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Music DRM in Critical Condition?
ianare writes "Universal Music Group, the largest music company on the planet, has announced that the company is going to sell DRM-free music. The test will see UMG offering a portion of its catalog — primarily its most popular content — sold without DRM between August 21 and January 31 of next year. The format will be MP3, and songs will sell for 99 each, with the bitrate to be determined by the stores in question. RealNetwork's Rhapsody service will offer 256kbps tracks, the company said in a separate statement. January 31 is likely more of a fire escape than an end date. If UMG doesn't like what they're seeing, they'll pull the plug. UMG says that it wants to watch how DRM-free music affects piracy rates."
UMG says that it wants to watch how DRM-free music affects piracy rates.
Well they should look back over the last few decades then. They've been selling DRM-free digital music ever since CDs were invented.
Buy, buy, buy! I don't think DRM is in "critical condition" at all, but now is our chance to show these people that we *will* buy their product if they don't treat us all like criminals. We may be able to make a small but important piece of history here.
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
If record companies want me to stop downloading music from P2P networks, they need to offer a better-quality product than that available for free. I can get all the 256kbps MP3s I want on P2P. The only way to make me even consider actually paying for a mere audio file (as opposed to a CD which has liner notes etc.) is to offer FLAC.
R.I.P RIAA!!!
UMG says that it wants to watch how DRM-free music affects piracy rates.
Bollocks. I mean look up every "piracy" "statistics", they always talk about this and that much gazillions of good old bucks being lost because of piracy, yet no living human being has ever managed to give a reasonable and acceptable explanation about how those numbers make sense. Now they say they want to see how those numbers change if they sell non-drm-encumbered music ? Well, flip a coin, that'd make more sense to decide to continue or not. A better way would be to actually listen to what those pesky customers want.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Music companies have really just started waking up to why DRM is really bad, and it's nothing to do with their customers.
It has finally dawned on them that DRM - far from protecting them - will take control away from them and hand it to companies like Apple and Microsoft, who become the new gatekeepers since they own the DRM technologies that are popular. It's now dawned on the music companies that it won't be long before the likes of Apple and Microsoft get big enough in the music business to simply cut out the record companies and sign bands directly.
_That's_ why they are starting to drop DRM - they have finally come to the realisation that DRM is the trojan horse that will destroy them. Not piracy.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
My thoughts exactly. To look at how it affects piracy rates, you need some way of measuring piracy. AFAIK they have nothing other than RSITDANTMUFG* numbers for what piracy levels may be. Come on, how can you ever hope to count downloads on the many P2P networks when the whole point of them is that they're decentralised?
* RSITDANTMUFG = Random Stab In The Dark At Number That Make Us Feel Good
It seems like they're about to distort their own stats, by leaving iTunes out of the deal, FTA:
"One reason would be that Universal doesn't like Apple. UMG is the largest music company on the planet, which helps explain why they are trying to ruffle Steve Jobs' feathers. At issue are contract lengths and just who gets to determine pricing. Universal would clearly like to have more control over pricing than Apple is comfortable with. The company has also said that it would like a cut of every iPod sold, similar to a deal they have with Microsoft for the Zune."
So basically, they still want money. They'll try and fail to sell a substantial amount of DRM free music on rhapsody, call it a failure, publish the results and push congress more. just an 0.05 dollar prediction.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
So people will now just buy their music through these online stores other than iTMS, transfer the mp3 to iTunes and then onto their iPod.
It's not going to hurt Apple, it is gonig to hurt consumers. I doubt the user experience of the other stores will compare, though I don't have a problem with every store doing it's best and at least if they are mp3s it solves the 'wont load on my ipod' problem.
I think they will still do quite well, IF people ever hear of them and have a good experience when they DO try to buy something.
This has probably been posted a million times on slashdot, but we must repeat it until at least every slashdot person understands:
l abels may help. I seriously propose not buying in to the Sony, Warner, Universal, et al. game of hiding behind the word RIAA as if it is some, nebulous, vastly distantly related entity. It isn't. Substitute "major music label CEOs" for "RIAA". So for example this headline from Arstechnica:
THERE. IS. NO. RIAA.
Not as such. It is a like shell company so that the major music labels don't get their hands (or label names) dirty whilst suing dead people, stalking 8 year olds, and extorting grandmothers that have never even seen a computer.
Universal IS the RIAA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RIAA_member_
Judge greenlights RIAA to dig into man's past, employers
Should actually read:
Judge greenlights Major Music Label CEOs to dig into man's past, employers
Those CEOs are people. They make the decisions. They are responsible. Normal people can get their heads around that and hold those people responsible for their actions, if they so choose. The RIAA is some faceless acronym, just another brick wall. As it is surely intended to be.
I've always said, if there's a music store that sells good music without limitations, that's the place where I'll buy. Ok. The limitation part is gone. Now, let's talk about "good music"...
I predict there will be little if any change. We will certainly not see more piracy. Simple reason: DRM has not and will not stop someone from copying, so whoever wanted to copy already did and probably will continue to do so. An increase, because there is no DRM, makes no sense.
We might see more songs sold, though, since some people (like me) will turn to buying music online when there is no restriction on it anymore that limits my use in various devices of my choice. Goods I cannot use in the way I deem necessary have no value to me. If I cannot use it in my car CD player or on my MP3 player, the item is not what I want, and what I do not want I do not buy. This, though, the music without restriction, is what I want. So I will buy now when (and here's the catch) I find music that I would like to listen to. Sorry, but I don't buy the latest American Idol hypecrap just because I can media shift it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're still holding tightly to their fantasy about P2P downloaders costing them millions and billions - but they have noticed that their introduction of DRM technologies has received an almost totally negative response from their former customers. So they'll back off on this a little and "see if the piracy rate goes up". That's not what they'll be looking at at all, that's just some spin for the media. What they're looking for is some kind of upward bump to their profits; when they added DRM their income went down - so let's remove the DRM and see if our income goes back up.
What they still can't see through their pride is that DRM doesn't reduce piracy in any meaningful way; all it does is cause inconvenience to their paying customers. It's driven more than a few customers away; buy one CD that won't play in your player and it's quite natural to avoid any CDs from that company in the future. What they also can't see is that those lost customers won't be coming back just because of some mealy-mouthed PR statement about removing DRM from some music for a short period - they've been fooled once already.
"Piracy" (copyright infringement) is an interesting thing - it only happens with items that can be duplicated and sold at a price substantially below the price of the original product. If the record companies sold CDs for 69 cents each then the "pirates" wouldn't bother with music CDs. The record companies would never willingly reveal their cost of production - but you can safely assume that it's much less than a dollar. When they over-price the finished product at 20 dollars they create their own piracy problem.
Will they ever see this simple truth? "Pirates" are a fact of life; eliminate one or a dozen and a hundred more will take their place. As long as there's easy money to be made then people will be lined up to get their share. There is nothing that the music companies, their lobbying lapdogs, the government, the courts, or anyone else can do to prevent it. As long as the product is priced far in excess of its production cost, there's going to be a "piracy" problem.
Even the folks who just "want to get it for free" would become paying customers if the price was RIGHT. But the music industry keeps turning out formula junk with one or two good tunes per CD and then asking 20 bucks for it - and then they wonder why people aren't buying it. This is the root cause of their decline - expecting top dollar for bargain basement material.
But they weren't satisfied with shooting themselves in that foot - they decided to start up their "legal" extortion racket and run people over the coals for thousands of dollars - for downloading a song that has a market value of less than a dollar. They even decided to sue some dead people, children, disabled seniors, etc. just to make sure that they offended everyone. This bone-headed plan is pure public relations poison - but they just can't stop. This turns a bunch more customers into former customers and the sales drop off even faster.
Having shot themselves in both feet, they turned to their kneecaps with DRM and rootkits. While it's tempting, I won't belabor the point about what a bad idea this was. Now they suggest that they'll remove the DRM from a subset of their catalog - provisionally, for a short period of time. It almost sounds as if they believe they're dealing from a position of strength.
What a bunch of closed-minded fools. Their doom is upon them and they act as if they're in control of the situation...
...and I'll say it until I stop getting modded Insightful/Informative/Funny for it. Piracy is an economic indicator that you are not letting the market balance itself. Specifically, piracy is caused by artificially fixing prices too high. People refuse to buy the good since it is too expensive, but still demand the good, so they steal/copy it in order to obtain it. The only way to discourage piracy is to lower your price to the point that people would rather buy "the real deal" than a cheap knockoff. Perhaps if CDs were not pegged at $20 each, and were sold at the more reasonable $5 each, the public would find it more preferable to go to the music store instead of the torrent search engine.
~ C.
UMG says that it wants to watch how DRM-free music affects piracy rates.
Whats piracy rates to them? They should look at their sales, nothing else. If they sell three times as much, but the piracy rate (whatever is that, anyway) multiply by ten, why should they care? Should they suppose that they are losing that sales, even if the sales data tells them that they would never have done a but a third of them in the DRM-way? That would be really short-sight... oops, music-industry executives you said?. Then forget it all, short-sightedness is a part of the required CV there, to all external appearances.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
It's not that new, though:
;)
1. CD burners have existed for ages.
2. The possibility to just copy music to cassette or movies to VHS has existed for ages, and that existed even before CDs gained much adoption. Heck, in the 90's even half the portable stereos, and every self-respecting cassette deck, had room for _two_ cassettes at the same time and a button to copy from one to the other.
3. If you think people had to wait for the Internet to swap music or movies or programs, I dare say you don't remember high school that well.
4. Before mass Internet access, there were BBSs. Frankly, now that was a bigger pirate haven than the Internet... or than the Carribeans back in the 1600's
5. Internet access isn't _that_ new and unlike everything before. Sure, only now it may have reached the grandmas or finally gotten very high speeds, but I don't think those were ever the biggest pirates anyway. If grandma wants to listen to folk songs from the 50's or for some good ol' fashioned symphonic music, she can get those for pence legally. Plus she already has her cassette and vinyl collection.
The biggest problems are teens who (A) are driven by peer pressure, and have to listen, watch, wear and say exactly what their peers appreciate. Even if he goes for the rebellious punk image, the average teenager won't actually be rebellious at all, he'll be a clone of whatever punk image is currently fashionable among his peers. And (B) face high prices for that image. And (C) don't have that much disposable income. So the pressure was always there to copy the latest fashionable album.
And those already had modems, virtually all universities had Interent as early as the early 90's, and most had access to a hi-fi where they could copy a cassette.
Plus, music companies have been complaining about Napster since the 90's, so at least at that point the world was already connected enough to make a difference, according to those music companies.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you go into a hardware store and buy a hammer, you won't be paying the amount it cost to produce and ship it.
To continue to produce their product, any company has to make a profit. That is why your music can't be free.
Nobody else has this sig.
When I go to the store to buy a hammer, some of that price is the cost of making a hammer, and some is the cost of shipping a hammer, paying for warehouses full of hardware, having shop staff putting hammers on shelves, etc... and a small amount is profit.
If they could run the hammer program on a fab-o-matic and produce a hammer instantly, for damn near zero incremental cost, I would expect hammers to be a lot cheaper. If I have to use my own fab-o-matic machine and supply my own raw materials, I expect the hammer to be damn near free.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
...so the hammer now costs one cent. Everybody says, "Why does this hammer only cost one cent? There must be something wrong with it!" Then they go and buy exactly the same hammer from the shop across the road, because its elevated price gives it perceived worth.
Nobody else has this sig.
This article has to do with Digital Rights Managment music being sold online.
duh.
Lets try another example;
fifteen or twenty years ago (when CD's were already fairly old technology) A computer probably not even as fast as the one you're using now was called a 'supercomputer' and cost about a quarter-million dollars. The cost of computing and the cost of network bandwidth has dropped two orders of magnitude since then.
The technology behind computers isn't just similar, it IS the technology behind distributing digital music. The processing power that cost a quarter million dollars twenty years ago costs a few hundred now. The cost of distributing a dozen songs (a CD that actually did cost a few dollars to stamp and ship twenty years ago) is now a download from a server that costs them only fraction of a cent, but they still want us to pay 1988 prices?
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Free will trump anything else every time.
Sure, there will be a few crusaders who want to "support the artists".
Sure, there will be a few people who can't figure out how to make bittorrent work who prefer the convenience of a one-stop download site for a fee.
But the majority of the users who have already drunk from the fountain of free music will continue to do so.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Except that 0.000125 cents per song doesn't seem like fair compensation to the artist, does it? And that's ignoring the fact that not 100% of the proceeds may benefit the artist directly anyway. If 100,000 people purchased a 10-song album at your proposed rate, the entire revenue would only be $12,500! Even where I live, that's far below the poverty line. Split that across three or more band members, and they now have barely enough money to eat. And again- that's ignoring the fact that, unless they handle all their management and distribution themselves, the band won't see 100% of the money from the sales. Even if they're dedicated to their craft, at that rate, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave up on creating music altogether to get jobs as beggars.
Pricing can't be entirely dependent upon your storage means and your income. The actual production costs must be factored in as well. Taking that into consideration, I don't see 0.000125 cents per song being a feasible price any time soon.
The technology behind computers isn't just similar, it IS the technology behind distributing digital music. The processing power that cost a quarter million dollars twenty years ago costs a few hundred now. The cost of distributing a dozen songs (a CD that actually did cost a few dollars to stamp and ship twenty years ago) is now a download from a server that costs them only fraction of a cent, but they still want us to pay 1988 prices?
While I somewhat agree with a couple of things you say, I must add; Do you even know what you're talking about? I think you're just wildly spewing out numbers because you want something for nothing. Back up your figures or stop making things up.
Besides, your model of "cost" only takes the cost of distributing into consideration. The cost of creation needs to be taken into consideration too. Look into the pricing on your average studio. At your price of $0.01 a song, it would take anywhere between 50000-100000 or more purchases to make a song break even. That's not even counting money for the artist(s) to live off of, or the cut that the record labels want to get for their efforts in advertising.
I'm not saying the current price model is fair, I don't know the break down. I'm also not saying I agree with the strategies of the large record labels, I personally dislike them and the stranglehold they have on the market. But, consider the larger picture before you shoot off that songs should be available for $0.01.
DRM actually makes the music less valuable than it would have been without...
At the end of the day, profit margins on CDs are so high that it is highly unlikely piracy rates would become high enough to make them unprofitable.
Plus, musicians produce things that can't be pirated like live shows.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I just hope the RIAA or one of the other groups doesn't come out with skewed numbers and they give DRM-Free music a fair chance. I don't want to see some limited set of data after one month that says piracy was up. DRM clearly doesn't have a future.
You basically just described allofmp3.com.
Rather than trying to sue them out of existence, the RIAA would have been better off simply destroying them the capitalist way - Drive them out of the market with (possibly unfair) competition.
They could easily have charged twice what allofmp3.com charged and still done well for the following reasons:
1) Better selection if they did it right. (This would be hard - allofmp3 had a better selection than many of the "I only carry music from one of the major 5 labels" official online stores.)
2) Easier payment. EASY as hell compared to the nightmare that was getting credits on allofmp3 before they were totally shut down.
3) Still far less expensive than current prices. $1.30/track is a little to expensive for "impulse buy", and means that people are only going to buy tracks they've heard. With allofmp3, I would routinely buy entire albums if I liked one track because it was so inexpensive to do so. (Oddly, people buying entire albums is one of the things the RIAA wants people to do and why they resisted any form of online sales for so long...) Likewise, with allofmp3, I would routinely buy additional albums if I liked the first one as a total impulse buy.
The RIAA was stupid with how they handled allofmp3. They looked at it and simply saw, "we're not getting paid". They were too blinded by that greed to look at allofmp3's business model and the fact that allofmp3 was proof that if you gave people content at the right price and convenience, they were perfectly willing to pay for music rather than download it for free.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Most programmers are paid by the hour/day for the act of writing those bits...
There are very few who write once, and then sit back and do nothing as multiple copies are sold.
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DRM didn't curtail piracy and neither did litigation. Whatever the solution to piracy is, it has not been found yet and the rate will continue to rise until that paradigm is reached.
All DRM did was increase discussion about DRM and increase animosity for an industry that (for whatever reason) seems hellbent on nurturing the worst music ever created...
I used to believe that music will be pirated until the intrinsic & extrinsic values met (artists and labels put out quality music) but that's not true either.
I have ~1100 cds in my collection, I have purchased every single one. The only tracks I have dl'd on my computer are the few I received from iTunes via bottlecaps and a few cds released via creative commons license.
All the whiners saying that it's not piracy or theft, you're even worse than the **AAs. Thanks to you, private companies have totally freaked out and started trying to protect their content via draconian and gestapo tactics because you are exploiting technologies that are largely misunderstood by the general public. The GP and **AAs know that you are and that they don't understand the technology so their natural and defensive (albeit immature) response is to exploit it.
Now music companies are trying to respond to the backlash against the RIAA by *trying* to trust the consumer not to pirate their property and ya know what, I don't really care any more because I know all these a**holes are still going to pirate and give the record companies to continue to jack up their prices ultimately hurting me, the purchaser (by forcing me to continue buying used cds only) and the legitimate artist, who doesn't get a share of that increase anyway.
You can throw all the pointed comments and neato-sounding buzzwords and catchy phrases you want about correlations and statistics and this n that to try and prove that it's not piracy or it's not theft but you're really just making excuses and really no better than what you're complaining against.
So I hope this works out but it doesn't matter anyway because I prefer a lossless copy and unlike the pirates or the **AA, I'm not a thief.
Those are damned small costs for most professional recordings actually. Try adding another factor of 10. And that's STILL low for professional artists/studios. You list $500-1000 per song, it can easily cost that for a low budget indy recording at a small studio. Heck, 15 years ago the band I was in spent 20k to record, mix, and master a 10 song album, and that was using a close friends studio at very cheap rates.
Popular artists regularly spend tens of thousands Per Song!
What we need to have happen is a change to purchasing true licenses for works we want to, that actually grant us rights to continue to do so. This money should go directly to the artist. 10c per song for this would be a HUGE amount more than artists currently get paid for song sales, but is still cheap for us. Organizations like the RIAA should be able to purchase Distribution Licenses from the artists. Then we buy Media from the RIAA (or whomever else) for a reasonable price that actually reflects their costs...which again, would likely be in the order of 10c per download...more for actual physical media. (Given your proof of purchasing a license for the contents of said media). Yes, this would be a LOT less than the RIAA currently rakes in...but it's STILL basically free money...and then the artist is actually getting paid because the RIAA isn't playing bullshit games of collecting money on behalf of all artists, but then paying them a meager pittance, and not even to the artists that are necessarily making the SALES.
Like that'll ever happen though.
No Comment.
I've been buying DRM free music for decades. I go down to the record store (or online) and purchase an album. I guess that's the difference between me and teenyboppers that want to use the latest Top 10 single as a cellphone ring; I enjoy musicians who are worth listening to, not untalented one-hit-wonders spewed out of MTV and local radio stations.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
First, the audience doesn't give a shit about the executives, so the audience is not willing to compensate them for anything. Second, "what they do" has as much to do with self-promotion, backstabbing and kissing ass as it has to do with productive activity. Third, executives are overhead. The only reason they get paid as much as they do is because the corporate governance structures disempower shareholders. It's well-known that there is no correlation between executive compensation and corporate performance. Furthermore, US levels of executive pay are an aberration in the global marketplace and they are getting in the way of our companies' ability to compete outside our own increasingly stagnant backwater.
Competition for resources happens not only between corporations (when they don't rig the market to evade it, which they'll do whenever they can get away with it). It also happens within corporations. There are a number of strategies for individuals to get a bigger slice of the pie that don't necessarily align with the interests of the shareholders or employees of the company. In fact, one of the toughest challenges of management is how to encourage real performance while weeding out the self-promoting narcissistic sociopaths who attach themselves to revenue streams the same way maggots flock to roadkill.
Another thing to consider is just how people find out about music. There is a lot more music than anyone can physically listen to, and in the old-school model of music distribution, unless the music is broadcast on mass-market radio or cross-promoted (say, by including a song in a movie), audiences won't hear it. And what they don't hear, they won't buy. But the access to these markets is controlled by a small number of firms. Only they can get enough ears to hear your song so that you have a chance of selling those millions of records. But that also sets them up as gatekeepers who keep the largest share of the proceeds. In addition, the balance of power between five guys, a handful of roadies and a manager versus a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate does not favor the smaller party during contract negotiations.
Based on this, my hope is that the Internet has enabled the exchange of music over social networks at such a low cost that the middlemen (middleweasels?) have lost their clout. And those highly-paid music-industry execs? They can taste the market economy's power of creative destruction and move on to other jobs that their "unique" skill sets qualify them for, such as giving blowjobs through knotholes in the walls of truckstop restrooms for spare change.
Capitalism is no more a meritocracy than Darwinism is. The "fittest" are those who win the game-- by definition. The Social Darwinists believed that this made the winners morally superior. That was based on a misunderstanding of both Darwin and of capitalism, and anyone who has ever met some of the "winners" will understand just how wrong that notion is. The only thing the winners are better at is winning under the present system. Change the selective pressures and different selections will occur. Anyway, there is more corruption than competition in American so-called "capitalism" so the real competition is about who can most effectively buy off a legislator or give a kickback to a media outlet.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
There's no financial incentive to do that as opposed to just living off of the interest of the $1,000,000.
Your salary needs to be more than $60,000 after taxes in order for you to break even.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.