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EMI Says ITMS DRM-Free Music Selling Well
An anonymous reader writes "'The initial results of DRM-free music are good' says Lauren Berkowitz, a senior vice president of EMI, at a music industry conference in New York. Berkowitz went on to say that the early results from iTunes indicate that DRM-free offerings may boost revenue from digital albums as well as individual songs."
Who'd have thought that treating your customers with respect and giving them what they want would pay off?
Amazing!
that with 2 earlier articles - making DVD copying even more illegal (if that were at all possible), and a "desire" for a Canadian DMCA, that we "now just find out" people are willing to pay for DRM-free content. I did my part and paid for a couple of tracks that I bought with DRM and "upgraded" to the DRM-free version, and will continue to do so as more become available, and as content I want becomes available DRM-free. Let's really show them where we willing to spend our $. Seems to be the only thing they listen to ...
Well if they are willing to go drm-free, how about a site
to buy their 'tunes if you are NOT running M$.
We need an itunes for Linux.
Sell the songs in CD (or better) lossless format, with no DRM, and then I'll be a customer!!!
This first step, is a baby step...a good one but, a small one. Sell me online what I can buy in a store (quality) without DRM, and then, you've got it right. I'll be buying pretty much all my music online.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I had bought about 200 songs off iTMS in the 2 years i have been using it. Not a single song was from EMI.
I don't know what that is important to this discussion, but if felt like sharing.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
I have a soft spot for artists getting screwed by technology. Every technological advance seems to fall on artists particularly hard, so, while I really do hate the RIAA and the music industry and movie industry, I still think there might be a place so someone could show pictures of their work on the internet without having them stolen.
My wife used to use Napster (pre-lawsuit), and Kazaa, but she switched to iTunes because iTunes was more convenient and not choked full of ads, and paying a $1 a song is not so bad. If you add the threat of RIAA letters, then, iTunes seems like a pretty good deal indeed. She also feels a need to support the artists.
But really, the value of iTunes is the convenience and cleanliness, and there's no reason someone could not make a similar, ad-free thing but for file sharing writ large. Really, DRM free on iTunes is predicated on the fact that the recording industry must feel like it is getting some sort of handle on musical file sharing - that is, RIAA lawsuits to music downloaders must actually be working. Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
Then, musicians would starve.
This is my sig.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I actually prefer DRM music. DRM adds a certain ineffable flavor to otherwise bland music. It's like a sprinkle of cinammon on hot chocolate. The bass sounds more meaty and the singers sound just a little more angelic and bird-like.
I know, I know, I'm a bit of an audiophiliac. I don't want to sound too pretentious. But give it a try! You'll see. Music just sounds better with DRM.
yours truly,
David Massey
The more significant figures would be whether the amount of EMI music being passed on peer to peer services has changed. I highly doubt it has increased more than its usual variance (it may even have decreased), and I hope the other RIAA companies notice this. I'm of the opinion that there's roughly a fixed number of people who would pirate regardless, and distributing music without DRM won't change this. However making music harder to listen due to DRM might actually drive piracy numbers up.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Somehow, I think EMI knew that selling DRM-free tracks would make a profit all along.
1. Release DRM-laden, horrific quality tracks
2. Watch consumers buy tracks
3. Wait for consumers to grow angry and realize the restrictions placed on their media
4. Release DRM-free, slightly better tracks
5. Wait for the consumers to REBUY or 'upgrade' all their tracks
6. ???
7. Profit!!
THEN the second round
8. Release slightly better quality tracks...
9. Wait for the consumers to REBUY or 'upgrade' all their tracks...
FLAC takes less CPU to decode than MP3, AAC, WavePak, or Vorbis.
Sell the songs in CD (or better) lossless format, with no DRM, and then I'll be a customer!!!
Have you actually given yourself a blind listening test? 256 kbps AAC is very, very good. I have never seen a study where anyone could tell the difference between 256 kbps files and uncompressed files a significant fraction of the time. Many people claim that they don't like the sound of MP3 or AAC compression, even at such a high bitrate, but they don't back it up with a real test to prove it.
Do you think that photo sites should get rid of JPEGs and replace them with uncompressed TIFFs, too? I think that JPEG at the 99% quality setting is a fair comparison to AAC 256 kbps.
Give me a way to do my work once, doesn't matter what it is, and live from it until I'm dead, and I'll think it's fair for musicians to have the same privilege. Otherwise, forget it. It's simply fair that they work everyday, as everyone else does, by doing whatever they're good at, as everyone else also does. Copyright is at best illogical, at worst an aberration.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Actually, they didn't raise the prices unless you are buying individual tracks.
I *RARELY* buy individual tracks unless I am evaluating a single and want to see if I want to buy the next one. In which case, I have like 6 months to buy the rest of the album at the cost of said album minus the cost of the tracks I've already bought.
If you want singles, feel free to get hosed. Singles have ALWAYS been the way the industry made money until recently (in which time they decided albums were pretty much going to be one single mixed with lots of shit).
Sell the songs in CD (or better) lossless format, with no DRM, and then I'll be a customer!!!
You really think you can tell the difference between CD-quality and 256kbps AAC? Doubtful. I call BS. And even if you can tell the difference, and the difference is obvious enough to you that you care, you're one in a billion. For pretty much everyone, 256kbps is near enough to lossless that you could treat it as lossless (even transcode it to another format) and never be able to tell the difference.
And for that miniscule nearly-undetectable drop in quality, you're cutting your download time, increasing the amount of songs you can hold on your mp3 player, and maybe even increasing battery time.
Not true.
Copying CDs has been pretty easy for a long time now... but musicians haven't starved.
Copying copyrighted music has always been illegal... the DMCA didn't make it "more illegal" or whatever.
Some (I would argue most) people really do like to follow the law, even when it's easy not too... those people will always continue to buy the music they want to hear. Not too mention that some of us feel _good_ about buying cds because we like to support artists that we enjoy (even if most of the money doesn't go to them, more cds sold = good chance of another from the same artist).
Really... assuming that everyone in the US (or world) would break the law and not give any compensation for any entertainment they enjoy is just foolish. I think the RIAA and MPAA forget this sometimes... that 99% of people in the world are actually good people who like to do the right thing.
Friedmud
You mean like http://www.emusic.com/? Funny, I've been buying DRM-free music from those "starving artists" since way back, and they seem to be doing perfectly fine as is.
I wish apple would offer this option to indie musicians (like me), I'd sign up for straight away.
(strictly speaking they'd have to offer it to the the aggregators like tunecore that people like me use)
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
This depends on how much the economies of scale affects your industry. With software distributed electronically, this is especially true. The first one may cost $10M to develop, but every copy after that is effectively free, thus reducing price to encourage sales can make a huge difference in profits.
If you make a one-off embedded controller for a particular purpose and you expect to sell 10 annually, reducing your price will definitely reduce your profits.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
They are slowly expanding the set of DRM free songs, and have said they will allow anyone that wants to use this to do so - contact them.
I didn't have any songs that were DRM free at launch of iTunes+, but just recently two came up as upgradeable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with you Dominic that 256 kbps AAC may sound fine. But what if you want to play it on a device that doesn't support AAC? If you re-encode a lossy format it may not sound so good anymore. I rip my cds to FLAC so that I have a choice later in what format I want to listen to the music in. A simple shell script is all that is needed to convert a directory full of flac files to MP3 or Ogg. Disk space and bandwidth are cheap, but rebuying music in another format is not.
This is the single biggest, highest profile way we can get the message to the industry that DRM doesn't pay.
So please, find a Mac or Windows box if you have to, but go buy something from the iTunes music store. Even if it's just one album and you then shunt the AAC files back to Linux to listen to.
Personally, I recommend something from the Mute back-catalog.
(And yes, I've bought 2 albums so far, I plan to keep buying preferentially from iTMS at least until the other labels get the message.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
> For example, you can mark a gif file by inserting information in unused portions of the color table and leaving the image data > completely untouched. Is this a watermark by pour definition? Or is it one only if used color entries or pixel entries are altered? > Or is it a watermark of the container, but not the data (even though it is potential data...)?
The defining feature of a digital watermark is that it cannot be removed given only the watermarked data. That is its point. A digital photograph emblazoned with a watermark cannot readily be transformed into the original. A digital video file with an invisible-to-the-human-eye-digiatl-watermark inserted to allow the owners of the video's copyright to see who has leaked a copy if it to p2p is useful only because the altered bits cannot be reset to their original state.
So you see, the idea of calling this a watermark isn't just fudging the concept slightly. It's nonsense. It is completely trivial to remove the identifying information, so it is innapropriate to call it a watermark because it neither performs the function nor attempts to perform the function of a watermark.
I've got a pretty decent home system. I can hear the difference of good vs bad recording on it...even with ears not being what they used to be.
I prefer to have the best quality I can have for home listening, and to rip to lossy formats for horrible listening environments like the car and on the portable for the gym. I mean, why would anyone not want the best possibly copy for perm. storage, and then rip from that to suit needs? Seems like a no brainer for me. I don't have the fastest connection at home (about 7mbit down), but, its fast enough that downloading a whole uncompressed cd isn't THAT bad...lossless AAC would not be a big deal.
I've got good speakers and a decent amp to run them on and a decent subwoofer and soon to get a newer processer. I've got klipsch center channel, and some day hope to round out the surround with klipsch heresey's or the like.
No, I didn't plunk down a bunch of $$ all at once, but, have been building my stereo since I was 12...a piece here and there, swapping out things over the years. It is very efficient and I can hear differences in music on it. On good recordings, you can hear people breathing in the background...
I'm not an 'audiophile'...I don't freeze my stereo cables...but, I do and always have as a kid, appreciated good sound reproduction...I bought what sounded best to my ears. Others that have heard my system agree often that it is good. So, for people out there (there has to be more than just me) that want good sound for home listening...they want the best source they can get for that.....and go from there for poorer listening environments.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Because it means they can charge 'extra' for the new-improved version.
It costs them nothing more to produce.
They can charge extra because it is different. Who ever said that retail price was based on the cost to produce? A $20 widget doesn't cost $10 more to produce than a $10 widget with fewer features.
By now introducing DRM-less tracks, EMI have now made an extra £18 by providing something I should have got in the first place.
EMI doesn't make any more money unless you choose to buy. Why did you buy it in the first place if you "should have" gotten something more?
If they add another 'upgrade' to 320kbps quality audio [...]
They could charge whatever they want, but that doesn't mean anyone has to pay it. Why is that hard to comprehend?
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
And obfuscating it further will help what exactly? /not/ a watermark.
I agree with the grandparent that tag info is
If it is, is including your email in the filename a watermark too? Is placing a (separate) file with your email on a CD with aac files a watermark? Is just printing your name on the CD? Is printing it on a jewel case? All we're doing is playing around (deliberately to the absurd in my example) with what we consider the black box we wish to consider "the content in question". Is it the jewelcase and all that is inside? Is it the CD? The iso? Directory? file? aac stream?
Is the meaning of "watermarking" a function of how dumb consumers are, thus incapable of grokking what lays beneath the file layer? The answer, in case you haven't figured out, is NO.
It's a slippery slope you're jumping on, and there's nothing but useless terms too meaningless to be of any use at the bottom. Just drags us one step closer to an idiocracy.
I don't see why we need to dumb our language down to the lowest common denominator. It may be you prefer to do things in the US, I think it's outright idiocy. Do we need to start giving "detergent" or "carbon" a new meaning because the average person is clueless in chemistry? No. You either talk the talk or accept the definitions of people who do.
Watermarking refers to embedding data in the media data. Appended stuff that is meaningless in the context of the data is just that. Appended stuff. Think back to where watermarking came from - marking paper. Would scribbling a note (on the same piece of paper, at the bottom) with your name on it constitute a watermark? No. The "water" in "watermark" has a reason for being there - to lay the extra data *on top* of the existing document.
-
That does not imply a unique value per file the way the term "Watermarking" does automatically.
Watermarking means no such thing.
Watermarks were used in drafts, demos, and other such things, partly to identify them as such and partly to prevent someone from stealing it. e.g. if you hired a design firm to create a poster for you they might send you a watermarked draft so that you could see the finished result, but if you decided not to pay for it, the poster was still useless because it had a giant watermark through the middle that said 'draft copy - property of design company'. Once you'd approved and paid, they'd send you an un-watermarked version for you to reproduce.
Watermwarks were also used in coporate letterhead, cheques, and other docuements to help prevent forgery and authenticate that they were genuine. For the most part this was just used to help foil attacks. The same way most banks.
Never to uniquely identify individual documents.
but I would still argue in the shift to the digital domain the meaning is more of uniqueness than ability to remove
Again not true. With the digital transition, the primary motivation for watermarks was, as before, to 'damage' files so that people could see images but not steal them due to the watermark. (or more precisely, they could steal the watermarked image, but because the mark was hard to remove it wasn't worth it, and you couldn't leave the mark on for obvious reasons.)
Watermarks have been used for a long time on sites hosting high res photos or other digital art to prevent people from just downloading the image and using it. In order to get an image with the WATERMARK removed, you had to pay for the picture. Because the watermarks were translucent and applied over of the picture they are relatively difficult to simply remove.
Only very recently has watermarking technology been applied like a serial number, to uniquely identifying documents or files.
** Quite Simply there is no 'automatic' association with unique identifiers and watermarks. **
Aha, but that is external to the device, visible and alterable (potentially) by the user. The iTunes mark is not.
The itunes meta tag is not part of the song data, although it is in the same file.
It is visible in the sense that *any* program that can view the meta tags can see it -- and iTunes software itself will show you this information if you tell it to show info about the song. And the itunes tag is EASILY removed and or altered which is the antithesis of a watermark.
The iTunes tag is as much a 'watermark', as putting your email address in the filename.
And a watermark is just as identifiable if a record of which marks were sent to who is kept.
This whole 'invisible digital watermark serial number thats hard to remove' thing is pretty new, and really isn't entirely in keeping with the historical meaning or use of watermarks. Moreover, the apple meta tag is really none of those things. Its not invisible, not hard to remove.
If you didn't like the analagy of the laptop serial number because it was visible and alterable. Consider that at least half a dozen parts inside the laptop are also serialized. And that even if you scratch off the laptop serial number, if someone found the laptop they could not only infer what that number was, but potentially also who bought it.
Point is: laptops aren't 'watermarked' despite having serial numbers. And neither are iTunes files.
Well, unlike FairPlay-music, AAC is a standard supported by a huge range of devices. Probably doubly so as non-iPod owners can buy AACs now. Yes, if you have a non-AAC player now which is very important to you this might be an issue, but honestly... this will be a complete non-issue unless you go far out of your way to buy an AAC-incapable player.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The interesting issue that always comes up with independents (who are used to not only writing and performing their music, but actively manufacturing and promoting it as well), is that this mentality comes out: "All I need is big site X, because everyone's heard of it!" With iTunes, you're virtually guaranteed to get buried on the new releases section, and you lose out on a lot of potential fans/consumers because advertising real estate is incredibly limited.
What about, however, sync licensing? Ringtones? OTA downloads? What about exploiting pre-release exclusives? What about getting front-page feature spots? Certainly, the market adjusts when consumers and producers find that happy equilibrium price. When you're dealing with an almost-perfectly inelastic supply curve, this really comes down to consumer preference. There's no reason to preclude iTunes from the overall strategy by going niche-vendor-only. However, considering Cupertino's general reticence toward helping independent distributors to provide content, especially in a DRM-free format, I'd venture that independent artists have even less of a chance of getting this to happen.
From a business standpoint, I'd rather make 60% of something than 100% of nothing. Most digital distributors are dying to find good, new talent, and there are ones specialized in just about every genre you could want. Exclusivity typically comes up for working the distribution, but artists still retain ownership of their masters and publishing rights. Within any genre, there's at least one distro that allows the deal to be terminated by the artist at any given time for dissatisfaction with the service (we're one such). Getting proper distribution (which includes advertisement, feature spots, and maximizing price points within the target demographic) isn't as hard as most artists think.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.