the audio layer for their respective video formats. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You don't really needa all your music in your music player.
YOu can safely delete 20% of it, fill it with something else and in all likelyhood you will barely notice.
There is so much music there that you will never hear it all even if you devoted 2 or 3 hours a days for the next several years.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have said it many times, and I say it here: I will not buy DRM music.
And I am installing Itunes tonight to check non DRMed music.
Pirating is cumbersome, illegal and counterproductive (I have never ever pirated musci by the way).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... they will make you feel young and beautiful.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No, it's purely coincidence. Apple either does or doesn't sell indy music, so 50% of people's opinions will match, while the other 50% will not.
Yes but mine matches what Apple is actually doing, whereas you are going against the grain of a very successful company. That lends more weight to my choices, until you can come up with any that make sense.
That only demonstrates a tremendous lack of imagination on your part.
Perhaps, but your ideas demonstrate a lack of business acumen that I'm not sure you should really be airing in public.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
how about: 'Whiney Mac Apologist' or 'Whiney Mac Audiohole' both of which shorten to 'WMA' and doubles the sting to the machead.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
You can use wathever music player you damn please from now on and you can use those tracks in any way you want. No bullshit.
That is what those extra cents per track give you.
But still you want to be blind, alas, be blind.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... what about if the artists does not perform in your locality or you can't go where they perform?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... they have my support.
I am celebrating, I don't see reason to stop celebrating just because copyright infringers could have a more difficult time amkign bussiness out of stuff they do not have any rights to (copyright is amonstruosity as it is certainly, but that is a completely different battlefront once DRM isout of the way).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... and mention the re-mixed CDs.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
As long as I get free DRM music I don't care who produces it or owns the legal rights to it.
If the music labels will have the last laugh it would be because nobody else managed to steal their thunder while they had their heads up there where the Sun does not shine.
Non DRM means freedom for the music fan, how the music bussiness organizes itself (finally) around a non DRMed world is up to them. As long as they do not do things illegal or unethcial I could not care less.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Nothing simpler than that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm just curious... exactly how fat are you?
6'2" and 165. Sorry to disappoint, pal. Avoiding shitty local stores is about saving time and money, not about spending more time on the couch like you do. I like to go out and exercise, have fun with all of the time I'm saving. How about you, fatass?
How is it you have all those devices that play music, but not one iPod? Don't you know that they're the best?
Just take the 2 seconds to convert it from aac to mp3. walla now its still 99 cents and you can do with it what you want to which is how it should be in the first place.