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Apple To Grant All Labels DRM-Free Distribution
SexCaptain writes "MacRumors.com reveals a letter circulated by Apple to all producers of content for the iTunes Store, announcing that from May onward they can sell their music at higher quality and free of DRM. Hopefully this opens the doors for labels like Netwerk. This is a big step in the right direction, although it's unclear exactly what Apple means by 'higher quality,' and there is no mention of price changes. (Apple charges $0.30 more per song for DRM-free content from EMI and encodes it at 256K.) Quoting from the letter: 'Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free," Apple wrote in the communication. "Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers."
A good start (if the labels take up Apples offer), but is Apple going to extend that grant to itself (for the DRM that attempts to prevents you from running os x on other PCs) and movie studios (particularly the Disney studio)?
Or is it just other people's content they want drm-free?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This could get really interesting. Of course emusic uses the more ubiquitous mp3, bt I bet eveyr 'mp3' player will now come playing unprotected aac as standard now Apple is making things interesting.
They used to like 128kbps AAC uploaded to them, but now they want lossless - so it's been on the cards for a while (not the DRM free, but higher quality). Anyway, means they can encode to anything they want for all the new stuff without having to transcode. Hasn't helped with their congested servers though.
Apropo of nothing I suppose, but thought it might be interesting.
It seems pretty clear to me-- they're offering the same pricing scheme that they've announced with EMI. They will continue to sell 128 kbps DRM-wrapped AACs for $0.99, but will additionally offer 256kbps DRM-free AACs for $1.29. Anyone familiar with Apple's tactics will tell you that they'll want to keep it simple. They'll offer the same pricing for the same product across the board.
I'd guess that this is all transitional anyway. Apple will continue to try to pressure labels to drop prices and remove DRM on everything. In the mean time, this is a step in the right direction.
Hopefully Apple will eventually allow labels to set their own prices. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of old songs languishing at barely measurable sales numbers-I think that a hell of a lot of those could sell pretty well at $.25 or $.50. We could see back-catalog price wars! It would also allow smaller labels labels and independent musicians to compete by leveraging their lower overheads--one can sell for less when a album was self-produced in a week with no advance and no A&R guys to feed.
"Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free. Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers."
Translation from Jobs-esque:
"People asked for DRM-free content, and EMI said fine, but we'll charge more. So we said, ok, we'll up the bitrate and justify the higher price with that."
If it's DRM-free, it IS higher quality. There's no need to state it twice as "higher quality and DRM-free." The "higher quality" bit is just for the music exec's who wouldn't be able to make that connection on their own.
I am not very concerned about this DRM-thing. I have for a long time said that the market will "fix" this, one way or another. If the customers don't accept DRM, they will get pirated versions without it -- and those who wants to earn money from these potential customers have to adept an acceptable technology.
"Disruptive technology" anyone?
However, $13 per album is on the order of a CD. So, for the same money I can get a bad copy with no DRM, or a good copy with DRM, the only hassle is the 3 minutes that it takes to rip, and the need to physically purchase the product. Though iTunes is still a reasonably good deal, it is no longer the great deal it once was.
I will admit for single track purchases the money for the DRM free is compelling. I can see them moving toward a 100% DRM free collection, with a $1.29 price tag. This in a time when the value of CDs are plummeting. WHat did Steve Jobs say? iTunes has to compete with free? How exactly does this scheme do this?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How am I supposed to manage my digital rights now?
But can I import them into iMovie or Final Cut (Express or Pro)?
I'm not a music collector. I can fit all my CDs into one carrying case with their jewel cases. But if I can get per-track purchases able to be mixed into my own video projects without hassle or fee (for my personal use) I may buy a few tracks.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
As I said before, we want better quality music (although this 256 nonsense is not it - what about lossless or flac?!) and what Apple wants is their AAC to become the defacto standard over mp3.
www.itjerk.com
It would also allow smaller labels labels and independent musicians to compete by leveraging their lower overheads--one can sell for less when a album was self-produced in a week with no advance and no A&R guys to feed.
This is exactly why I'd expect the RIAA to pull out of iTunes if they allow this. No matter what, they don't want an efficient market - not when they're selling artificial scarcity.
It's interesting to see Apple as the potentate with the ability to change the music industry with small changes in policy. I think they're doing a good job as benovolent dictator, but there's some deeper meaning, I'm sure, to the fact that iTunes is only 5 years old and we're talking about things this way. The power of the Internet to change markets, demonstrated, perhaps.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I want DRM-free FLAC before I start buying music downloads and this is a step in the right direction.
"EU asked for DRM-free content, and EMI wanted higher prices. So we said fine, we give you higher prices (we'll justify with bumping up the bitrate), you give us DRM-free tracks & we got a deal."
Your translation is well-done, and likely accurate. Here's my take on it:
"Awesome - who cares if a track costs $1 or $1.3 if it's DRM-free?"
I plan on upgrading all of my iTunes guilty pleasures ASAP. If this is the battle that's going to turn the tide on DRM, I'm all in.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
When Jobs came out with his "Thoughts on Music", I made all kinds of cynical comments saying that he was being disingenious for this or that reason. After all, Job's in incredibly successful and people all over the world laud him and his company's products, so he NEEDS to be brought down a notch.
Well now he's making me look like an ass.
Will Apple allow users who have purchased DRM encoded tracks the chance to re-buy them without DRM at a reduced price, or will they have to fork out a 2nd time the full amount for the same tracks without DRM? (much like having to re-buy your favourite films every few years because someone comes out with a newer higher quality format)
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
To sum up the list of objections to this move by Apple:
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The article mentions "DRM-free music videos". That's nice but what about the TV shows and movies also offered on iTunes? Will we burning DVDs from those anytime soon?
I'm, for example, now under the dilemma whether to pony up the upgrade price on Photoshop CS3, given they added almost nothing of value to me as a web dev except a new intimidating interface and few obscure photo editing tools.
Why the heck is that a dilemma? Do you owe something to Adobe?
If you want to spend money on stuff that has no value to you, send it to me and I'll find some crap out in the shed to mail you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nor-fscking-way???!!
Every asshat that ever said that can go home, shit on a plate, put some mustard on it, maybe a little tabasco on it... but that is the shit sandwitch of words that you must now eat.
I guess i'm saddened that so many people are so convinced that everything every company does is for pure evil. Watching Jobs all these years, its obvious that
a) he doesn't need the money. Seriously.
b) he's got a track record of being straight with people.
for instance... when they opened the iTMS in Europe, he said on stage "we wanted to do a single Euro Store, but the copyright holders said no" - and then recently, all the Euros piled on Apple for making it impossible for Belgins to buy songs from the UK Music store.. apple said, again "no, we wanted a single Euro Store - blame the music companies"... and everyone said Apple was lying.
Well, about a week later, all the music companies came out and said "yeah, pretty much, Euro customers can get fucked, cause we're the ones not letting apple sell the English songs on the French Music Store page... now smeg off, its our content".... and all has gone quiet on the subject.
Now, we all remember Steve saying "DRM doesn't work, but the music companies forced us into this" - and everyone balked - they all said "this is for iPod lock-in. You can't fool us!" And the din only increased after the Music Manifesto.
Well, all of you naysayers... all of you that doubted Apple's honesty can just jam it.
If you will sell your wares without DRM, Apple is happy to oblige. Your arguements are 100% invalidated, and all the blame now rests squarely on the shoulders of the music companies.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
For the regular price ($8.88 CDN per album) you get 192kbps non-DRM'd MP3's. For $2.00 CDN extra, you get the same album in FLAC format. Their entire catalog is in non-DRM format and they have been doing it this way for a lot longer than Apple. As an added benefit, they a support all platforms equally, so you can use Windows, OS X or even Linux to browse and buy music.
STFU about slashdot bias.
I'll give them $2.00 a song if they will give up on this compressed stuff and sell me lossless. I'd like to have the same music that comes on the real CD. That way I can compare a checksum with a "global public" value, and make sure they haven't watermarked the song. They could even go to $3.00 a song for people who are aficionados and release the 24 bit stuff.
So we have...
$0.99 = DRM'ed AAC at 128kbps
$1.30 = Non-DRM'ed AAC at 256kbps
$2.00 = Non-DRM'ed, lossless.
$3.00 = Non-DRM'ed, 96KHz-24bit per Channel.
Still dreaming.
Out of curiosity, who gets the $0.30 for the songs, Apple, the producer, the musician? A quick search didn't turn up anything.
Do people who have bought DRM-crippled low-quality versions get some sort of discount/upgrade option to the higher-quality DRM-free music.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
My Nokia phone plays AAC pretty well, so I don't quite get your point. AAC is as much a standard as MP3 is one.
Besides, once there's no DRM, you can transcode it to whatever format you want, even right in iTunes.
Mmm, no. Not just top 40. Apple carries all manner of classic rock, hard rock, symphonic, blues, and more. beat them up for DRM (OS or other) all you like, but let's not just lie about things, ok?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Because it is cheaper to distribute. If I were in a business and I figured out a way to cut my costs in half, you'd probably call me an asshole if I didn't cut my prices at least somewhat. In fact, if I was in a business where there was completion, it wouldn't matter since if I failed ot, someone else would and I'd lose money. Cost going down and price going up is not progress.
Oh, and when you can buy a song for what it's actually worth.
/Still buys CDs anyway, so don't actually wake me up even then
Well, that was nice and specific.
The record labels love you for wasting money needlessly on their behalf.
It is hard to determine if Apple is challenging the record labels to allow all music to be DRM free, or if this is just PR. The deception is that if Apple really cared about the consumers then they would open iTunes/iStore to work with other players. This is possible, no matter how much the Apple brain trust tries to convince us otherwise. It is assumed that iTunes only work with Apple's iPod series of DAPs. Offering DRM-free content is good for those that own iPod, but mean nothing for those that don't or have not intention on purchasing one.
A CD is $10 at Wal-Mart. I can buy the hit single for $1.20 without DRM and encoded at a decent rate. Yes, that is progress.
I have bands I like I cannot buy at any rate at Wal-Mart. Going forward, I can buy a whole album from them for $10 without DRM and encoded at possibly an even better rate. That too is progress.
In all the ways I as a music consumer act, progress has been made.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are either a uninformed troll or an MS shill but again for the record: AAC is a part of the MPEG standard that is used by many other players like Sony's PS3, MS Zune, SanDisk Sansa e200R, numerous cell phones, etc. The licensing scheme of AAC is even more generous than MP3 as there is no license on distributed content. Also for the record, WMA has never been the industry standard. It was a standard foisted up us by MS which actually suffers from the same defects that you claim about AAC. If you change AAC in your ranting with WMA and Apple with MS, your statements would actually be true.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Huh? AAC is Advanced Audio Coding. It is based on the work of many companies including Nokia, Sony, Dolby, and others. Apple did not create it nor does Apple receive any money from organizations that choose to implement AAC. It was the most advanced audio encoding format available at the time of the iTunes launch and thus a good choice.
.m4a which also has nothing to do with Apple other than that they are utilizing a standard.
/MLS
What they DO own, is the m4p protected-AAC container format which has nothing at all to do with AAC; it merely houses the AAC audio data in a way that they can implement DRM. They could implement m4p with embedded OGG, MP3, whatever and you would have no idea other than the audio quality difference. What they are effectively doing away with is just that, the protected container format, meaning that the files will be released (probably) as
True, AAC is not a truly 'free' format, but neither is MP3.
Why bother pointing out one itsy bitsy label? There are lots of small labels with a small number of relevant bands signed to them - why not Sub Pop or 4AD, or some other label that makes up a tiny, miniscule percentage of the iTMS?
"We've upped our bitrates and prices--now up yours!"
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
AAC is somewhat less "proprietary and locked" than MP3. While its true that AAC (and MP3 ) are patented,the patent is held by the MPEG standards organization and only requires payment and a license for the sale of encoders. The MP3 license requires use fees, that is, payments for the distribution of encoded content. The patent isn't held be Apple or any other corporate entity, but by the MPEG folks.
FOSS implementations are available in source code format.
The list of vendors that contributed to and promote AAC is much longer than just Apple - they include Sony, Nokia, ATT, and the Fraunhofer Society, largely responsible for the invention of the MP3 standard.
Almost every modern music player from the PS3 to Neuros to Archos to iRiver to Kenwood car audio players can play AAC, and encoders are available as a stock part of Nero software, as well as FOSS encoders available for the download. It's hard to understand what you mean by "only existing in Apple's reality sphere"
So while it may be technically proprietary because an IP patent was issued, its hardly as if Apple invented some in-house format that they won't share with anyone. Apple didn't invent it, doesn't own it, and receives no financial benefit from its use.
By "locked", maybe you mean the DRM applied to most iTunes content -- that has nothing to do with AAC and Apple has shown some tenacity in convincing a major label to risk going without. They may have done so for profit-oriented reasons, but I don't find that reasoning particularly "evil".
You sound like an anti-Apple troll.
And as for all the rest, it probably wouldn't hurt you to venture outside of top-40 music and try something different.
This is great. Higher quality AND no DRM, whereas normally you'd think you would have to pay more for non-DRM. I take this as a serious attempt to get rid of DRM and make customers happy.
I can be made happier by getting rid of syncing. I HATE to sync! Hate, hate, hate!
I figure the idea of being able to use only a limited number of computers, and having to sync, is based on Apple's initial wish to make studios happy about their support for drm.
And there is one good thing about syncing I suppose, I used an Internet cafe computer once that had a hundred songs from in an iTunes library left on it. Huh!
The iPod's "sync only specific files" interface sucks and is outdated when you can have so many on your iPod too. And if I drag movies to my ipod in the iTunes app it just silently fails instead of say, starting a size conversion thread or telling me why. Dumb.
And I use my iPod like a hard disk a lot. It would be much better if I can drag music or video onto my iPod to a folder I can play/view from when detached from the computer. How about an expert mode that lets you view all the data in the ipod? And a database at Apple, or some other site like iMDB could be used to update the metadata db in the iPod. Right now everything is nailed down and nearly unhackable (how about a perl app for that Apple?).
If I could I'd like to ask for the iPod to be able to play video in it while connected, convert movies automatically (Red Kawa's iPod converter is so-so but best I've found on windows, though the Mac based handbrake is cool). I'd like to be able to view website archives and pdfs too, and while I'm at it, I'd like to be able to store absolutely huge astro or landscape photos and be able to zoom in on them with the ipod too. Oh and make it possible to use the ipod tactile interface for pageup/pagedown and maybe up/down/left/right too. A tap code would be acceptable to get into that mode.
In conclusion now that Apple is working hard to eliminate drm, I'd like them to make the iPod's software more user-friendly too, and they can start by taking the training wheels off. I'm not going to complain about how the video ipod dies after a couple hours of watching video (okay I just did complain but..) however it feels like Apple just used the function built into MacOS to let you plug in another mac as an external hard disk. That's totally 20th century.
Same about the "corrupted" state my ipod is perpetually in and the "do not unplug" logo. Very fragile I think. They should make use of the iPod screen when plugged in too, and most importantly, dare I repeat myself, GET RID OF THE SYNC! PLEASE! I don't want a sync.
I want to put music, movies, and ebooks (text or html files) in my iPod, I want to be able to put real sized photos in and read real sized text files with a real sized font size, and I want a real backup of my entire iPod on my hard disk. I don't want to have to delete things from my hard disk to delete them from my iPod or some such insanity. Now that Apple's sold enough of these things they can certainly afford to take the time to stop the insanity and STOP THE SYNC! Thank you.
It's honestly not that much less convenient to rip a CD and store it.
True, I'll definitely grant that with a modern computer and CD drive, ripping an album is really not that much harder or time consuming than downloading it. (However, as others have pointed out, downloading scales better than ripping in terms of working without user intervention -- you can "fire and forget" a few thousand MP3s but you'll have to babysit a terminal all week to rip an equivalent number of CDs, and human time is expensive compared to pure machine time.)
The downside of CDs is that they generally require you to go into a store, which requires substantial human (again, as opposed to machine) time. If you're not impatient, you can just buy them via mail-order, though, and not deal with most of the acquisition downsides.
Personally I buy almost all of my music in the form of Red Book audio CDs, used, from sites like Half.com; to me they're the best of everything -- no waiting in line or dealing with the general obnoxiousness of big-box stores, DRM-free format, a read-only backup, and sometimes some interesting goodies or extras -- generally for less than $5 per disc. However, given how impatient people have become, I think online music is here to stay, if only for the immediate gratification it offers.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Jobs is pretty clever and seems to be taking the right steps to ensure the public effectively backs his market strategy. The move towards DRM-free and higher bitrate songs is a perfect example: DRM-free will get people on his side on ideological grounds - he is doing the right thing. Higher bitrate will also appeal to people that want to get a better sound from their devices - whether ipods, or the myriad of docking sound systems that are sold everywhere. However, at the same time, higher bitrate songs means bigger files, which in turns increases the demand for newer ipods. As a result, those people who haven't upgraded will do it sooner rather than later. I won't be surprised if there are some other devices in the making as well, or if the demand for larger storage will not tie in nicely with their "tv"-thingy. If this is the case, probably soon enough there will be a move towards newer ipod versions with larger storage capacity and different features, which may or may not continue to support drm-full music. And, given half a change, many people will "upgrade" to a drm-free version of their songs by paying additional money for the privilege. Not to mention that in a few years, should they come up with a newer, better format with higher quality (or even lossless) for all of the songs, people will again be happy to pay for an upgrade of their collection, in addition to forking out money for the next generation of ipod that will have the features and storage requirements for such a format. This can easily turn into the same thing we've done for years - shifting music mediums and formats and paying for the privilege.
JR
One compelling argument for making music downloads DRM-free is that most music sold in stores is recorded on DRM-free CDs anyway. On the movie/TV side of the aisle, it's all copy-protected DVDs, so the same argument doesn't apply.
It might be possible to convince the MPAA to sell non-protected content, but the vast majority of what they currently sell is protected, so they'd be understandably sceptical of giving that up.
Don't get me wrong, I don't care much for the packaging either, but calling it progress to pay extra for the lack of something is quite bizarre.
Really?
There seem to be many people willing to pay extra for the lack of something.
Like those willing to pay for satellite radio, because it lacks stupid DJ's and excessive ads.
Or those willing to pay more for their steak, because it lacks the fat and toughness of a cheaper steak.
Or those willing to pay more for their new car, because it lacks the mechanical problems of a cheaper used car.
Point being, there are countless times when paying more for "less" makes sense. But then again, in those cases, "less" is very subjective, depending on who is actually doling out the cash.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I wonder about this. That is Jobs' pitch to the record companies: "We're not your competition, we just want to sell iPods." But is it really true? Jobs thinks long-term. Maybe he's just lying low, trying not to spook his prey until it's too late. With iTunes becoming huge, what young musician wouldn't be tempted to sign up with iTunes as a label? Particularly if, instead of the artists getting a small slice of the record companies' cut of an iTunes sale, they got most or all of it? Wouldn't that increase the artists' income from digital sales by something like 400%?
The major labels would excrete bricks if this happened, but if iTunes gets much larger, it may be inevitable. At that point Jobs will have the major record companies over a barrel, and could make them obsolete while getting cheers from everyone else by vastly increasing what musicians make for digital sales and giving the fans what they want.
Imagine the PR coup that would be. I see it as a "One more thing..." item at a future MacWorld Expo keynote.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
they want me to buy it all over AGAIN??? I've already replaced my LPs with CDs... I'm not gonna spend major bucks to get official MP3s to use instead of my CDs... I'll carry on ripping to format shift and play on the mp3 player in my car...
I have a huge home made NAS with all my rips archived in flac and ogg and I've backed all that up onto DVD... I only transcode to mp3 when I want to make a mix disc for the car... the player in the car doesn't handle ogg, my ipod does though... only cos I wiped the OS from it and replaced it with Linux.
Now if they were offering downloads in flac format though... I'd maybe purchase new stuff that way...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Will that mean i can use my a billing address in India and buy music?
Does DRM-free mean iam free to buy music from US iTunes store even if am residing in Australia or worse Iceland?
Until that happens, all this DRM-free crap is just marketing.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I don't want 256K recordings. I would probably pay the extra for a 128K mp3 file over a 256K AAC file. Talk about halving the size of your iPod in one foul swoop.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
they want me to buy it all over AGAIN???
Um, no, what makes you say that? Don't forget Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign... why on earth do you think they'd do anything to make the music you've already ripped stop playing. For that matter HOW on earth do you think they'd do that?
If you don't care for the service, they're happy to sell you more iPods to play ripped music on... whether you're running Linux on them or not.
The deception is that if Apple really cared about the consumers then they would open iTunes/iStore to work with other players.
They have. DRM-free music from iTunes will play on any player that supports MPEG-4 audio. That's all Apple's "AAC" is, it's an open standard and one that's used by a number of serious musicians like Elena Kuschnerova for their online distribution. Apple didn't invent it, they selected it because it's superior to MP3, and any company making a music player ought to have done the same.
Recently I went to Frys to try and find a player that supported MPEG-4 audio (under any name, MP4, MPEG-4 Audio, or AAC) and found precisely one non-Apple player that supported it. More importantly, I only found one other player that supported ANYTHING but MP3 and Windows Media.
So it's not Apple that's keeping you from listening to your iTMS music without converting it. I don't know whether Microsoft's been cutting restrictive licensing deals with the people who make the players, or whether they're just stupid, but it seems to me that it's hard to take a company complaining about not being able to license Apple's format seriously when it's not actually something they have to license from Apple in the first place!
Thanks should probably go to the EU, where Apple was about to face anti-trust proceedings related to the DRM+iTunes+iPod combo.
"You can't X a single Y" is an idiomatic expression (at least in American English) meaning you can't do it all, in any way. So you're wrong, or at least the wording is ambiguous. But yes, from the context he should've realized what was meant.
See, here's your problem right here. You're under the mistaken idea that price and cost are more than vaguelly related. You might want to try framing price in terms of perceived value instead. To some people being able to buy one song at a time from their couch has higher perceived value than buying a CD at Target. Thus a higher price is supported.
This framing has the added benefit of allowing for different perceptions and opinions without value judgments. So you might have a different perception of value, and that's fine. You can go to Target and pay less for the CD, and everyone's happy. Yay for the free market.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yes, you can buy albums for $9.99 - but the question would be, what is the UPGRADE price for a whole album? After all, you already paid the $9.99, so in theory there should be no upgrade charge... in reality there will be some small charge I think.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
eMusic for me is actually much more expensive than iTunes. Some months I just forget to buy anything. Some months I only buy a few things, because I only find a handful of things I like. The iTunes model of not having to remember to buy a certain number of tracks every month, even when you can't find anything you like quite enough to buy, is less expensive. I have been a subscriber to eMusic more because I wanted to support DRM free music than because the pricing model really made sense for the way I buy music - as soon as Apple goes DRM free I'll probably drop out of eMusic since I've always been more interested in purchasing things as I need them rather than an endless monthly drain on my financial resources.
Also with the world opening up more and more to DRM free stuff, we should be able to buy more music from bands directly, like the Barenaked Ladies (who sell recordings of almost all concerts they do, many in FLAC or MP3). That's really the best idea because then I know the maximum amount of money goes to the artists.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
MP3's are just a mobile form of my music, they're not going to form the basis of my library.
Hell, better yet, I'd pay even more for lossless DRM-free audio that's sampled at a higher resolution than CD. Maybe a buck a song or something.
The market is there, I'm thinking, but nobody is selling the equivalent of CD audio, much less something better. CDs even come with a physical backup!
[javac] 100 errors
Will there be a way of 'upgrading' current crippled music to DRM-free, or will we have to pay and download the whole thing again if we want to be crazy and transfer it to several of our own computers?
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
I think the answer might lie not in more fields, but in repeatable fields. I'm drawing on my experience as a library cataloger here. The record format that we use most commonly in my field is called MARC (for MAchine Readable Cataloging... or "Cataloguing" if you are in an English-speaking country other than the US), and, instead of having a field for every possible role a person or corporate body (not as in a corporation in the business sense of the word, but in the literal sense, so "The Beatles", "The Berlin Philharmonic" or "Blue Note Records" would all be considered corporate bodies), there are fields for names which can be repeated for every name you want to add to a record and a subfield can be applied to each entry, identifying the role the person or corporate body plays in the production of the work.
... etc.
Very interesting. Although in retrospect your explanation makes sense, I didn't quite understand what you meant about MARC until I did a little reading. Anyone else who is interested might want to have a look at this LoC publication. I agree that the way they do things is pretty nice (although, being an old format, they're really niggardly about bits in the headers). I think if you were good about establishing conventions, it would even be possible to hammer such a system into a schema that only provided for arbitrary Key=Value pairs (no explicit 'subfields').
Artist0 = "Beethoven, Ludwig van"
Artist0-type = Composer
Artist1 = "Klemperer, Otto"
Artist1-type = Conductor
The real problem, given that AAC files do have the capability of arbitrary Key=Value pairs, is really the interface; what iTunes really needs is a metadata browser that's more like Aperture's (which is excellent); allowing you to define 'views' for commonly used metadata but also view and edit the pairs associated with a file directly if you wish.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So let's say I already own an album I bought on iTunes, the DRM version. The question at hand for the last several messages is, how much will it cost me to upgrade the album I already bought, and get the DRM free higher bitrate version?
For a single song, that cost to me to upgrade the song, will be $0.30. That's because the DRM-free version costs $0.30 more. So now take the album, which I have already bought for $9.99 - how much will Apple charge to upgrade those songs to be DRM free and of higher quality? Will it be $0, since a DRM free album on iTunes costs $9.99 as well, which is what I already paid (since I own the album). Or will it be $0.30 a song to upgrade just the songs I like, even though I already paid for the whole album on iTunes before?
I already own the album that I bought on iTunes. How much will it cost me to upgrade to the DRM free version, nbot purchase again, but upgrade to the DRM free version?
That's the question, ofr which you have no answer. I'll let you re-post your same answer again, waste as much of your own time as you like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Twice you came back with the simple answer of what an album COST, not the upgrade COST or any acknowledgment you even understood we were talking about upgrades.
If you had showed any intelligence in terms of reading comprehension across multiple messages, I would not have belittled it. If you had in fact shown any ability to help rather than repeat yourself like, well, an idiot - I would not have belittled you. As it was you were of no use and couldn't seem to read the simplest of messages.
I have also researched the question and come back with no answer. But I know how to compose a response in such a way that it indicates I understand the question being asked, even if I don't know more details. If you don't want people to call you an idiot improve your responses to queries.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Offering DRM-free audio to other labels isn't that surprising. What gets me is the DRM-free music videos. Jobs has taken care not to imply that video (movies) should be DRM-free. I'd like to see other types of video show up, short movies, clips, etc.
Move along, no sig to see here.
There is some amount of HDTV content available from unencrypted broadcasts, but that's not directly relevant to my original point, I think.
While you can record over-the-air HDTV signals legally and fairly easily (at least for now), you can't buy that content in a store without having copy protection applied to it.
The record labels love you for wasting money needlessly on their behalf.
:)
I never said I bought cds from them.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Good points, but I think it's way simpler than that. Music is something you use again and again. Most people listen to the music they listened to when they were 20 for their whole life. You're going through a lot of different hardware during that time, and you want to take your music with you. In my case, I went from vinyl to cassettes to CD to MP3 to AAC. I re-bought some stuff, but generally, I would have preferred to just keep the music I already own, and move it to new formats.
Movies are different. You watch them once, then you don't watch them for 5 or 10 years. Or ever again. Hence, re-buying them isn't that much of an issue. Hence, DRM is somewhat acceptable.