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SoundExchange Backs Off DRM for Webcasters
Radio Free Europe writes "The big news is not that SoundExchange has repackaged the same royalty proposal that small webcasters rejected in May, but that SoundExchange has dropped its previous insistence that DRM be a part of any agreement. 'On the bright side, it doesn't appear as if DRM is part of the terms this time around. Previously, SoundExchange stated that webcasters who agree to the deal must actively "work to stop users from engaging in 'streamripping'." This began a war of words between the Digital Media Association (DiMA) and SoundExchange, with DiMA accusing SoundExchange of using rate negotiations to push mandatory DRM. SoundExchange's letter leaves the much-maligned streamripping issue out of the discussion, clearing at least that hurdle.'"
SoundExchange has no idea how to create a viable business model. The money is not in charging the broadcasters, rather its in free promotion coupled with aggressive web marketing.
They should cut a deal with broadcasters that offers free music in exchange for relevant ads and links to store fronts were a listener can purchase the music. They should also offer discounts on packaged songs that they want to push on the market.
They could be influencing lesser known genres such as indie and techno, and popularize and brand a new line of music.
They could completely rule this new medium and reap the rewards, instead they are going to force broadcasters overseas and lose even more money to pirates.
I am just sitting here shaking my head in disbelief at the shear stupidity of their business model.
SoundExchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundExchange is a subsidiary of the RIAA. Why do webcasters, radio stations and everyone else continue to play their game? There is a lot of good music out there; Always has been, but now it's a listener's market. The web means we no longer need the RIAA to choose which acts we should listen to. So why don't these guys, instead of waltzing with the RIAA, tell them to get bent and promote other artists instead?
Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the RIAA Shill Lawyers when the webcasters say: "You're absolutely right. We're not going to give a single one of your artists a second of airtime again. Now get out before we call the cops. Watch that step. Ooooh that's a dozy! Doris, if he doesn't pick himself off the floor in thirty seconds have security bring the Rottweiler. Oops sorry I trod on your hand." You get the idea... So webcasters, stop acting like wusses.
Good grief, why would Sox get involved with DRM? Maybe to add some echo?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This doesn't surprise me. DRM is dead. How could SoundExchange possibly require it when most of the RIAA members now favor retail sales of DRM free music? Even WalMart is getting into the act. Why? because they found that they can charge MORE for DRM free music and the consumer will pay it. It only took the music industry TEN YEARS to figure out what most of US knew all along!
Streamripping produces a perfect copy of what was "transmitted" which can be copied perfectly ad infinitum. Recording off the radio onto tape produces a lower fidelity analog copy and subsequent generations of copying of that copy introduces more noise at each generation.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"Recording off the radio onto tape produces a lower fidelity analog copy and subsequent generations of copying of that copy introduces more noise at each generation."
l s/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2905632&CatId=1425
l e/
You just time traveled from what decade?
FM Radio cards:
http://www.cel-soft.com/RadioCard.htm
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchToo
USB radio:
http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/13/usb-radio-dong
http://www.redferret.net/?p=7760
So how is saving a stream off the net any different than recording from one of these?
--
BMO
So, I've heard of Soundexchange but I don't know who they are and why we have to listen to them. What do they have to do with internet radio stations who play non-RIAA music. I ask that because I heard that they put the "squeeze" on everyone, no matter what they play. NPR has even been talking about them.
Does HD Radio have any sort of DRM? I personally believe the best way is to set up the rules the same for Internet Radio as they do for traditional radio. That's as long as the Internet Radio is only streaming music to you like a traditional radio instead of allowing you to choose what is playing, when it's playing, etc.
Case in point, I recently downloaded some nice drum and bass mix sets that were apparently recorded from some station called "Radio One" in England or something about ten years ago. My copy is a perfect duplicate of the original recording made from the air.
FM Radio cards:
l s/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2905632&CatId=1425
l e/
http://www.cel-soft.com/RadioCard.htm
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchToo
USB radio:
http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/13/usb-radio-dong
http://www.redferret.net/?p=7760
The Tigerdirect link is also a TV tuner card. You can record more than just the radio.
I have one in my Ubuntu box. It's kind of a pain to tune with the command line, but it works well. As an added bonus, it ignores Macrovision for converting your old VHS tapes. (oops is saying that a DMCA violation?)
The truth shall set you free!
SoundExchange has no idea how to create a viable business model. The money is not in charging the broadcasters, rather its in free promotion coupled with aggressive web marketing. They should cut a deal with broadcasters that offers free music in exchange for relevant ads and links to store fronts were a listener can purchase the music.
You are kidding?
SoundExchange has been given monopoly status. Everyone has to pay fees to them, and this tiny concession is meaningless when you consider the big picture: they get to pick and chose who runs internet "radio" stations. They can block all but RIAA members and force membership. As soon as they are sure of control, all the concessions will be undone and prices will be hiked up to terrestrial broadcast levels. Kiss variety, choice and artistic freedom goodbye.
It's a license to extend their little analog empire into the future. They are going to keep limiting who the "winners" are. A small number of acts will continue to be "pushed" as you put it, at the exclusion of all others. Bands that want to give their music away and advertise in the way you think would be best for them are not going to be able to do it. They are going to have to crawl on their knees and "prove" themselves in some "target" market, just like they do now, before internet radio stations will "risk" playing them. Without the odious fees the old industry is going to impose, the costs of running a web broadcast are very low, there are no risks and everyone is free to give their music away.
There is absolutely no justification for this. There is no scarce public resource involved and therefore no reason to regulate the internet. Your rights have been sold and the RIAA is going to keep raking in the cash at everyone else's expense.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
SoundExchange, while being a subsidiary of the RIAA is still authorized to collect all compulsory royalties due whether or not they are due to RIAA members.
That seems to be the size of it. Locking out competition, rather than finding and promoting excellence is what the RIAA member companies are all about.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I was digging around and just noticed that SaveNetRadio.org is claiming an agreement has been reached.
Here is the press release (pdf)
And more on their homepage
Note: it looks like this is just one detail that has been agreed upon but negotiations are ongoing.
meep
Sweeten the deal, get it signed. We can change it to include DRM later.
The copies that you 'found' somewhere have travelled long & far from where they would have been pushed via mainstream "music industry" backed means, meaning that as a promotional mechanism new frontiers have been found. You now know about "Radio One" and might google it and tune in via the internet, you might also search out more mixes by those D&B artists or even search out some of the individual tracks in the mixes. You might not also, but getting those files to you from the 'copy of the broadcast" cost Radio One and the artists represented nothing once it was recorded by the end user. Certainly they gained nothing *yet* at that point either, but since there was no cost *to Radio One* to get the music to you it's still balanced in theory. In practice the interests that dominate the industry perceive every digital copy as a 'loss' in the same way that allowing the public to have access to analog recording means was once considered a loss by them. And meanwhile terrestrial radio is stagnating to the point of being 'muzak' that you will replace with what you are 'really into' any chance you're given. Incidental to this is the fact that Radio One also still broadcasts online in a lower bitrate crappy realaudio stream for most of these programs, even as the BBC is attempting to pioneer broadband television.
Now let's discuss the 'no loss' in an mp3 recorded from that FM broadcast on Radio One 10 years ago (I'm not sure if they had DAB yet then, more on that in a second).. Certainly any FM transmission is not 'pure' but subject to some level of interference, crosstalk and distortion from EMF fluctions around it and flaws in the transmission & recieving devices. Then it must be 'digitized' which is quite often done with $0.50 ADC and crappy op amp, hideously innaccurate digital clock run into a cheap soundcard which is cpu bound and has 0 shielding on its line input. Some of the even cheaper computers double up the Line In and Mic In and simply attentuate the signal with a switch when you choose Line In. Hardly the paragon of transparent recording devices, and yes this includes almost all of the computer soundcards shipping to the non-pro audio sector back then. Turtle Beach and the AWE64 Gold were a bit better but still nothing that could be called 'perfect' or better than your Boom Box's tape deck.
That was 10 years ago... These days Radio One is broadcast via digital radio in the UK called "DAB" and most of the sets I've seen 'floating around' online are ripped directly from this. DAB is encoded into AAC I believe, 128Kbit or so. I could be wrong as I only know of it through people I know in the UK. However here the industry again waves the 'perfect copy' flag, much like it does (did?) with Satellite radio here in the US. However consider that 128Kbit AAC isn't "perfect" to begin with, and has introduced loss of quality and distortions into the original recording.
Did I mention that DAB devices exhibit dropouts and digital 'glitching' on occasion and so the transmission & decoding process isn't 'perfect' either?
Now your mp3 version is a 'reencode' and that means that the audio was converted from AAC to mp3, and I suspect not in a single step. Many of the applications that inexperienced users would have would convert from the 32bit AAC format to a PCM encoded format (WAV or AIFF) which may truncate things to 16bit, with or without dither (even with it's probably only TPDF which is used during the mixing stage and is NOT a 'mastering' quality and weighted dither). Then it gets encoded back mp3 to reach you. Users who don't know about Replaygain may even accidentally clip the data if it was already normalized to 0dBf before encoding to AAC. For Radio One over DAB it's more likely to be normalized to -0.3dBf after being heavily squashed dynamically (see the discussion on dynamics compression yesterday) and so a bit less likely, but it still happens.
In any case assume an ideal transcode from AAC to mp3 by an experienced user with a decent app
DAB is *lower* quality than FM radio. The people responsible split the available spectrum into so many channels that each one is rather low quality. (Or so I understand it; I've naturally not seen firsthand proof, but then who has?)
Why talk about FM? With a DAB receiver, you can record an exact digital copy of what was broadcast, without any noise coming from analogue transmission.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
For all its bluster, SoundExchange is an organization with about 30 employees. They are set up to collect and administer royalty payments, not engage in large-scale litigation. Even if the broadcasters completely stonewalled, I doubt SoundExchange is in a practical position to do much.
As I've said before, the music industry and the broadcast industry are engaged in a standard contract negotiation, albeit one that is receiving a good deal more press than would be usual. Strictly from an economic perspective, the broadcasters would like to receive broadcast rights with no royalties or restrictions of any kind. The music industry would like to have a massive royalty payment and perfect and absolute DRM. Eventually they'll meet at somewhere in the middle where they both figure they can make a buck. It will all work out...
it would seem pretty stupid for them to insist on it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
because its just an extortion racket.
Let me get this straight...
SoundExchange are going to collect $50k from each and every WebCaster radio station.
Then the artists have to find out wether they played their songs, or not, from every single WebCaster. (If you believe people are consistently that diligent, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.)
Then the artists have to figure out how much of those $50ks SoundExchange might owe the artist. (Some of these guys and gals can play great. Math, they're not so hot at.)
Then the artists have to try to collect, less the euphemistically called administration fees of course (can you say 110%.)
Get the "Piperazine"! I'm looking at a nastytape worm here.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
*raises forefinger*
Sheer
(adj) absolute, downright, out-and-out, rank, right-down, sheer (complete and without restriction or qualification; sometimes used informally as intensifiers) "absolute freedom"; "an absolute dimwit"; "a downright lie"; "out-and-out mayhem"; "an out-and-out lie"; "a rank outsider"; "many right-down vices"; "got the job through sheer persistence"; "sheer stupidity"
Shear
(n) shear ((physics) a deformation of an object in which parallel planes remain parallel but are shifted in a direction parallel to themselves) "the shear changed the quadrilateral into a parallelogram" (there isn't an adjective form)
I believe you're looking for the first one. Now you've learned something today.
</grammar nazi>
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
Yeah, but most streaming radio stations aren't that high quality to begin with. There are a few out there that broadcast at 128k or sometimes even higher, but most don't. My own darkwave radio station (plug!) broadcasts at 96k, actually, and I do this for a few reasons, which are also the same reasons other broadcasters do it.
First, because it's a reasonably decent fidelity without hammering the connection (mine or yours). 96k isn't that fantastic but it's still quite a bang for the buck, as it were. Second, I don't believe you should get a perfect reproduction of the music I'm playing -- it's supposed to be analogous to an actual radio, where the fidelity isn't perfect either, and furthermore my station is free to listen to, and if you like the music you can go buy the albums or songs. I even provide a bunch of links to Amazon for currently featured artists I'm playing at the moment. My station is not intended to be a perfect copy.
All of this comes together to mean that you could streamrip mirrorshades radio all day long but you're not going to get something you'd want to burn to CD or put on your iPod. The quality is fine for a stream you're likely listening to at work or as background music for home, but if you were to rip it it'd be about the same as taping a song off the radio.
Most broadcasters I know or listen to operate the same way. Digitally Imported's free streams are 96k, Corrosion Radio streams at 64k mono, and most of the stations on live365 are 64k or below. I know afterhoursdjs goes up to 192k but they're one of few that do.
The main bullet point you should be taking away from my entire speech here is that despite SoundExchange's whinging, streamripping is an extremely minor concern. Most people don't know it can be done, most of those who know it can be done don't know how, and even if they do, who cares if they get a low-quality copy of a song?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.