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Amazon to Open DRM-Free MP3 Music Download Store
mtnlion1 writes "Amazon.com announced it will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels. EMI Music's digital catalog is the latest addition to the store. Every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software. Amazon's DRM-free MP3s will free customers to play their music on virtually any of their personal devices and burn songs to CDs for personal use."
There must be some kind of trick here, I think. Why is this coming so late? It seems to good to be true, but I really hope it's true :)
My photo's.
You will not be missed.
Hmm, what does the word "premium" mean in there? More expensive? Just some subset of their catalog?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I wonder what strings they were able to pull to get this moving faster/better than iTunes has... hurm....
Will it only be music from the EMI catalog?
They have the section of their site where individuals can sell things as "used" , will they expand this so that unsigned bands can sell their MP3's without a recording label behind them?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Sounds awesome, but what's the quality and price? If it's more expensive than eMusic, I won't be switching.
Yes, but what is the quality? 128k just isn't enough anymore.
Wonder whether this move is a case of siding with the 500-lb gorilla (Apple), or if it is aimed at remaining competitive with that gorilla in what Amazon and other retailers perceive as the inevitable death of DRM in music. Either way, customers win.
You know, I'm about as big of an Apple fanboi as you're likely to meet... But even I am excited about this, and am hopeful that it's the beginning of a change in the industry.
And it could be even bigger: If the music industry can start treating their customers like clients, instead of vermin, then perhaps there's hope for the airlines (motto: we fucking HATE our customers).
A boy can dream.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
If all the Labels begin making their own sites or deals with DRM free-MP3 music files that can play on ANY PLAYER that sort of cripples the iTunes/iPod monopoly wouldn't you think?
The Labels could do what they want now, set up their own sites, charge more for popular songs, less for the "filler", even go back to selling just the whole albulm, the skys the limit.
And by slowly delaying releases on iTunes, eventually pulling their music off of it in favor of their own sites it would really hurt iPod sales. Really after all it's the iTMS store and the access to all that content that sells iPods.
A iPod is just a player, iTunes is a good piece of software that can be copied and without content the iTMS would be dead.
Is Apple's bright star in the sky about to fall?
(Posting as AC to avoid the unreasonable lynch mob of Apple fanatics)
OK seriously, are people going to live in the past forever? While I don't intend on getting rid of the mp3's I do have, it isn't mp3's that people should be making, and especially, buying, now. MP4/AAC has been around for a while now, and there is no excuse for non-WMA stores to not be selling it... the quality at any given bitrate is significantly better... and even if you can't notice it because of poor ears, a poor audio system, or just general lack of caring... it's the future.
As for people saying things like "Goodbye iTunes"... why do you think this is any different than what iTunes is doing? iTunes is adding the EMI catalog plus a ton of independant labels (and of course, the other big ones as long as they sign on. Why do you think the Amazon store is any different? I think you can pretty much rest assured that near-everything Amazon gets will be on iTunes... and I have a hard time imagining that anything Amazon releases could beat the integration and ease of use of iTunes and iTunes Music Store... and from there, the iPod.
-Daniel
Would work for most people for simple convienience. but I personally would not pay unless the quality was at least equal to that of a cd which i could order perhaps for less or same anyway with the actual packaging
lossless (eg FLAC) is not so unreasonable with broadband these days
But, please read those EULAs, people
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
No DRM - so this is basically deathblow to iTunes music store. DRM music just can not compete with non-DRM music. Average will see this as "hmm.. music I bought from iTunes will not play on my x device, but music I bought from Amazon store will play on all my devices.. hmm.. there is something wrong with iTunes, I will quit using it."
No mention of price in the article. While this sounds great, each song could be .50 or $5.00. This will dictate how cool it really is.
Just as more evidence to my above post: ""The announcement is a carbon copy of Apple's deal with EMI," said Gene Munster, an analyst with PiperJaffray. "Amazon will offer the same DRM-free tracks as iTunes, and therefore will have no competitive advantage over Apple." Given that Amazon will not offer a better selection, Munster attests that there will be no compelling reason for users to switch from iTunes to Amazon. He therefore doesn't expect a material impact on Apple's music business. "In fact, although Apple's dominance frustrates music studios, the reality is that Apple's market share gives [Apple chief executive] Steve Jobs and iTunes the upper hand," the analyst said. "We believe this upper hand results in Apple's ability to be first to market with new features and more DRM-free music, as evidenced by iTunes being the first store to offer DRM-free music from a major record label." While Amazon's plan is to offer users of Apple's industry-leading iPod an alternative to iTunes, Munster believes the strategy will add a confusing and unnecessary step to the digital download process, which will only serve to complicate matters for most users."
-Daniel
I happen to live in the present, any my MP3 player plays ... MP3s.
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People don't get rid of MP3s because they're still the lowest common denominator of music file formats. Everything plays them, unlike AAC or Vorbis or WMA or whatever else.
It would be nice to have the option to choose a format that suited the user, though. Presumably the only reason they've not done that is to avoid confusion (Apple can offer AAC as their "only choice" since they only support iTunes and iPods).
Here are a couple of commentaries from MP3 Newswire and Digital Music News on the deal. Needless to say, while no-DRM is certainly a step in the right direction they seem to agree that pricing also plays a big part in this picture. Amazon to Sell Full EMI Digital Catalog Without DRM http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/7002/emi-amazon .html
Resnikoff's Parting Shot: Amazon's Game
http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/051607parting/ view
Get an axe.
It is as bad as you think and they really are out to get you.
This is a really fun and juicy story. It's just a shame they are talking about "later this year'. Assuming someone doesn't throw a monkey wrench into the works, and assuming this isn't some marketing guy's pipe dream, they still have to actually do it. And they have to do it well.
Apple's iTunes has several things going for it. For starters, if you are showing up you've already got the iPod, the iTunes, etc. The iTunes store has a massive catalogue of music, so much so that I have yet to find something I wanted that it doesn't have. (And I have some WEIRD tastes in music.) And the store sells nothing but music. (Ok, some video too.) But searching for Kraftwerk on iTunes is going to find me Albums from the band. Searching for Kraftwerk in Amazon... well I'll get kitchen appliances.
The prices are also, noticeably, absent from the announcement.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Likewise, there is no excuse for devices and stores to not support OGG Vorbis.
Really, why wouldn't you want to use a high quality, patent free codec? MP3 and AAC are patent infested, though AAC is slightly better (with mp3 you have to pay to sell mp3s).
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
The patents on the MP3 codec are going to expire in a few years. The same cannot be said for the other codecs you mentioned. When the MP3-related patents expire Amazon can encode music without paying royalties and MP3 player manufacturers can make MP3 players without paying royalties. Whether the cost savings get passed to customers is another matter, but there is a soon-to-be-realised financial incentive associated with sticking to the MP3 codec.
The other good thing about the patents on MP3 expiring is of course that Linux distributions will be able to play MP3 files legally without installing extra codecs or anything like that.
OK seriously, are people going to live in the past forever? While I don't intend on getting rid of the mp3's I do have, it isn't mp3's that people should be making, and especially, buying, now. MP4/AAC has been around for a while now, and there is no excuse for non-WMA stores to not be selling it... the quality at any given bitrate is significantly better... and even if you can't notice it because of poor ears, a poor audio system, or just general lack of caring... it's the future.
In a casual conversation, "my AAC player" wouldn't ring a bell, and "buy AAC from Amazon" wouldn't either.
The fact they said "we'll sell DRM free mp3" doesn't mean they're in love with MP3. They need to get the message across first, and one we have stable economics with DRM free music, they can work on informing their clients of the better options.
You gotta be happy we seem to be taking the first steps of getting rid of DRM here. But some people always whine never mind what.
DRM will likely remain as a model for renting music/video (movies on demand, most likely you'll run directly from your browser).
But there's someone who's pretty majorly screwed if DRM is no longer used on sold media. Microsoft: they invested millions upon millions to get the DRM in Vista, and Vista suffers significantly from all the DRM in it. Imagine if it turns out in 2 years no one wants it, and they have to remove it in a SP.
Imagine all the lost resources, time, and the bad PR consequences for Vista with all they are doing DRM... Bad, bad.
Because Amazon sells far more than just music.
They can cross promote, buy the CD, get the MP3's for a discount and have them while the CD ships... Buy a movie, get the MP3's of the soundtrack bundled in...
Searching for information on learning classical spanish guitar? Here are a dozen books, a couple CD's, and oh yeah, some MP3 examples of greats in the field...
On another level, this is the difference between WarMart expanding it's electronics to also sell HDTV, and Best Buy expanding it's selection to do the same...
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
As for people saying things like "Goodbye iTunes"... why do you think this is any different than what iTunes is doing?
Because many of us, myself included, will not, ever, intall iTunes or use the iTMS.
Amazon, OTOH, as evil as we may all consider Bezos' 1-click patent, has the right idea. When you buy digital media from them (or if you buy physical items with a digital manual), it just goes into your account's Media Library. Totally platform (as well as specific-machine) agnostic; If you can run a web browser on any machine anywhere in the world, you can log into your Amazon account and download what you have in your account (and as many times as you want).
I have a hard time imagining that anything Amazon releases could beat the integration and ease of use of iTunes and iTunes Music Store... and from there, the iPod.
Exactly - And I don't want any of the three of those, much less all three.
Not to mention the obvious Slashdot cry of protest, "iTunes on Linux?"
The only benefit of using MP4/AAC is if you're bandwidth-limited, but that advantage is rapidly disappearing in this broadband age. We're copying entire videos around, FFS, so the fact that MP3s are a bit larger than MP4/AAC files of the same quality is pretty irrelevant.
And as other people have pointed out, the MP4/AAC format brings numerous disadvantages.
So, no thanks.
No the only reason they haven't done it would be the terabytes of extra space that would be required to store the same music twice or three times. True, with a little imagination and a small supercomputing cluster they could rip music on demand to a different format... ...Or just throw the music out there in the lowest-common denominator format and know that audio-snobs will order the CD, and everyone else will either deal with the music in it's present form, rip it into the flavor of their choosing, or be content to post snarky comments on Slashdot.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Actually no, AAC is completely patent unencumbered.
Well, as far as devices goes, here's the reasoning. Because it's currently very expensive (or impossible?) to get chip decoders for OGG Vorbis, because of lack of demand. So, the other option for decoding OGG Vorbis is a generic processor, which if you want one with enough power also costs extra dollars, and requires a lot of extra electricity. In the small-is-good, and our-player-plays-for-54-hours world of portable music players, supporting tons of formats isn't the best idea. Supporting the one format that everybody uses is the best idea.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's all well and good for someone who is tech literate to say that, but if Amazon are going to make a success of this it has to mean something to the average iPod user - even more so to the millions of cheap MP3 player users. If you start throwing different formats at these people they will just get confused and stay away.
As for quality, MP3 is sufficient for most of the population (even if you and I can hear the flaws), just as mid-priced systems with low-grade speaker sound fine to the millions who buy them.
We need to get the idea of DRM-free music accepted as the only way to buy music first, then stores can begin to introduce alternative formats.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
...is to simply make CDs cost a reasonable amount. Oh, and have more than 1 good song on them.
Let customers then encode as they see fit. I certainly don't want to pay for stuff that is lower quality, and cannot be used as a master to re-encode in different formats, or the same format with VBR, etc.
It's not iTunes that bothers me
(the gapfree playback is a lot better than others)
it's that POS quicktime that you need to install.
Amarok and Winamp can both play AAC/M4A with just the codec.
I'm guessing it's DRM related.
Acid House saves Souls
at only $1000 per track
Seems like Cowon (aka iAudio) has figured these problems out. Many of their players support Ogg and FLAC. I nag them from time to time to add Matroska to the list of formats their video players support.
He's wrong. The big difference?
"One Moment Please.
Connecting to the iTunes Store.
Loading
We are unable to find iTunes on your computer. "
You apparantly cannot buy MP3 (or anything else) without the iTunes application installed. I cannot do that on my workplace machine (well I could, but I won't). I cannot do that on my home machines because they're linux. Well, if I could, I would not. But if I can access a huge library of MP3 for a reasonable price and use just my web browser...well pretty much a given, isn't it?!
I don't bother with Mp3, lossy is fine for singles but an album download should be flac.
Clearly the industry is making steps in the right direction but there's still no signs of them having any real clue.
It doesn't say in TFA if it will be. I do assume it will be available through the other Amazon channels: www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, etc.
I'd like to be able to buy DRM-free, major tunes online aside from Emusic.com, where, except for a few selected tracks, everything is generally available for purchase anywhere in the world. iTunes, Napster, etc, DRM-infested as they are, would have made a killing by not limiting purchases to the US alone. Until they do open up, and I hope Amazon does, my purchases (and I know I'm not alone) would be limited to Emusic.com and several indie sites.
When I rip today, I still rip to high-bitrate MP3. Yes, I know I would get more "bang for my buck" using a more modern format like wma, aac, or ogg. But, when I rip to MP3, I *know* it will be supported on everything from my Tivo, to my Xbox360, to whatever MP3 player I choose in the future.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If that's the case, it won't be hard to remove those watermarks, I'm sure there will be some tool available quickly to strip them out.
Hell, just decoding and re-encoding would probably work, if you're willing to take the hit of a further loss of sound quality.
MP3s became very popular because the files were relatively small and hence, easier to download. There was a huge boom in downloaded and shared MP3s. But that was then (some 5-8 years ago), and this is now. We gots bandwidth. Why not offer the tracks in a lossless compressed formal, like FLAC? Or heck, uncompressed PCM? If I'm going to pay for the actual song, I want it in the best quality possible.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The fight against DRM seems to be heating up. MP3s seem to be getting more of the attention with regards to removing DRM. Why is it mostly music? Why aren't we getting the same for movies?
ilovegeorgebush
Excuse #1: Cannot play MP4's on an MP3 player
Explaining to the average music consumer that they need to upgrade their MP3 player to an MP4 player is like explaining to a person with cataracts that they need to upgrade from regular TV to HD. Sure, it's the future, but don't expect them to run to the store any time soon. Without a groundswell of new consumers flocking to MP4, retailers are hard pressed to justify moving to MP4. Again, think HD.
Perhaps someone should find a legislator to sponsor a bill to require music retailers to move to MP4 by 2010 so we can be forced to pay for high-definition music along with our high-definition video.
Error:
The big downside to me with iTunes is the same thing that keeps me using a Quicktime clone instead of Quicktime itself--namely, that iTunes and Quicktime are VERY aggressive about burying themselves deep into your computer and running in the background, consuming resources and making it very difficult to uninstall them (almost as bad as Realtime). The last time I installed Quicktime it buried itself in my system tray, overwrote my Quicktime clone, associated itself with formats that I specifically told it not to, and would not completely uninstall (I had to go into the registry and manually remove all references to it).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Exactly - And I don't want any of the three of those, much less all three.
Especially ease of use. I hate that.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
All of Amazon's content will be DRM free, only a portion of iTune's content will be DRM free. IMO siding with the more moral of the companies (and in this case that would be Amazon as I'm only talking sales of music, not one-click patents) gives them a reward and others an incentive to fucking catch up.
As with the MP3 format [3] , no licenses or payments are required to be able to stream or distribute content in AAC format. [4] This reason alone makes AAC a much more attractive format for distributing content, particularly streaming content (such as Internet radio).
However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs. [5] It is for this reason FOSS implementations such as FAAC and FAAD are distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement.
AAC requires a patent license, and thus uses proprietary technology. But contrary to popular belief, it is not the property of a single company, having been developed in a standards-making organization.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I love my IPOD too, Apple has made a lot of good hardware over the years. I guess what I look forward to most is the far-fetched idea that apple will wise up and remove DRM from their files. You are right, a boy can dream.
So perhaps gearing the Zune and Vista towards DRM was a bad move on Microsoft's part? Wow, I didn't see that coming.
Because it's currently very expensive (or impossible?) to get chip decoders for OGG Vorbis, because of lack of demand.
That may have been true a few years ago, but most of the current Portable Media Players are more than capable of handling the decoding of OGG files and would be pretty trivial to add support to their players. I really think their is a more of a "politcal" reason for not supporting OGG files anymore (not sure what it is, but for some reason companies don't want OGG files catching on).
BTW: I just purchased a Sandisk Sansa e260 series player to be used with my entire collection of OGG Vorbis files - the trick is to simply install Rockbox on it to use instead of the crap firmware it comes with.
Anyone else find it odd and annoying that 1/2 of that press release was actually about the MP3 store, and the rest was boilerplate "About Amazon.com" and SEC disclosure stuff? Put differently, all the legal stuff totaled up to as much text as the announcement itself.
Matroska is a container, not a format.
It's much easier to do with a portable video player because you can charge a lot more, and you're going to need the processing power to decode the video anyway. You can also charge a lot more for the player because it does a lot more for the consumer. But for most portable music only players, it's still a lot of trouble to add Ogg Vorbis support.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Your missing the important thing, MP3 players while small still aren't that big. Most people I know either own a Ipod Nano or a generic MP3 player (around 1GB memory.) Sure you can fit alot of songs onto a 4GB nano, but you find people prefer hundreds of songs over dozens.
I have a WM5 phone with a 2GB memory card it shuffles its way through 10GB of 192kbps quality MP3's. If I could I would own a 10GB memory card, because I own low quality headphones i downgrade the MP3's to 128Kbps. For most people that isn't an option, or something their even aware off. To explain to a girl (over the phone) how to rip a CD to MP3 (using Itunes) so they would go on her MP3 player took me 25 minutes. So the idea of having a master MP3 and copying lower quality versions of it really is a no no unless Itunes and WMP improve the setup wizards.
Once MP3 players like the Nano start coming in 10/20GB models and the cheap alternatives are 10GB/20GB's then you'll start seeing a drive to quality because people will reach the point where all the music they want to ever listen to is on the device. I still doubt that OGG or Flac will make much headway because everyone knows about MP3's and saying something is an Ogg player will confuse most people for a while.
It's not just the video players. Just picking one at random, the flash-based iAudio T2 supports Ogg and FLAC and sells for about $100.
The reason is that MP3s play in every player without conversion. Most players can't convert on the fly. Media Monkey can, though not to MP4 yet, and even with a fast machine its slower than a straight copy,
I would prefer FLAC (or even APE, since I just transcode to FLAC), but to be popular you have to be simple. MP3 is simple. You also need to appear to be "compact", so they'll proabably send them out at 128 or - if we're luckly 192kb. That may sound silly, but imagine the iTMS commercial that touts "If you download from iTMS, your player will hold twice as many songs as the leading competitor." Stupid but true.
Now, if they were to offer a FLAC option, that would be awesome - but I'm not holding my breath. Somebody needs to swipe the AllOfMP3 engine, if you want to know my opinion. Now that the DRM beast is retreating, you may as well let people download whatever bit rate they want.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Oh no! Terabytes of extra space!! Oh, the humanity... oh, wait, it's 2007 and for a company the size of Amazon or Apple a few terabytes of extra storage could easily be absorbed in their monthly nominal running costs. The reason nobody has done it is that the vast majority of people are happy to buy MP3's. Sure, they might prefer higher quality in the same way as they'd prefer a Ferrari while they're still perfectly happy to drive a Ford. At the end of the day it's not worth going that extra mile as a music store and offering better quality when all it will net you are higher bandwidth fees and one or two audiophiles. If people are happy with what you're selling them 99% of the time, it'd be pretty insane to restructure your business model to cater to the 1%.
Go back an play in your sandbox son.
Saying that storage requirements can be solved by simply buying a bigger hard drive is like saying you can fix your supply chain problems by throwing up more shelves.
And if you need me to explain the analogy you reek of FAIL.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
You need Quicktime because iTunes uses Quicktime's audio and video playback engines. If you want to add formats to playback (Ogg Vorbis, for example) in either Quicktime or iTunes, you add the plugin to Quicktime's plugins directory
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I really think their is a more of a "politcal" reason for not supporting OGG files anymore (not sure what it is, but for some reason companies don't want OGG files catching on).
So, are you saying there is some sort of conspiracy between music player makers and the fraunhofer institute to keep ogg support off players? I don't buy that for a second. For me there can be no doubt that ogg is more expensive to support, or all players would support it.
You're right. The songs are "watermarked" with your info. Make sure your copies do not end up in the wrong hands, for example, if you computer is stolen or whatever.
a) MP3 players MUST have mp3 capability
b) For the windows market, it MUST have WMA capability
c) For WMP commerce, it MUST have WMA DRM capability
now each of these cost in licensing and hardware. So Ogg has a smaller base and requires more hardware.
iRiver, Neuros and several other players manage Ogg and Ogg is often used in transporting music in games. So I only buy from these people. However, there are only so many mp3 players one needs: HDD jukebox and flash player for ruggedness seems all, as long as you bought >20GB hard drives: from the portable player, there usually isn't the fidelity to record better than 128kbs in the newer codecs and even drop down to 96kbs will normally be indistinguishable through the portable player.
So it's only the "fad" (iTunes) or "churn, burn and never relearn" (Windows) lines that make any sort of continuing profit. One because you MUST have the latest and the other because they keep dropping support.
I'm pretty sure the A3 supports Matroska (still a horrible name).
sic transit gloria mundi
Ah. Another Gentoo user.
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So, are you saying there is some sort of conspiracy between music player makers and the fraunhofer institute to keep ogg support off players? For me there can be no doubt that ogg is more expensive to support, or all players would support it.
Then what other reason do you give why ipods, sansas, gigabeats, etc. don't support OGG files out of the box (while rockbox happily runs on these devices) ? It would be very minimal (price wise and man-power wise) for these companies to support OGG files as their hardware is more than powerful enough and their are large amounts of code readily available to reference so implementation would be extremely easy.
Add to this the fact that it does cost licensing fees to support the MP3, WMA, .... formats, while the OGG format does not have these fees. So yes, I really believe their is something fishy about the lack of OGG support on these consumer devices, it may or not be the fraunhofer institute, but someone of "power" is trying to keep OGGs from catching on.
Theoretically, a store could use the mp3PRO format to get the best of all worlds, couldn't they? A 128 bps mp3PRO file would play on every MP3-compatible device with quality comparable to MP3. And any device (like the PC, or a media center of some kind) which is mp3PRO-aware would automatically play them with superior sound quality.
From the end-user's point of view, I think this would be an awesome idea. But then again, the format doesn't have a very good track record of adoption so far, and there may be licensing issues which make it infeasible. But I don't know. It's a good idea which nobody talks about, so I doubt it'll go anywhere.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I've heard a lot about this ape and it's the reason why I'm mp3 only. Basically I've read up about ape, sounds really good, sounds interesting. However I've tried using ape which contained a japanese artist. Let's just say no player or converter worked 100 percent of the time.
.ape and .cue files as well, which if ape allows is just frightening.
I couldn't find a single way to batch these files to Mp3, I saw
As you said Mp3s are simple, small and easier to use. OGG, FLAC, and APE have annoyed me in the past and will annoy me again in the future, not because they are any worse, but because their better features come at a price of compatibility and size.
There is a very simple reason why DRM-free music is likely to be more expensive than the DRMed version, it is more valuable to the consumer. Think about it, what would you rather have? Because the DRM doesn't work anyway the only real difference between DRMed and DRM free music is that DRMed music adds an extra inconvenience. This makes it less desirable to consumers and thus companies will have to charge less to get the same demand. That the price of both DRMed and DRM-free music is high compared to CDs is simply a case of cartels, limited competition and ignorance from consumers. If people only ever bought music from the cheaper sites the more expensive distributors would have no choice but to lower their prices. Prices are high because people put up with it. I don't know if it will last or not, but if the big labels don't bring their prices down I'd think it is only a question of time before some large company takes advantage of the situation and run over them when they least expect it. Just imagine what would happen if Google decided to join the game with Free advert financed downloads. The RIAA wouldn't even know what hit them...
I wonder what their store will "look" like. Will it exist entirely within the web browser? Will they help organize your .mp3 library on your computer? Are they going to try to create their own music "ecosystem" to compete with iTunes/iTMS? Amazon could do anything here.
Personally, I think making the store web-based would be a plus. But I think if they don't help manage your library, that's a minus. This being Amazon, I'm going to guess it will be web-based: click to download, and they'll forgo any attempts to help manage your library, unless you install some kind of browser plugin. The plugin would be optional, but if you had it, it would manage your downloads and organize your library for you. I'm just speculating, though. It'll be interesting to see how they actually do it.
'' Yes, MP3 is an aging format. But it is almost universally supported... ''
AAC is almost universally supported. All iPods play it.
And since Microsoft has released a dark-brown AAC player, all those companies who went with Microsoft's PlayForSure and were afraid to support AAC because they didn't want to upset Microsoft will switch over very soon as well.
There is also the slight matter of MP3 patent trolls, who have already won a judgement against Microsoft for more than $1bn.
Really, then how does AllOfMP3 offer this for their Online Encoding Exclusives? Their Online Encoding Exclusives library seems to be the majority of their music, and they offer it in MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, FLAC, Monkey's Audio, and WAV format. They seem to transcode the WAV file to whatever format the buyer chooses.
Regardless of how you feel about AllOfMP3's compliance with copyright law, you can't deny that they have much less computing power than Apple with iTunes or Amazon, and yet they figured out how to do this without breaking the bank.
I know, hard to believe that allofmp3 can't be trusted, right?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
They actually make it fairly clear when the source is from WAV (thus you get a good transcode) or "other" (usually 128Kbps MP3).
If you purchase based on the available information, you can usually but the best possible quality, without spending more.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
It's particularly easy to dream about things that happened last month...
What bitrate are they offering? TFA makes no mention of this. If the mp3s are 192 kbps or lower, then they're no use to me.
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
mka's just a container; write a script to mux/demux the track as needed when you load music into the player.
Arby's had this ad campaign many years ago about Arby's being for adults or whatever. My wife and I will never forget that they printed "Premium Beverage" on their cups as part of this.
Yeah. Premium beverages. e.g. 7up.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The Telechips TCC72x supports OGG.
Not without some extra software mind you and I have no idea about the cost.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
MP3s won't stop until all the MP3 players that people own die. And all new players that people buy support something else.
If all I've got is a cassette player, I'm not going to buy CDs, no matter how much better they are.
Very good point.
AMEN!!!
No one has really ever verified the assertion that Ogg Vorbis is not covered by any patents. The patent situation for Vorbis is a big unknown whereas it is well established for MP3 and AAC (and WMA for manufacturers that use it). If a big manufacturer researched Vorbis' patent situation and found it infringed on some patents somewhere they would have spent all that time and money for nothing. If they avoid Vorbis all together it costs them nothing. An insignificant number of people even know what Ogg Vorbis is and only a fraction of that will only buy a music player that supports it. Small manufacturers are free to include Ogg Vorbis support because people holding submarine patents covering technology in Vorbis don't give a shit about them. They're waiting for someone actually making money to support the codec.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The problem is, when they indicate the source is WAV, it's often not. Or perhaps, at some point an mp3 was transcoded to WAV, and then re-ripped to your mp3 bitrate of choice. Either way, you're paying for something that you might believe you're getting, when you're not. But don't take my word for it. Go buy 5 random tracks at 256k, throw them into your audio app of choice that shows you a spectral analysis, and see for yourself.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
You need to get Media Monkey and set up your portable devices with custom convert-on-the-fly sync rules. It's easy - even I managed to do it. If you've got a pretty static collection, you can convert-sync to another directory. That's what I did when my wife got an ipod - converted the 80GB of FLAC to 15GB of MP3, then let her sift it down to the 8GB of her device memory by cutting out the chuncks of my collection she never listens to. She's happy with iTunes, and I rip all our CDs and just give her an MP3 copy, so there are few tears involved.
.cue, etc. and just keep the base files when I useually download from the net. I always have to go in and clean up the tags anyway - even on my own rips - since I'm particular about my genre and album-artist settings.
I used to use foobar, but it takes a bit of customization to really be useful as a full-time app, and I don't have that kind of time or patience. MM does most everything for me, and tagging is pretty easy. Version 3 is looking to be pretty cool.
APE is just another lossless. Foobar2000 is a quick and dirty way to transcode, and lossless-lossless is (naturally) lossless - so you can swap out to a new format in the future if you really decide you hate what you're using. I actually converted my whole collection with foobar once - took about 3 days, but it worked. I always delete
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Because it's currently very expensive (or impossible?) to get chip decoders for OGG Vorbis, because of lack of demand.
.ogg although the player will play Ogg Vorbis files if they have an .mp3 extension. Reflashing the firmware to the international version lets it appear as a USB storage device and load .ogg files.)
VLSI offers their VS1000 Ogg Vorbis decoder (with built in USB and flash interface) for $4 each, quantity 500. No doubt much less in higher quantities. You can get onesies for less than $10 from SparkFun.
Ogg Vorbis is actually a pretty popular encoding for low end embedded devices because there's no licensing involved.
The real problem is with digital music players that also want to be able to play WMA files (which is what Windows Media Player will helpfully rip your CDs to). I suspect that Microsoft leans on the manufacturers a little to make the firmware rather non-cooperative with Ogg, in return for WMA licensing. (This is the case with eg. Samsung YP-T9; the US/Canada firmware only wants to load via MTP, and the provided software doesn't recognize
-- Alastair
So, are you saying there is some sort of conspiracy between music player makers and the fraunhofer institute to keep ogg support off players?
More likely between the player makers and Microsoft, of the same sort we've seen Microsoft do to PC makers: "Sure, we'll license {Windows, WMA} to you -- it will cost $X/unit, or ($X-$Y)/unit if you don't load {Netscape, Ogg} on it." (And since you have to dig for the settings to make Windows Media Player rip CDs to mp3 instead of one of the WMA options (and it doesn't rip to Ogg at all), Joe User is probably going to want WMA capability.)
-- Alastair
While I am shocked... shocked. The fact is, what I downloaded sounded good enough to keep me coming back for more business. The nature of the product means if they had cheated so that I could see it then I would have stopped.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Exactly - And I don't want any of the three of those, much less all three.
Especially ease of use. I hate that.
-Ted Using mp3 is complicated? How much easier than double-click on virtually any computer and/or throw on virtually any device can you get?
I used every single one of those programs and none of them worked 100 percent of the time, most were unable to open the files. If the format was ready, then this shouldn't be a problem. A couple players could play them all but playing the music to reencode it as mp3s is such a bastardization it shouldn't be allowable.
There doesn't need to be a conspiracy, one can achieve the same ends with many businesses pushing for the same thing—business managers believe that MP3 is a file format where one can pay off all the right people and organizations then go about doing business. Hence, businesses believe they should favor MP3 over Ogg Vorbis.
This is, of course, an invalid line of reasoning because all of the patent holders are not known. In fact, in February 2007 Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.5B judgment against Microsoft for patent infringement. Whether Microsoft successfully appeals the decision or not, the lesson is there to be learned: so long as software patents exist every programmer in patent-encumbered countries are threatened by them.
Digital Citizen
Well it looks like the ball is rolling, with Amazon and Apple onboard and sites like Grooveshark and We7 coming up the old DRM based music services may be heading towards extinction.
No the quality is not better at any given bitrate. At high bitrates (>128kbit) mp3 is as good as AAC with a decent encoders (which have improved a lot). Given much better support for mp3 there no reason to switch.
Now using lossless encoding like flac would be nice.
mp3PRO is cool, but the Wiki says that there are no portable players on the market right now that can play it properly, and all the software out there to do it is binary-only.
Why not give out flac's, and let people do whatever they want with em. Better yet, encode on the fly to whichever format the customer wants.
Have you ever flown a major European airline? I can assure you, it is a pleasure, and difference in service and attitude between European and US airlines is shining day and blackest night.
Ryanair is a shining example of service?
My $130 Nintendo DS Lite has a $40 attachment called R4 that lets it play MP3, Vorbis, and tracked music, as well as loads of other features. And it gets Good Enough(tm) battery life.
I was able to obtain most of the BBC Music Magazine winners this year on eMusic.
If you are a classical music buff and care about DRM free music you should look at eMusic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I really think their is a more of a "politcal" reason for not supporting OGG files
The reason is pretty simple and boring, which is why geeks have such a hard time believing it. Basically, Thompson has claimed that Ogg "probably" infringes on one or more of their patents, so nobody can say with certainty that supporting Ogg won't someday get them sued. The bigger makers would rather just pay a license fee up front than risk future litigation. Big companies are often quite timid.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.