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Web Radio Negotiations Carry Poison Pill
Adambomb writes "It seems that the deal that saved Net radio at the 11th hour, the new terms that would limit the maximum fee for multiple-channel Web radio broadcasts, contains a hook. To qualify for the cap, broadcasters must work to ensure that stream-ripping is not feasible. Given that the analog hole will always exist as far as I can imagine in such scenarios, is this even possible?" The article mentions the measures Net stations could easily take but have been reluctant to — lowering bit rates, playing jingles over the music, cross-fading songs. How long before they are backed into using these techniques?
I do. Last.fm is great for my musical needs, and BBC Radio 4 & 7 for comedy.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
When I lived in Italy, I noticed the DJs always talked over the first and last 20 seconds of every song. A friend told me it was so that people don't record the music.
It's kind of annoying, but understandable. The RIAA wants to use MTV and radio as an advertisement for CDs and DVDs. The artists want to use the CDs and DVDs as an advertisement for live performances. The radio stations want to use music as a filler between their own advertisements.
In the end, everyone makes money.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Today, it is impossible to listen to radio there, not because of all these problems, but because payola there is rampant, and if you are lucky, you get to listen the same 50 songs over and over and over again. Once I recorded 24 hours of radio programming, and I was able to identify a group of 8 songs (I can remember the exact number) that played at least 4 times that particular day, and one that played every 2 hours. That was a special spot on the programming called "the song of the week", played every two hours, every day, for 7 days. The other radios had a similar sport, with variations in the name ("the best of the week, the hit of the week"). It is a mafia, and it is not exclusive on U.S.
Payola killed the radio star, and the internet will kill the payola star. Well, at least one man can dream.
Cool! Now, I can hear music just like the DJ's played it back in the 70's!
Seriously though, while crossfading makes separating songs pretty much impossible, that presentation style was so distinctive. It really is a lost art, because it took real finesse for DJ's to get it sounding right with vinyl.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Even if they cut songs, talk into them and play some annoying jingle, compared to standard radio it's still gold. How often can you listen to the same crappy song before the urge to shoot the box is overwhelming? Currently, I measure my work hours in "umbrellas" (ya know that audio pollution called a song, right?). When I've heard it 8 times, my day is over, my 8 hours are done.
Does anyone really "record" off internet radio? Sit there for 12 hours like we used to in the pre-internet times in hopes that "your" song comes up and you can hit record? Oh, of course you can today just use software to do that, but still, simply sucking it from some P2P is easier.
Not to mention a "hole" that is more important than the audio hole. It's just like in real estate: Location, location, location. What keeps me from tuning into a station from Genericstan that doesn't care about the mafiaa?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's a convenience thing. Recording stuff to cassette then separating it out to get more or less what you would have bought on CD is/was a pain in the ass and took a lot of time. Stream-ripping might be theoretically equivalent but it's a lot easier - click a few buttons, go to work, come back and you have a ton of MP3s more or less identical to what you could have bought. Yes I know people wouldn't actually buy every track they hear on the radio, but even if you assume the average person might buy 1 in 100 songs they hear on the radio, with streamripping that's still lost sales because they have no incentive to do it.
Do people streamrip? Well, most stations I listen to (and I listen to net radio a lot) have text on their website saying "don't do that" so I assume it's not entirely obscure.
I suspect this will be quite easy to fix though, without DRM. Cross-fading/jingles are all simple solutions because they are fairly harmless for an actual listener, but if somebody wants to stick that track on their iPod or whatever it'll [a] be annoying for them and [b] be obvious to all their friends that they record their music off the radio, which is lame.
Actually, I use one of these. Same form factor and user interface, but with the global choice of stations that internet radio has over standard AM/FM broadcast. There are some very good Jazz stations with good bitrates in Switzerland and France that I listen to a lot, AFAIK there is nothing of the sort locally since Jazz FM became Smooth FM.
All the sound cards I own have an option to record "what you hear".
If you can hear it you can record it digitally.
Even without this there's SP-DIF connectors, etc., no analog conversion needed.
It's all moot though. So long as the RIAA sells CDs in shops then all music will have perfect copies available on P2P, no matter how much DRM they put into the online versions (sorry to break it to you, but your emperor's naked!)
No sig today...
I used to listen to di.fm quite a bit, and it was pretty cool. I was just getting into electronic music, but it was difficult to find stuff I liked, since no radio stations here (Los Angeles) play it consistantly (Granted, a few shows at night do, but you're looking at either listening to that or nothing, and you are only even given that option between a few hours on a few days.) so the net radio was perfect for me. I found it through iTunes' Radio listing, so I never was taken to the di.fm site anyway (I have since gone on my own, but that's not the point). I wound up ripping the stream for a few weeks, and after eliminating the duplicates and such, it was a nice addition to my music library, not to mention pointed me in the right direction. The stream was only 96 kbps, but that's still not unlistenable. Anyway, the point is, now I know what I like, and if any of the artists I found were performing, I'd see them. Unfortunately, many of the artists are European, so the point is moot. Oh well. Oh, and last.fm is cool for stuff like that, too, but I didn't learn about it until much later.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
I'm convinced that all this (rate hike, denied appeals, last-minute "change of heart") was orchestrated expressly to get every web broadcaster into a deal that favors the recording industry. It's disgusting, in a "Lex Luthor teasing Superman with kryptonite" sort of way.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
One of the main radio stations I listen to in the UK has a no-pirating policy:
Oh, and nobody plays mafia^WRIAA music unless it's part of a mashup, in which case it's the least of their problems.
In such a niche area like this, there's hardly any piracy; the problems only start when you're playing music "owned" by large corporations or copyright federations, which I think is very damaging to the music industry.
I've run my own radio station (a popular one at that) from my home for about 3 years. I stream at 80kbps. I've nobody complain about quality and I havent heard a single word from anyone about legality. The only thing I ever hear about my radio station is a stream of emails from indie bands who want air time OR people requesting playlists (to download I presume).
I actually like cross fading of music. Am I really in the minority about that? Given the number of music players that have the option, I can't believe that I am.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I believe that any restrictions from the RIAA can only pertain to music owned by its members. I'd love this to result in online sources providing a separate and competing channel for distribution of music not controlled by the RIAA.
The RIAA's power currently stems from one real source. They control the major channels for the marketing and distribution of music. In the past, control of recording studios and equipment has also been a big deal, but with the decreasing costs of recording equipment and improving technology, that has become less of a factor. These two factors have resulted in their ability to own most of the music that many people want to listen to.
If the online music sources were pushed away from music that was controlled by the RIAA, it could push them into providing an alternate distribution network, completely beyond the RIAA's control.
Thing is that in the UK they are f*&ked when it comes to stream ripping. Any sane person stream rips either the Freeview (digital terrestrial TV with absolutely no DRM) version if available (has higher bitrates) or the DAB version. You do end up with an MP2, but it is a perfect digital copy and free of any DRM.
If you want music, you can just stream rip the Freeview music channels, the hits, TMF, and E4 (weekend morning only for E4). Full of music videos but here is the deal while the video itself is not suitable for stream ripping, as it is overlayed with channel graphics and other stuff, the audio is and you get a nice DMR free 192kbps MP2 file with no fades when you demux it from the video. It is dead easy to cookie cutter out the tracks if you are so enclined.
It would take at least a decade to force out the existing DRM free TV and radio.
I used to listen to music quite much. I bought everything on CD. My iPod made me listen to my music more, and I bought more and more music. After a while they started putting copy-protection on CDs. Around that time I more or less stopped buying music - not as a statement... but I was annoyed and I didnt really find so much interesting music either.
A few days ago I tried www.live365.com, which I havnt used in years. It is great! If it remains open I believe I will subscribe to it (to get CD-quality no-ad radio, that I can play in my HIFI-system at home). I also think I will start buying CDs with those artists I discover at live365. Really. No promises, no threats. I just think live365 may help me find CDs to buy. If they close it I doubt I will discover those artists.
In the UK even using a VCR is technically a copyright violation - we never updated our laws to cope with the 20th century (and we have no hope with the 21st).
Of course no court in the land would prosecute someone for recording a TV programme, so the law is widely ignored, creating a worse situation since nobody gives a crap about it.
Probably longer than that. It's based on the european DVB standards (which is partly why the boxes are so cheap) and encrypting the channels has been ruled out - to the point that very few of the boxes produced since the ondigital debacle several years ago even have CAM slots.
To encrypt a music channel you'd have to force 70 million people to buy new freeview decoders (by 2012 everyone will have at least one as the analogue signal will start disappearing). Not gonna happen.
You know, I don't *like* it, and yes, I'd like to be able to rip a stream so that I can store the file and listen to it later to decide if I want to buy it, but it seems to me that the only onus on the radio stations under this "catch" is to stay vaguely abreast of those who are breaking their systems. Apple did this, quietly mending their DRM when it was broken to keep the RIAA off their back. When it comes down to it, if the RIAA and record companies are so lame that they feel they need these types of nominal assurances (and there's *always* going to be a way to get around them), then, well, I don't like it, but I'd much rather not say goodbye to Pandora and Last.fm, where I've been exposed to most of the great music I've *legally bought* in the last couple of years. On a slightly related note, I hope that Apple, with the digital distribution leverage that it has, is able to prove with its DRM-free tracks, that the old model doesn't work, but that may be too much to ask from the RIAA.
u-bend
I do. I rip a NPR stream, specifically the car talk and prairie home companion on saturdays to listen to in my car during the week on my commute. No I do not see the reasoning behind buying it in a form that is not playable on my mp3 player (I dont use the ipod in the company car, I use an iRiver) ignoring the fact that I already paid for the show anyways with my taxes and generous donations to my local NPR station.
So I use an automatic stream rip to time shift. I know of guys that time shift "Bob and Tom" radio show because they travel 240 miles a day for work and cant stand having to tune in a different station every 60 minutes.
My world has lots of people that stream rip.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One difference is that the RIAA can lurk on filesharing networks, sending you an invoice if they see your IP address, but there is no way that they can know if the radio stream is saved to the harddrive when a user listens to a webcast. It is thus completely safe from a legal standpoint.
Sir, I'm sorry to inform you that you have broken the law according to the DMCA. Our lawyers will contact you soon.
:( Really. Do you remember the case of the guy who spoke about the shift-key?
Crossfading and jingles is not harmless to the listener. It destroys the music. If it was harmless, then it wouldn't deter people from streamripping. How would you like it if you were watching a movie, and they decided to play some jingle instead of the dialog from the final scene? I can't remember which country it was (Finland?) but I hear they weren't allowed to play commercials or cut scenes from movies when they were played on TV, because it ruined the artistic integrity, and it's not the way the movie was meant to be seen. Although much music and movies today is lacking in artistic integrity, it's still wrong to cut up and play something over someone else's song.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I think some of the industry actions have less to do with controlling consumers and more to do with controlling artists.
If they can limit the distribution and marketing (which is the bulk of what a major player music corp does) options an artist has, then you increase both your control over the artists and the amount you can extract from them in contracts. This is especially important to the music corps. where it comes to areas opened up by newer technology which favor cutting out the middleman and the major players have a track record of complete ineptness.
Crossfading works for some kinds of music, but it kills others.
Obvious example: classical music. Crossfading two symphonies...
I listen to Salsa music on live365. While there are DJs in Clubs that crossfade, I don't like it. Good salsa songs have a well composed beginnings and ends and the artists take great effort to make them stand out to make the whole song a piece of art. Cutting/dilluting the front and end is a sin to the music and disrespects the artists. This might be particular to that kind of music, because it is dance music in the strict sense (couple dance). You especially do some spiffy moves at the end of the song. If the music cross-fades, you prepare for the end and then, instead of the accentuated end, the next song starts which is simply annoying.
That said: If the station is forced to do crossfading, I will cancel my subscription. And don't get my started on the playing jingles over the music and that other crap.
And then you won't have to pay as much in royalty fees as you will be paying in bandwidth costs. Result, you still won't be able to afford to do business against the Big Boys.
The only thing I can hope for in the light of these royalty demands is that it will bring the radio drama back. Learn the foley arts, write some original scripts, and get some perfomers. Just make sure you use no music to set mood.
Unfortunately, regurgitating news and political opinions (is there a difference anymore?) is a lot easier, and thus more likely.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?