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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.
.. everyone who wanted DRM-free music put your money where your mouth is!
Uh, no? Jobs isn't stupid. As the summary says, these files are encoded at a much higher bitrate. So what you're really paying more for is higher quality files. Of course, you could get higher quality files on anti-DRM principles, but the result is still the same: You get twice the "standard" bitrate for about 30% more. You can decide for yourself if that's a deal or not.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's not a win unless you reward them with your custom. Better buy now.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think this is a good deal for people like me who like to buy the whole album instead of singles. We get higher quality at the same price without being locked-in.
It's a win? Paying more money to get what you should get in the first place?
So a DRM-free downloaded album is now going to cost, what - $13 or more? Is that 30 cents really going to offset the supposed rampant copying and sharing that a DRM-free copy would allow or cause? I doubt it.
What's next, a 30 percent increase in your cable bill if you want to be allowed to Tivo content or to allow you to record it with a DVR that is not of the Tivo brand?
I wouldn't pay a dollar for a downloaded copy of a song. I'm sure as hell not going to pay a dollar thirty. For that price - or less - I could buy a physical CD and rip it.
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'
So what exactly is their justification for leaving DRM on the $0.99 tracks? It can't be that they are afraid people will release them into the wild if the higher quality tracks are now DRM free, so why not remove it?
No, it doesn't. As others (who have read the article) said, the .30 price increase is due to the doubled bitrate. It might be a convenient cop-out, but it still doesn't give anyone the right to distribute the file.
Starmen.net
The format is still locked to the Ipod, which is entirely the problem!
Ummm, no it's not. AAC is a fairly standard format (though not as ubiquitous as mp3). Many players out there will play non-DRM'd AAC files with no problem. The Zune comes to mind. Hell, my Samsung phone will play them. This is a good thing all around. And since album prices are staying the same, I can only view this as a good move.
This guy's the limit!
How is the DRM going to make a profit if their product's marginal utility (apparently) is -$.30?
Without DRM there'd be far less excuse to charge extra for the DRM-free version. The $1.30 version will subsidise the $1 DRM-encumbered version.
It's a bit like the way the supermarkets virtually wiped out tastier (but odd-looking) varieties of fruit and veg for cosmetic reasons. They're then selling them back to us as luxury items now we're used to eating the pretty (but tasteless) varieties.
The real winner here is Apple, and the potential big loser is Microsoft. This may well kill Windows Media as a digital audio format.
Think about it... If all the labels offer their music DRM free by the end of the year, then what incentive is there for any online music store, except for the Zune store, to offer music in Windows Media format, given that the iPod is incompatible with WMA and represents about 80% of the target market.
There simply isn't any reason for an online music store that isn't owned by Microsoft to offer downloads that are incompatible with around about 80% of the devices that people own.
More to the point. Microsoft is only offering the Zune as a means of pushing its own audio format. Yet even Zune customers will be now able to play DRM free tracks from the iTMS. Microsoft has just caught up to the idea that you have to have a closed system to succeed (which was never the case, as Jobs' said in his letter a couple of months back), and now they will have to go home and think again.
Steve Jobs has just succeeded in the first step of completely destroying Microsoft's music strategy, and no-one seems to have noticed. He must be chuckling to himself.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
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!"
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.
Yeah, it's important to have some perspective here. You can argue till your face turns blue that DRM doesn't work/doesn't make sense/is evil/whatever, but the reality of it is that there are people out there with different opinions. And a bunch of those people are old businessmen who run big companies that see, over the horizon, the end of the business model on which they've built their little empires and made their fortunes.
/. mentality is correct, and DRM is not a workable solution, then the market will flesh that out and we can all get on with our lives. But to expect and preach anti-DRM like the heavens will open up and everyone will see the light and hold hands and all DRM will disappear tomorrow is not only unrealistic, it makes you look silly.
It's easy for you as a consumer or a musician to argue for the new "music economy" because you have little to lose and much to gain. A lot of these big record companies have plenty to lose. You might be able to make an argument that with the right business savvy and some smart decisions that they have a lot to gain as well, but nothing is guaranteed, and big companies tend to be risk adverse.
The point is, if the general
Baby steps are what we should expect and really hope for. Each sign of progress should be a reason for celebration, not a bitch session about everything you still don't like about the music industry. Yay for steps in the right direction!
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
You don't get twice the quality, you get twice the bits. Is CD quality 10 times the quality? Most of the quality in music has to do with the people performing the music, not how many bits are used to encode it. The difference to my ears are minimal for these two bitrates, especially when listening on an iPod. $.99 is way too much for a digital file. CDs cost more because of the distribution chain and physical materials, but downloaded music should cost nowhere near that amount. I use eMusic, which ends up being around $0.30 a track. They don't have everything though, so for what they don't have, I get the CD. I'd gladly pay the extra $1-$2 for the CD over what iTunes charges.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
And I would challenge these so called "music enthusiasts" to pick out the 256Kbps AAC from a lossless source in a double blind test. 256 kbps AAC is so far above perceptual transparency it's not even funny.
I'd mod you up if I had any points. I think you hit the nail on the head. There are people (they seem to frequent the slashdot site) that cannot be pleased by any means. People are getting "twice" as much product (double the size, double the bit-rate), plus non-DRM for FREE! Yet they complain that a single cost an extra 30 cents. They complain that Apple uses AAC (which I've gotten to play on every OS) and which also has a very decent reputation for great sound quality. They complain that iTunes only runs on Windows and Mac (covering what, 95% of the user market). But luckily for the rest of us, that hasn't stopped Apple/Jobs from continuing to do great things for consumers.
The iTMS has a couple of advantages over buying physical CDs: convenience and the ability to buy songs piecemeal. Convenience is a standard reason to charge premiums, so why is this such a punch in the nuts to you? Are you equally pissed that 7-11 charges $4 for a box of cereal that costs $3 somewhere else? (Then again, maybe you are. :) Just go shop at the supermarket instead.
"But DJCacophony," you may say, "there are other players that can handle unprotected AAC." I am well aware of this, but the fact of the matter is that there aren't a whole lot, and Jobs knows this.
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.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I think one reason for AAC is that AAC is the future of digital audio whereas MP3/non-DRM-WMA is the current/past. With as fast as the industry changes, these media players become obsolete very fast. I would predict in a few years, AAC will be the norm.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm not really seeing a problem with that.
Mod point free since 2001
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.)
Exactly, and I will be buying..
I REALLY don't mind paying that for 256kbps non DRM AAC.
To be honest, I expected that they were going to spoil it by charging $2, but $1.30 is very reasonable.
Time for us to encourage it, by actually buying these songs.
Have a nice day!
If you download a song and then distribute it illegally, why should you be upset if you get sued? Privacy concerns aside, your argument is based on being upset that people might get in trouble for actually DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL.
Starmen.net
I don't disagree that both Apple and Microsoft use DRM because the music industry makes them.
But my original point was not about DRM, but about a format war. On the one hand, we have formats that are available to all stores, like AAC and mp3. Neither of these formats are owned by Apple. WMA on the other hand is owned by Microsoft, and the purpose of WMA was to create a default audio format controlled by Microsoft.
As a minority marketshare holder in the computer market, Apple has an interest in making sure that the most popular formats for audio (and video) are able to play on Macs. If not, Mac users will be locked out from most content on the internet. Microsoft's shameful and half hearted attempts to make Windows Media Mac compatible are a case in point.
As the leader in marketshare among PC operating systems, Microsoft does not need to worry about its users being locked out of content. It makes no sense for any content provider to ignore Windows users. WMA does not exist for any other reason than to try to ensure that Microsoft has proprietary control over digital media content, and that "open" standards do not give users a reason to abandon Windows in favour of the Mac or some other OS.
Apple's use of media formats is primarily defensive in nature (although not always). Microsoft's is just another attempt by that company to exert monopoly power.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
I think you are completely wrong. If there is one thing that should be fairly obvious to the world, it is that Steve Jobs quite unlike other CEOs. Yes, he is a very good a managing public perception, but, when he says he loves music and writes a letter regarding DRM - He is NOT just blowing marketing smoke. If it was any other CEO, I'd ask myself if they were just positioning things to their own strategic advantage. With Steve, I'm pretty certain that what he says is what he is truely passionate about. If he thought DRM was the future, he would ride the company into the toilet supporting it. If he says that it is a barrier to the success of the music industry and Apple would give it up if they could - that is what he truely believes in his heart.
Without DRM there'd be far less excuse to charge extra for the DRM-free version. The $1.30 version will subsidise the $1 DRM-encumbered version.
Don't ignore the other tidbit in the announcement about the re-release of the music. It's all going to be released 256kbps, rather than the current iTunes Store standard of 128kbps. So if you buy DRM-free music from iTunes, you're actually getting a higher quality rip than they previously sold. There's a very small number of people who can hear the difference, although a larger number of people think it matters. Either way, Apple has actually improved the quality of the deliverable, not just removed DRM.
At twice the bitrate, the songs use twice the bandwidth when downloaded, so Apple even has slightly higher real costs on the new downloads, although I doubt that the incremental increase in cost is as high as 30 cents per song...
-JMP
You've got to be kidding, right? AAC is an open spec. It's more efficient then MP3, uses less power to decode (important for portable devices), and isn't saddled with 14 different, incompatible tagging schemes. It's also the format that Apple customers expect. Not only that, but just about every player that can handle MP3 can also handle LC AAC.
That's fine that you've got some MP3 player from the nineties, but stop trying to find things to complain about and drop 80 bucks on something that can handle the newer format. Technology does become obsolete, you know.
Steve Jobs [is] quite unlike other CEOs.
What leads you to believe this? The way he dresses? The way he talks? The fact that he releases products that come in different colors? All preconceived public relations schemes.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Apple doesn't own AAC. It is a standard, like MP3. MS does own WMA and has patents on it. Apple is close to having monopoly influence with their iPod product. MS has monopoly influence with Windows. Apple bundles AAC with iPods. MS bundles WMA with Windows. Can you objectively look at what this implies?
Apple got into the music business to counter MS's takeover via a proprietary format. They had to include DRM because a cartel runs the show and required it, but Apple managed to negotiate looser restrictions than anyone previous to them. I doubt Apple even planned to make it big with the iPod. I think they saw it as a way to stop MS from locking macs out of the new generation of music and making them second or third class players. Apple still does not significantly benefit from DRM, which is why they have been pushing to remove it. They don't need a lock-in for their player since most people don't use Apple supplied music anyway. The customer confusion and bad press probably costs them more than the lock-in makes them.
Microsoft or Apple could demand DRM-less music and record industries would have to comply, because they know they would lose tons of money to piracy or lack of purchasing if they didn't.MS might be able to make such a demand, but I doubt it. Apple sure can't. Online music sales are still a tiny fraction of the market and the RIAA is not afraid of breaking the law as they've proved numerous times. For MS, DRM is a benefit as it adds more lock-in to Windows, which is what they care about. To Apple, it is a detriment because they don't make any money on the music itself and they've already done everything they can to mitigate the lock-in.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Publicity stunt? Come off it. Jobs said that if the labels would agree to go with DRM-free music Apple would do it in a heartbeat. Then, he cuts a landmark deal with one of the big four do do precisely that! Some people just won't stop complaining. Apple is always the bad guy, no matter what they do. First, they get accused of trying to lock everybody into a propriety format. Then, they make music available with no copy restrictions, and people still complain.
You act like the record companies are blameless when it comes to DRM. Did you notice the reaction to Jobs's letter from Warner execs? They want DRM and Jobs was absolutely right to focus blame on them since Apple, rather than the labels, is getting the attention from Norwegian and other European consumer regulatory agencies.
Personally, I am very glad that they didn't use mp3 format. AAC is better. It's too bad more manufacturers players haven't bothered to adopt this open format. It's not like they haven't had YEARS to get on board. At the vary least, they should have seen millions of iTunes users import their CDs into AAC format and had the smarts to figure out that giving their players the ability to play this freely-available format might give them the ability to win some customers who didn't want to transcode all their files. Even Microsoft was able to figure this out with the Zune. Sony has done it too, finally, which only makes sense since they were part of the group that helped develop it.
This is huge. A stake to the heart of DRM on music. Applaud it. Press for the other big labels to do the same. Enjoy DRM-free and transcodable high-bit rate files.
Exactly. DRM is bad because it attempts to control illegal activity by heavily restricting legal use. If you're publicly distributing somebody else's copyrighted music without permission, you're breaking the law; if the technology exists to much more accurately distinguish legal from illegal use and restrict accordingly, they should use it in favor of DRM.
'Should'? What you should get in any deal involving money is exactly what you asked for. In this case, 99c/79p gets you a 128 kb/s DRM'd track. If you don't think it's worth it then by all means don't buy, but don't think for a second that you have any entitlement to anything more. Charging as much as your customers are willing to pay is a mainstay of market economics, and to be honest paying an extra 20p for a higher-quality, DRM-less track looks pretty enticing to me.
I've also got to say that it's pretty typical of the Slashdot crowd to be bitching and moaning even after we get exactly what we want. It's a step in the right fucking direction, be glad that it's happening at all.
For a single song? One of the advantages of the iTunes Store for me is being able to cherry-pick the songs that I want from an album, without paying for the songs I don't like. I've been willing to put up with the DRM up until now for that very reason. Sure as hell beats buying a physical single for £2.99.
I'm surprised I haven't seen this on the thread, but will we all need iPods with bigger drives now? Mine's maxed at the lower sample rate. Is that the other win for Jobs?
I would, if only it were possible to buy from them without installing bloody iTunes on my computer! If someone knows of a way to do that which I just haven't found yet, please let me know.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
How about the fact that he just put his money where his mouth is and there is DRM free music on iTunes today? (Duh, that's what this article is about.)
There were a lot of people like you who said "oh, he'd never do it - he just doesn't want to take the heat for supporting DRM". OK, well you were proved wrong.
Yes, Steve Jobs wants his companies to be successful. And lately he has been doing a pretty good job of it. The cool thing about Steve is that consistantly through his career he has done that by focusing on quality and innovation. Compare him to someone like Jack Tramiel who made his career and built his businesses by cost cutting and underhanded dealing (stabbing partners, suppliers, and employees in the back, not keeping his word, etc.)
Seriously, not all business people are exactly the same and Steve Jobs is a very good businessman in the best sense of that word.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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.
As stated in the GP.... why the fuck is this Apple's problem?
Cynicism is not always justifiable. Sometimes there are exceptions to the standard corporate CEO it's-all-about-the-profit that is so common. Jobs seems to be one of those exceptions. Yes, he is ultimately responsible for maintaining Apple's profitability, but how he pursues that is what makes him apparently different. It is easy to brush it all off as nothing more than the usual, but I do not think the situation (or the man) is quite as simple as that.
You are forgetting something here. Most of the "iTMS suxorz" and "DRM suxorz" crowd that say "sell me high quality, DRM-free music, and I will pay for it" have now had their bluff called and now they're pissed. They never intended to pay for content in the first place. They will still pirate their music.
If Apple would have just come out and said "We are now offering 'audiophiles' higher quality AAC encoding for a small premium" and kept the DRM you'd still have the same crowd saying "What? It should be loss-less for $0.30!", or "I'd buy it if it wasn't for the shitty DRM!". But now they are showing their true colors. They will whine about anything if it means they have to pay for it. Look at some of the comments: "OMFG, it should be in .mp3 format! AAC suxorz! MP3 roxorz!"
Give me a break. Personally, the audio equipment I usually play my content on is not of sufficient quality and not in an acoustically-correct enough environment (my iPod, my car, my living-room) to be likely to tell any difference in the higher-quality format. At this point it will come down to "Am I willing to pay $.30 extra for DRM-free content?". I have to say that, even though my music collection is end-to-end Apple-compatible (iTMS->iTunes->AppleTV-or-iPod) I still prefer to make a statement about DRM-free music and will choose to put my $$ where my mouth is. As a "bonus" I get a higher bit-rate encoding, which, who knows, may sound better. Do I wish I could get all of this for $0.00 or the whole ball-of-wax for only $.49? Yes. But, oh well.
I don't like DRM any more than the next guy, but I've moved out of my parent's basement and have discovered that, in the real world, you actually have to pay for things. Even thought the restrictions should never have been there in the first place, I am willing to pay for that "added benefit" of no restrictions. The "yeah, but my 'XYZ MP3 player' won't play the superior AAC encoded content" argument doesn't affect me because my "MP3 player" can. I feel sorry for you. Call the company up and tell them you want a version that plays AAC content. I think more of them will now. All of Apple's content is already in AAC format, why should they change and sell it in MP3 format which would have to be larger to keep the same quality? Besides, isn't Apple already in a lawsuit about MP3s?
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
The jerks! Imagine the gall! Attempting to set prices on their own product!
You don't want to pay the price they are asking, they don't want to sell for the price you're offering. I don't see how that alone makes either of you an "asshole". Just don't buy it.
The big difference between the two is that ripping CDs cannot be automated by an easy free program (since you have to manually insert the CDs). It's simple to transcode a big batch of files to mp3 though, and modern CPUS can chew through most collections in a night.
I'm going to take the liberty of assuming you are not deliberately being a troll, and that you are not posting from Redmond.
"How can you claim that Microsoft is trying to control the music industry and Apple isn't, when Microsoft is the only one of the two who implements an open-format DRM scheme to foster interoperability?"
Very easily. Microsoft's "open format DRM scheme" is only open to anyone who wants to sell audio files to users of Microsoft Windows. It fosters interoperability between producers of audio content and devices and MICROSOFT software products. Strangely, it does not seem to foster interoperability between said producers of audio content and devices with anyone other than MICROSOFT.
Again, the point is not about DRM, but about WMA (DRMed or not). Microsoft's attempt to make WMA a standard had only one purpose: to exert proprietary control over online music and to lock out competitors by making sure that the only "interoperability" available involved sucking at the sweaty, Ballmerian Microsoft teat.
Non DRMed AAC (what Apple wants to offer and is now actually offering) does not lock users into Apple products at all. Apple products will play them, but so will other products. And you can throw away all your Apple products, buy someone else's stuff, and still play them.
Try playing your WMAs with decent quality if you decide you hate the pus filled sac that is Windows. See the difference?
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
The original "watermarking" post didn't suggest that people would get sued for making copies of a file. It suggested that people would get sued for making their files available on a publicly-accessible network. Unless the copyright-holder has given permission to do so, that's pretty much always illegal.
Agreed.
DRM'd WMA? Hundreds of different mp3 players from tons of companies.Yes, only those people MS is willing to license to and who pay MS. MS can use this to kill off anyone in this space they don't like or degrade service. This means they can prevent Linux from playing most new music, or the mac, or even competing players in the future if they decide to push the Zune.
DRM'd AAC? ONE mp3 player from ONE company.Yeah, no one else has bothered to wrap AAC in DRM, but anyone that wants to can do so and neither Apple nor MS can stop them. More importantly, this also holds true for non-DRM'd versions of the same, which is not the case with WMA.
How can you claim that Microsoft is trying to control the music industry and Apple isn't, when Microsoft is the only one of the two who implements an open-format DRM scheme to foster interoperability?MS does not implement an open format DRM scheme. Their format is closed and their DRM is closed and all of it is proprietary. They simply licensed it temporarily to hundreds of companies who make hardware because they did not have hardware of their own. Now they have hardware and you'll note there are already compatibility problems between the Zune, the Zune store, and other WMA players.
Look to motivation. Apple has no real way to "take over" the music market. Nothing they have done stops anyone else from doing the same thing. Apple also has consistently made moves to lessen and remove DRM, including making public statements that they would prefer if they could license DRM free music and now their pushing for a label to remove DRM. If their plan was to control the music industry, why would they do this?
Apple uses music sales as a way to sell iPods and a way to stop MS from leveraging one more market against them. For both those purposes DRM-less AAC or MP3 or another standard works fine. DRM-less WMA, is still an MS controlled format, with MS being the only one who can agree or not agree to some implementation of it.
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?
yeah. except that their players might get stolen. or the friend who said he would "only listen to it once, then delete it" did actually show it to his friend, and this friend...you might trust your friends, but honest mistakes can happen. and try to tell the riaa that something got stolen from you, when they say it got stolen from then? big fucking luck.
MS wouldn't make that demand, they go the opposite direction. Steve Jobs did make that demand (whether or not you agree with his sincerity, he did post a lengthy anti-DRM manifesto on the Apple website). And now, Apple and EMI have announced this deal. So who can and would make that demand?
MS has been sucking up to the RIAA and giving in to whatever they want. Remember, MS agreed to give $1 from the sale of each Zune to Universal "because we all know these things are just repositories for stolen music." (Sorry, I don't remember which music exec said that quote, and it's mostly from memory.) Of course, if you buy a Red iPod Nano, $10 goes to the fund to fight AIDS in Africa... (OK, maybe I shouldn't have added that last part.)
Seriously, though, MS has tried to cozy up to the music suits for years, and they have a minority of the portable player market, despite the fact that most players support their format, and most online music stores sell that format. Apple has won over the customers, and is now nudging the labels towards more open music. It's not like it's an innovative thing, because as Jobs pointed out, 90% of music sold today is DRM free already on CD's. But in a world where MS is trying to buy the favor of the music people by offering restrictions, Apple is going the opposite direction and helping to remove the restrictions.
I'm not saying Steve Jobs is all noble and innocent, he is a businessman, so I'm sure he's trying to take his company where the money is, but this is doing it in a way that helps the customers, instead of screwing us all.
Other mp3 player vendors out there will probably drop wma support and pick up AAC quickly if this takes off. Both formats are better than mp3, but AAC is a lot less encumbered than wma, and now ipod owners can consider buying your player as their second device without having to re-buy their entire collection, and vendors can make software that will import itunes songs without running into the DMCA.
For its part, apple enlargens its itunes market to many more players, and now becomes the dominant distributor.
Sounds like a win-win for everyone. Even MS since it greatly increases the value of their zune players - maybe they can even reduce the DRM-encumbering of their file sharing if the underlying files aren't DRM'ed in the first place.
And watermarking will discourage random trading of files with complete strangers on P2P nets. And if price/convenience is set at the right level people will pay money. Right now people with non-ipods probably tend to find allofmp3/etc more convenient than most of the DRM'ed alternatives. If Apple makes a nice open itunes API those same people might be buying from itunes...
happily licenses their DRM scheme to whoever asks for it in order to encourage interoperability.
Unless, of course, it's interoperability with the Zune. Plays4Sure was nothing more than an attempt to kill the Apple Store Monopoly and make room for the Zune Store Monopoly. With the Zune rolled out, it'll fade into the inky blackness from which it came once the companies that were suckered into a monopoly-provided "interoperability" standard realize it's over.
I fail to see how AAC is less "fair-use-friendly" than MP3, considering its a more open format.
Perhaps you should be pressuring vendors of non-AAC compatible MP3 players to adopt open formats, rather than slamming Apple FOR their adoption of an open standard.
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."
We won't know for certain until the tracks become available. But Apple has said it is "30 cents per track". And so far, it only includes EMI content. I would *HOPE* that albums that were purchased for a total price that made them less than 99 cents per song will have a cheaper upgrade fee. (Like, say, $3.00 for a $9.99 album, regardless of number of songs.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Because EMI wants more money to make up for the file sharing that will occur - and Apple wants more money to pay for the doubled file size (the non-DRM songs will be 256 kbps AAC vs. 128 kbps for all other songs on iTunes).
This space intentionally left blank.
Why not get a player that supports AAC? Just saying "WMA" makes me cringe.
I bought it because it was under $40 and it does play MP3. It just also claims to play WMA files in the feature list, but I haven't tried it.
Cringing would be if it supported MTP or Janis DRM that broke the simple thumb drive drag and drop no driver ease of use. It is compatible with any OS that supprts a thumb drive. That is why I bought it. Having an SD slot is a bonus. Easy expansion and an easy way transfer files without needing a cable. I have the choice of connecting with a USB cable, or plugging the memory card into the card slot on a PC or laptop.
The truth shall set you free!
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!
And you would probably go clear if you fought it.
If someone steals a gun, registered in my name and shoots someone, I would expect that the police looked me up. That does not mean that I would be convicted for murder.
In the case that your computer is stolen, you can easily prove that. If you were hacked, then you can probably prove that as well as there would most likely be residuals of this on your computer.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Sorry if I misunderstood your post -- I thought you were saying that the supermarkets planned to introduce flavorless produce so they could charge more for premium produce.
Anecdotally:
I grew up on a small farm in NJ -- and believe me, by 1988, we couldn't sell tomatoes to the supermarkets at all -- because we grew beefsteaks, which have a shelf-life of only a few days and bruise easily when handled. This is as opposed to the crappy globe tomatoes bred to last for weeks on the shelf, which are also resistant to bruising. So, we switched to producing the globe tomatoes, which we could sell to distributors, who sold to the supermarkets. Eventually that too became unprofitable, since we didn't have the economies of scale as some of the southern growers, though our produce was much better (sheep manure is an *incredible* fertilizer). End result? Out of farming; one less small producer who might have grown heirloom tomatoes today due to their resurgence. This is especially true because most heirloom varieties depend on the grower being local to the market, since they don't travel well when ripe, and don't taste good when not ripe.
The elimination of locally-grown produce has been repeated ad nauseum in farms since the industrial revolution; homogenization of crops and produce varietals for economies of scale resulting in less choice for consumers -- though it has its benefits, such as lower retail cost and greater non-seasonal availability.
Market forces are neither the consumers' nor the producers' fault. They just are. Could things have happened differently? Sure, but we're stuck with the way things are now, for better or worse. I'm just glad I have enough land to grow my own.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
1. You claim that Apple refuses to license FairPlay DRM in order to form a monopoly. While this is, indeed, a possible interpretation it is unlikely. Remember that when the iTunes music store launched, Apple needed to negotiate with the studios to reach agreement about iTunes DRM. At that date, the only alternatives were to create a new standard or use a form of DRM licensed from a third party (e.g. Microsoft, Real Media, etc.) Since Apple hoped the market would grow rapidly, it would have been foolish for them to pay royalties on the format as well as the content to third parties on each song sold. Also note, that at the time (and to my knowledge to this date) no DRM format developed for windows has been ported by a third party to work on the Mac. There is no need to suspect them of trying to form a DRM monopoly when simpler and less sinister motives explain the matter well. Apple has always claimed that they wanted to make DRM as open as possible given the restrictions imposed by the Media companies. Jobs then posted an open letter claiming that Apple would love to sell DRM free music and encouraged the Media owners to let them do so. He also explained (on technical rather than marketing grounds) why licensing fairplay DRM made no sense for Apple. Now that higher quality, DRM free music is available, Apple is the first to offer it.
All of this contradicts your claim that Apple refuses to license for reasons of forming a monopoly in a DRM format.
2. You praise Microsoft for "happily licensing their DRM scheme" to all other parties. That is currently not the case. In order to compete with the iPod an iTunes Microsoft developed the "Plays for sure" campaign using a proprietary DRM which worked only on Windows and on compliant players. They then licensed this to player manufacturers. This not only did not "Play for sure" since some puchased media would not play on all supposedly compliant devices. When the attempt to control the software and media format failed to gain share against iPod+iTunes, Microsoft then came up with the Zune approach.
Their DRM is more restrictive and less portable on computers than Apple's (Apple DRM also works on PCs but Microsoft DRM does not support Macs). They screwed their partners by dropping support for play for sure media in their hardware product, and not licensing Zune media to third party players.
How can you claim that Microsoft's foray into the music space was more open than Apple?
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?
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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?
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
The logic is that the record labels want to offer an economic incentive to purchase whole albums. It's no secret that the record industry usually wants you to buy albums rather than buying individual songs. This is a decision on the label's end, not Apple's end.
Sometimes there are exceptions to the standard corporate CEO it's-all-about-the-profit that is so common.
You know, I've witnessed a heated argument between my old company's CEO/President and its Vice President, where the CEO was stubbornly sticking to his guns in the face of the VP's proof of how this was costing the company money. It was almost absurd, indeed the VP was laughing out loud at many points in the face of the CEO's apparent complete disregard for the idea that the point of the company is to make money. But like any good CEO, our CEO had a vision of where we wanted to be, and the right way to get there, and we were going to do it right, profits be damned. Of course, part of that conviction was that if you did the right thing, the profits would eventually follow, so perhaps its just another brand of "it's-all-about-the-profit" attitude, with a longer-term view, but regardless, the pragmatic effect is that the CEO was more interested in doing what's right than in what would generally be regarded as profitable.
And he wasn't the only one, just the example that sticks out in my mind most, after that day and that argument, giving me a really nice inside peek into the mind of a very successful CEO, hearing him articulate his reasoning not to outsiders or even employees in general, but to a couple of his most trusted insiders.
Given this, I have trouble swallowing the cynical stereotype that it seems most people have about the typical CEO. Maybe the ones I've known have been atypical. I imagine it's skewed by the fact in the cases I've known, the CEO was also one of the founders of the company -- necessarily a group with "the vision-thing". But guess what, Steve Jobs was a founder of most of his companies too, including Apple.
My own experience makes most of the cynical assessments of Jobs actions and motives sound improbable to me. It's not that these kinds of CEO's aren't interested in profit, it's just that they tend to think long-term, and have unshakable confidence that doing "the right thing" will be what's most profitable in the long run. They're high on idealism, often apparently low on the "connected to reality" meter, and except in the face of certain disaster, willing to sacrifice profits for what they think is right. And sometimes, not even certain disaster dissuades them, which is what causes boards of directors to oust them from the CEO position as often as they do, and as happened to Steve Jobs at least once.
So, go ahead, keep your cynicism. I've known these kinds of people before, in all their apparent looniness, and from knowing them, I know it's far more believable that Jobs did what did because be believes its right than as part of some ploy.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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!