Legal Music Streaming Site Launches In France

An anonymous reader writes "The French website Deezer.com has struck a deal with the SACEM (the French equivalent to the RIAA) and is now legally providing Internet users around the world with more than 100,000 full songs, streamed on demand and without restrictions. The site, formerly named Blogmuzik.net, had had to close down last March under pressure from the recording industry."

Comments

it's cool i've tried it

[wizardforce]

no more of that 30 second preview nonsense- listen to the song if you like it you add it- no restrictions on the number of songs/artist like finetune either. hmmm guess the RIAA can't do shit about it now can they?

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[garcia]

no more of that 30 second preview nonsense- listen to the song if you like it you add it- no restrictions on the number of songs/artist like finetune either. hmmm guess the RIAA can't do shit about it now can they?

I tried a couple of albums at work late last week and then at home on Friday morning. Both connections (work routinely allows for 3MB/s from Apple -- just for reference and I have a 4200/500 DSL connection at home) were laggy with the music frequently pausing during the stream. I felt like I was using RealAudio back in 1999.

I wasn't impressed at all. My co-workers all use free.napster.com which works much better. YMMV.

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[Llian]

Its a lovely idea. So lovely they decided it's too good to be allowed decent sound quality. Its no wonder they have the agreement allowing the tracks to be free, they couldn't pay people to listen to this crap quality.

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[skeeto]

Radio Paradise is an internet radio station that works well with free software. I listen/streamrip using VLC. The only thing I don't like is the lack of an Ogg Vorbis stream (or some other free codec) :-P.

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[thc69]

SomaFM provides nice streams in various formats that can be played by free software. Lately I've taken to listening on my phone while on the road. If only I could make my phone's media player not timeout every 5 minutes, I could probably cancel my satellite radio subscription...

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[springbox]

The quality of Deezer is much better than free.napster.com. Not sure about the skipping; it has worked perfectly fine for me.

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[OfficeSupplySamurai]

The quality is certainly better on Deezer, although it does vary somewhat.

While they both use MP3 format, Napster uses only 22 kHz mono 32 kbps MP3's. Deezer on the other hand has some at 22 kHz stereo 64 kbps, but also has some at 44.1 kHz stereo 256 kbps. It even has some VBR with 44.1 kHz stereo and about 240 kbps average.

My guess would be that while Napster standardizes (undoubtedly reencoding from some high quality original), Deezer just gets an MP3 from the artist and streams it, without messing with bitrates or anything like that.

The fact that it's still a new service combined with the much greater amount of data per song they have to transmit compared to Napster probably accounts for the difficulty experienced by the grandparent poster.

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[anticypher]

The site is hosted in France, where bandwidth is cheap and plentiful. They are supporting the load just fine over here. Getting traffic from New York to Minnesota is the more likely bottleneck rather than France to NY. OTOH, their servers seem to be completely overloaded under the slashdot effect, I think their massive press push has come back to bury them.

I suspect that since they just scored this licensing agreement after a long legal struggle under new french obligatory licensing laws, they haven't had time to upgrade their servers or get better load offset architecture in place. Paying lawyers who saved their asses probably is a high priority for them.

I need to clear up the trollish flamebaiting headline, as the SACEM is nothing like the RIAA. They are the only group that collects royalties for authors and songwriters in France, and by law most of the money collected has to be distributed, despite their legendary corruption and incompetence. The SACEM has been forced to provide licensing to anyone who wants it, and I think Deezer was one of the first test cases for internet distribution. By signing a deal with SACEM, Deezer can now play any and all French artists, and any other country's artists who register with SACEM. This doesn't cover performance royalties, which are separate, all the songs on Deezer are performed by the original author. Since the Wu-Tang Clan (who I just saw on the site to use as an example) has registered with SACEM, ODB and MethodMan will get quarterly or yearly royalty checks directly from SACEM. Bands covering other author's songs can't be played under this agreement, at least according to the French press covering this.

It remains to be seen if Deezer can make enough to cover the royalties they've negotiated with SACEM. They were really over a legal barrel and if they hadn't signed they risked prison time for piracy. They could be a dotbomb2.0 fizzle, since they haven't dropped all the extraneous vowels from their name.

the AC

Re:it's cool i've tried it

[TheRaven64]

I'll second (uh, third now, I guess) the recommendation of RP. I rarely hear music I don't like on it, and I've bought a couple of albums recently after hearing tracks played on it. A very nice mix of stuff.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

32kbps MP3

[Mostly a lurker]

While I am not one of those people who claims to be able to tell the difference between 192kbps and 256kbps MP3s, a sampling rate of 32kbps is obviously degraded even to my aging ears.

Sweet mama ! it really works well

[unity100]

I get in, i type in "smokie" and voila, 14 songs pop up, groovy too. i click, and it plays, and it plays well, and it doesnt even require one single bit of anything - it has its own player in the site and plays well - actually at the same time with winamp playing some other thing.

its fast also.

Re:So where is the money coming from?

[alxbtk]

Our concept is simple:
-Give consumers a full and free access to all their favourite songs
-Pay artists and their producers through a revenue share based on our advertising revenues
- Help discovering new artists through a wide audience

from the about us page on the site (emphasis mine)

SACEM != RIAA

[reSonans]

SACEM is the French performing rights organization, equivalent to either ASCAP or BMI in the US, or SOCAN in Canada. They're not a lobby group comprised of commercial record labels. They collect royalties from broadcasts and performances on behalf of French musicians.

Re:SACEM != RIAA

[shark72]

"SACEM is the French performing rights organization, equivalent to either ASCAP or BMI in the US, or SOCAN in Canada. They're not a lobby group comprised of commercial record labels. They collect royalties from broadcasts and performances on behalf of French musicians."

This bears amplification.

SACEM, ASCAP/BMI, SOCAN, etc.: performing rights organizations which represent artists, composers and lyricists. THE GOOD GUYS.

The French equivalent of the RIAA is the IFPI. The RIAA and the IFPI represent the recording industry. THE BAD GUYS.

Performing rights organizations represent a potential revenue stream for artists, composers and lyricists that the record companies generally don't see and can't touch. You know how we all want the record companies to go away but for artists to be compensated, in a way which doesn't require us to pay for the music? Performing rights organizations are the way that can happen. The summary's statement that SACEM is the equivalent of the RIAA was dangerously misleading.

Re:SACEM != RIAA

[anticypher]

All my information here comes from working peripherally around DG Competition, the European Commission's directorate that oversees all things to do with "free markets", monopolies, and the like. I also know a lot of francophone musicians.

SACEM ... THE GOOD GUYS

Hardly.

The really bad.

SACEM was created under the Vichy regime in France in 1941, and headed up by a group of six wealthy supporters and close friends of some of the ministers of the Vichy government. I've almost Godwined this thread at this point, so I'll tread carefully. SACEM was to collect all royalties, but only distribute those royalties to artists who swore affirmation that they were of pure aryan descent. They were supposed to keep all the royalties from non-aryan artists, to compensate the Vichy government who was trying to counter the effects of non-pure music like jazz and swing. Being typical corrupt french bureaucrats, the monies never saw their way to the Vichy government, and at the end of the war the 6 heads of the SACEM escaped the hangmans noose by fleeing to Argentina, Monaco, and Canada. All were extremely wealthy at that point, and the two who were returned to stand trial were able to escape capital punishment by claiming to have kept all the monies from the Vichy government as an act of resistance and patriotism. SACEM was condemned to pay all the monies to the artists and their heirs, but didn't start to do so until 1968. The monies collected from 1941 to 1947 have never been paid to the artists or their heirs. The monies collected for non-aryan French, which includes Corsicans, Tahitians, Algerians, Blacks, Jews, Catalans was only partially paid from 1947 until 1968, when the heads of SACEM were replaced in a political scandal at the end of the de Gaul era. After 1968, SACEM started to live up to its role as protector of artists.

The bad.

SACEM has the de facto monopoly for collecting all monies on French territory for lyricists and composers, from every source possible. Radio stations, concert halls, bars, carnivals, advertising jingles and so on. No songwriter or lyricist can directly get paid from a rave DJ or radio station. All the money has to be collected by SACEM, who deduct administrative costs, then pass on the rest. Until they tangled with Daft Punk, who managed to get some of the rules changed, but the high court of France confirmed that the monopoly served the public interest and that competition would hurt both artists and society at large. It also makes sure artists don't cheat too much on their taxes.

The not so bad.

Daft Punk. Heroes to all French authors, composers, songwriters. Daft Punk was two excellent musicians who wrote all their own works, then sold the tracks directly to DJs for special performances at raves and large events. Since the music was good, radio stations started playing the music, paying standard rates to SACEM. Daft Punk had a string of top 10 hits across Europe in the mid '90s, and got their money from other country's rights management groups except for SACEM. SACEM wanted them to sign over all their rights, Daft Punk took them to court, fought hard all the way to the French equivalent of the Supreme Court, lost most of their arguments, but managed to win some changes in SACEM.

The Cour de Cassation reaffirmed that SACEM's main role was to protect authors, composers and lyricists, and that having multiple competing groups would weaken that role. But Daft Punk won the battles to keep some of their rights, such as internet broadcast, CD-ROM sales (not pressed CDs from labels, CD-ROMs of their live concerts) and a few other new technologies that a lumbering bureaucracy like SACEM is completely unable to keep up with.

Further missives from Brussels based on the Daft Punk ruling, amongst others, have opened up the possibility for copyleft and creative commons style licenses in France, where musicians can release their music for free and not have the SACEM collecting in their name (and then not passing on the mo

imeem.com Has Been Doing This In The US For A Whil

[illectro]

You might have missed this imeem.com has been doing this for a while, as well as the usual selection of indie labels the massive news was that Warner Brothers music has basicly given them streaming rights to their catalog which includes hundreds of mainstream artists. All advertising supported and free (well I guess you have to sign up for an account)

Damn Universal....

[meuhlavache]

Thanks to Universal to order Deezer.com to stop stream their content due to a lack of communication between them. For more information (in french): http://www.freenews.fr/nat/5144-presse-deezer-com- universal-acte-3.html The little history is Neuf Cegetel, french ISP, sign a contract with Universal allow their subscribers to download and listen DRM protected music. Deezer.com was associated with Free.fr, another ISP (one of the most important in France), after a strategic "Joke" in press by Free. Now Deezer get the feedback of Free.fr actions..... Please Universal: let us listen free music! I hope my english is not that bad! =)

Lot's of buzz, but it won't last

[nsebban]

From what is said in the French press and on French news websites, Deezer's music catalog is far from being 100% legal. They have a few agreements, but for most of the songs they have at best *contacted* the corresponding recording company.

They have a temporary agreement with the SACEM, till December 2007, with the SACEM having the ability to make it stop even sooner if they want. What makes me think this thing won't last, is the fact their agreement is based on the promise that their service is the first one where the user can listen to the music without the data being downloaded on the user's system, and without the user having the ability to record it.

In other words they guarantee that there's no way for user to record a song and listen to it without using their service. Hello there, Total Recorder and similar applications.