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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."
256kbps is good enough for me, though I'd really only buy if the price point was closer to 10 cents. Lots of reasons for this, though the main one is simply that I live in Asia, piracy is common. Like it or not, that's what they have to compete with. 10 cents per song is about double the profit margin over pirated CD's, though if I can reliably go to an online store from the comfort of my home, then that's where I'd rather be.
The recording industry themselves are entrepreneurs, and now they realise that the software companies are not just another mechanism to enforce their intermediation, but an attempt to introduce a new, and harder to evade, middleman.
All entrepreneurs seek to enforce their control, either legally or through other means (such as owning the channels of distribution, or by monopoly patents.)
Entrepreneurs have a part to play when a resource does not have a market, but they find it very hard to lie down and die when the market is established. We don't yet know who will win this battle for control over the electronic music market, but improved search engines and technology availability could disintermediate the market in a different way - e.g. by sites aggregating direct sales by many small bands, cooperatively owned.
Pining for the fjords
If I was the music company I'd place some kind of signature in my files and keep a watch on how many of them later appeared on common piracy sites. It would be interesting to see how many, or few, of them leaked out.
You buy if you want. As far as I'm concerned Universal can fuck off.
They're one of the worst. It is they who persuaded Microsoft to let them charge Zune users a Zune-tax. Let them lift that tax first.
They're still playing games. This time round, they are refusing to sell through the iTunes Store. This is an act of revenge. It's because Apple won't open their DRM to other distributors, because Apple doesn't want the hassle of maintaining this DRM (that it doesn't want in the first place and only has to use because companies like Universal insist on it) for every other distributor. IOW, Universal do want the DRM and are blaming Apple for not making it work for them across the whole industry - as if Apple, or anyone else, could.
YOU buy. YOU rush out and buy from these parasites. I shan't.
If I want to buy a download rather than a CD, I'll buy EMI at the iTunes Store or go to Magnatune or Linn records. Universal can go boil its head.
6 months back, he himself spoke against the negative effects of DRM and how Apple was implementing DRM only to comply with the wishes of the recording industry. Now fear of an Apple monopoly on DRM has finally forced Universal (for starters) to think about selling unencumbered music. So we have him to thank for scaring the recording companies into removing DRM! (hoping that they eventually will)
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
$.99 is just wrong. I have mp3 music on a dvd. At 5MB/song, I can fit 9.6GB/5MB ~=2000 songs. I would be happy to pay $25 for disks like this, but no way I pay alomst $2k for a disk.
I notice also that in markets that sells pirated music they come as MP3 on CD's and contain over 100 songs for $1. The lagal CDs next to them costs $10, and contains 10 songs.
The legal product is certainly inferior. Unless the music industry can deliver a superior product, they can not win this.
"Fix it"
I don't remember, but I know they've bribed radio stations to broadcast crap music.
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/tvstations/artic
Wikipedia also summarize it well:
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Consider that the majors have been trying to push bloody business models where one or more of those restriction apply to you:
1) Pay for each nail you hit with the hammer
2) Rent the hammer and pay monthly for ulimited strikes on nails - when the rent expires all your nails disappear
3) Be limited to use your hammer just in your room
4) Be limited to use only a specific brand of nails - In case this is overturned by a clever hacker all the nails can cease to work (see playsforsure against old MS DRM)
5) whatever else limiting to you but more profitable to them
6) Get sued if you lent/use a hammer from another person
7) Pay for a hammer that can be used to build 10 houses - Ops, sorry, after the sale terms are changes: only 7 houses (Apple FairPlay Cd burning)
From my humble point of view as noone would use such a tool . Conclusions: those corporations have been looking actively for extincion and fully deserve it.
The underlying question is why is it reasonable to pay the artists over $200 grand a year? Why is it reasonable to pay executives so much?
I mean the average person earns $41k a year. The answer is- it's not reasonable. We got tons of music (and movies) in the 30's... 40's... and 50's... (and most of the 60's...) when everyone on the food chain made a lot less.
We got more of them because the artists had to produce more to make a living. And the idea of getting filthy rich didn't really start until the 70's.
There is no reason in today's world that we need 15 to 20 people feeding 200k+ per year incomes off of each song. This is why songs (and movies) cost so much. Because a parasitic industry has grown up around them due to their unique government protected monopoly.
Is there any reasonable way you can justify an author getting richer than the queen of england- becoming worth over a billion dollars in such a short period of time? Is there any other kind of work which pays that kind of compensation?
Clearly copyright is currently broken. It forces society to pay grossly inflated prices compared to most of the rest of history.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Except for the lucky few, musicians or "artists" are rather on the poor side. I play in a local band, so many a time after a show we hang out with the headlining act. I see behind the scenes, behind the image... Signed musicians, and they sleep in their van, taking shifts driving to the next show. If they're lucky, someone in town offers them a place to crash for the night. That doesn't really sound like a bunch of people making >= $200k/year to me.
Yeah the stadium filling acts have tour buses and roadies and groupies and all that, but the vast majority of performing musicians make enough money to stay alive and on the road, if they're lucky.
Also, don't compare music and movies. Making music involves a band, a couple of engineers, and possibly a studio musician or two for the "extras". Next time you go see a movie in theaters, sit through all the credits... Try to count the names. Music involves a couple of handfuls of people to create, a movie requires hundreds. Now, to clarify, I'm not in any way for the high prices and I'm not defending current copyright laws (I believe the system is broken personally). I'm just pointing out that movies and music are on different levels.