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Universal Offers iPod-Resistant Music
dprovine writes "Universal is now offering music through Spiral Frog as free downloads supported by advertising revenue. But according to Daily Tech, the files being offered won't work on iPods. 'The move to not allow its content to be played on iPod's appears to be a clear snub by the Universal Music Group, similar to NBC's recent move of its television content from iTunes to Amazon.com. Apple has not commented on this development. For many, though, SpiralFrog.com presents an intriguing new business model that may present a legal alternative to file sharing or spending large amounts of money on CDs or paid download services, such as iTunes.'"
or less.
come on. let's get real here.
universal is gonna get owned.
How can it not work on an iPod?
MP3 is a clearly defined standard. These files either are, or they aren't, mp3's. If they are, iPods will play them. If they aren't, then they shouldn't be sold as MP3's.
sig?
This is a great service. Well, it's great as long as you only listen to music sitting in front of your computer. And don't use a Mac. Or Linux. And don't mind paying for music that may one day dissapear because the service has been discontinued or you move to a Mac or Linux.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The reason their "MP3"s don't work on iPods is because they're not MP3s. They're PlaysForSure DRMed WMAs. This is high quality journalism at work. Slashdot editors should be proud.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
Now Universal just look like idiots. One can easily argue the business sense of delivering content in a price-controllable way. Business 101 - when the demand increases, limit the supply and profit by increasing the prices, or changing the delivery mechanism to make more money on the same supply. Demand for downloadable music has increased while CD sales decreased, thus the allegory.
The stupid part of this idea is removing 70-80% (the share of iPods in the portable music market) of the market for your product. Just try to buy a gas station and switch to only selling ethanol and see how well that works if you need an example. The phrase shooting one's self in the foot comes to mind, but the recording studios seem good at that.
as noted in the comments to the DailyTech article itself. Slashdot editors ftw.
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~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
We see the rise of another doomed business.
Of course it won't work on iPods, they're using DRM-out-the-ass WMA files that won't work on any OS but windows and players made by companies that bought into the Plays for Sure nonsense that not even Microsoft themselves use.
So it's free, so what. You get a combination of advertising and no control. I'll stick to my usual of buying CDs and ripping them to AAC, even if it means less music overall.
Ha Ha. So take that, Apple. We'll show you.
(Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Anyone who believes the Windows DRM will make life easier for anyone is a damn fool.)
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
The move to not allow its content to be played on iPod's appears to be a clear snub by the Universal Music Group
Played on iPod's what?
OK, now, I understand what the big music industry people are trying to accomplish. They're trying to keep from going the way of the buggy-whip makers. They're pulling out all the stops to keep from becoming irrelevant. That's understandable. But jeez, this is just pathetic.
They're trying anything and everything to keep people from buying their music. They're putting up every kind of conceivable roadblock that they can come up with, as malicious and as pointless as they may be. These guys are really getting desperate, and it shows. Pretty soon, even the average brain-dead consumer will understand what they're trying to do, and then it really will be all over for the entire industry.
I don't respond to AC's.
Well, there's probably a similar thing going on here... they're either working a deal or have a deal with another provider to try to exclude Apple's products. Aside from conversion to one format then to MP3, it won't be more than a day or two before someone has a standalone program or plug-in for an existing one that will do the conversion.
OCO is Loco
since it seems to support "Plays for Sure" which doesn't play for sure on a Zune.....
Monstar L
Because Apple dropped them. NBC didn't pull their video from iTunes.. Apple did.
Here's an even easier way, download it from a P2P network in the first place.
The RIAA still doesn't get it. People can already get this stuff for free. The question in the consumer's mind is would they rather make sure it is 100% legal, or would they rather the music was convenient, i.e. works everywhere on all devices and can be transferred between machines and will still work if you switch computers or reinstall your computer. WMA is too painful to use. Nice try though.
For $0 a month in cash, I can download a sizable selection of music to my Playsforsure (Creative Zen Vision M) music player, but I have to spend my rare and precious time watching advertisements. Right off the bat, the real economic cost of this service based upon my opportunity costs is over $50 per month without exaggeration.
Or, I can pay $15 a month for Rhapsody or Napster and not have to spend my time being subjected to advertisements. $15 a month, which, and let's be honest, is not a lot of money to have access to a library of millions of songs.
My cynical take: this service is essentially an advertising gimmick by its financiers to draw people to superior services, such as Rhapsody. The increment from $0/month to $15/month is not too much at all for the tremendous jump in convenience.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It seems to me that Universal et al see "downloading music for free" as the entire problem. They somehow don't understand that the biggest reason to download music for free is to put it on your mp3 player. They may have provided free music downloads, but DRM'd music is useless, and won't solve the problem.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
For everyone jumping down Universal's throat for "snubbing Apple", it should be noted that this is no different than what Apple is doing when it restricts iTunes downloads to Apple-supported hardware. Yes, there is some DRM-free music available on iTunes, and I applaud them for it. But Universal is snubbing Apple about as much as Apple is snubbing Zune and every other music player out there that it refuses to license Fair-Play to, including the Linux operating system. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this had anything to do with their recent contract spat with Apple or that this wasn't coming out regardless of how their negotiations turned out.
- Stealth dave
Evil is as eval("does");
It's called radio.
Now everyone will talk about how great free music is, but then they'll complain about having to listen to advertisements. This, of course, will lead people to pine for some service where you could pay to listen to radio without advertisements.
NBC Uni may have just helped Apple more than hurt them. I'm sure this is going to come up in the impending anti-competitive lawsuit against iTunes that the EU is planning.
substitute "cork" for "cock" and it would be an apt analogy. Better to know who is screwing you.
How is Apple different: Because every song downloaded from the iTunes Store can be burned to CD and played on any CD player. They can also be re-read from CD in any desired format including MP3 or non-DRM AAC.
Further, Apple has publicly committed to DRM free music sales whenever the publisher will permit it. Apple claims they don't want DRM and it can't work anyway. "Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store".
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Okay. There is a very very simple reason why FairPlay will never work with anything but iPods. iTunes exists solely to sell iPods. It makes little to no money for Apple in the first place - some have said that it operates at a small loss for Apple, after the content suppliers' cut is removed. What possible reason could Apple have for letting anyone put that music on a Zune or any other mp3 player? Is the suggestion they should do this as a public service? Should they include free ponies, too? Once again, let's review. Apple is a HARDWARE company. Its OS and content exists to sell more HARDWARE. If there is no incentive for the customer to use that hardware, Apple would be a company of fools to give away everything else.
So, what is next? Not buying from advertisers is stealing music?
Bert
Whoops, editors screwed up. They're not MP3s, they're WMAs. I take it back.
(Money's now on 72 or so hours. Not for lack of technical know-how, but for sheer apathy.)
Yes, cut out the millions of iPod users. That's how I would make something successful!!
Let's see how great this thing really is in 6-12 months with ads, DRM and limiting the product to not work on the #1 portable players.
I predict yet another failure in the pipeline. This product is about catering to the recording industry with the customer as an afterthought.
Same story, different URL.
So there!!!
Have gnu, will travel.
Add to this the fact that their heads are firmly planted in their rectal cavities and the whole picture is complete.
...how come all the iPod wannabes support WMA but not non-DRM AAC. Most iPod owners' collections consist primarily of AAC's ripped from CDs. Why on earth would the 2nd tier players not want to be able to play these, if only to lower that barrier to entry?
Do they all think that hitching their wagons to Microsoft (and MS DRM) will magically win the day for them? Even now? I know Apple won't let them use the iPod's DRM, which I guess is pretty nasty. But that's no reason to snub Apple customers willing to switch players if not for having to re-rip their collections.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
So this company has been working at this for more than a year (which predates Universal's iTunes melt down). A quick search on that widely reported meltdown reveals this from The Times of London:
This is not the behavior of a good business that is likely to succeed.
Not quite. After skimming some Wikipedia articles, Universal Music Group is wholly owned by Vivendi, who also owns Blizzard and Sierra. NBC-Universal, on the other hand, is owned 80% by GE and 20% by Vivendi. Not the same company. Not sure if that's enough ownership for them to influence each other's policy.
Just so we're clear, the record industry peeps have no ears, and their fingers are in their ears, while their heads are up their asses, all the while humming a tune that's to a different drummer, AND screaming "mine mine mine!"?
Talented folks, these deformed **ia people...
BMG invented Discman-resistant CD's with a light sand-blasting just before packaging.
But, many people claimed it was derivative of Geffen's efforts to create Walkman-resistant tapes using magnets.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In the end Universal is crippling itself.... they also just released DVD's with out even so much as a menu (ie, zero special features) you put the disk in, watched a couple previews you didn't want to watch, and then the movie started.
How is this bad? I would frankly really prefer a simple "movie only" DVD. Having to wait for the menu video intro to play and then shift the cursor around to "play" every time I stick the disk in is not as convenient as simply inserting the disc and having it play right away as it does for the DVDs I make from our camcorder.
Having several hours of extra "documentary" footage on how wonderful it was to make the film really doesn't do much for me. I realize that some people might like it but does it really sell the DVD? Your comment seems to suggest that there are people out there who will base their decision on whether to purchase the DVD on whether it comes with these extra features and not on whether the film was any good.
You're completely right, but I'm still a little baffled -- what do you get when you divide WMA by MP3 and then re-assign the result to WMA? ;-)