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.'"

Comments

24 hours

[set]

or less.

come on. let's get real here.

universal is gonna get owned.

How can it not work?

[zerocool^]

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.

Re:How can it not work?

[Coopjust]

Not really an MP3, the Slashdot summary (and the line in the article) are misleading. Quote the SpiralFrog website:

Can I transfer the music I download to a portable device?
SpiralFrog is compatible with portable music players and music phones that support Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM). Look out for devices that prominently display the "PlaysForSure" logo.

So, they're not MP3s; they are WMA files with DRM. This is a nonstory.

Re:How can it not work?

[Reaperducer]

PlaysForSure? Are they kidding? Even Microsoft won't touch PlaysForSure.

Look out for devices that prominently display the "PlaysForSure" logo.

I assume by "Look out" they mean "Look out, it's gonna blow!"

Re:How can it not work?

[Horas]

They use OGG Vorbis!

(just kidding, but wouldn't it be nice?)

Re:How can it not work?

[Bassman59]

what if I took a stereo mini to mini and plugged the output from my computer to the audio input, then used an audio recording software (audacity, its free)
to record it. Simple analog hack defeats complicated DRM encryption thingy.

Better than the analog hack, use a digital hack: don't go out the analog out and back in through analog in. Instead, get a sound card with S/PDIF ins and outs. Loop from the out to the in with the appropriate cable, press record on the recording program and play on the other, and off you go. Digital copies!

It's probably best to choose a sound card that uses its own drivers and does NOT use the Windows mixer.

Also note that modern Macs have TOSLINK (basically S/PDIF over an optical connection) capability built into the 1/8" analog in and out jacks, so get an optical fiber and connect them together and go. (Or use Audio Hijack and be done with it.) Oh, yeah, I realize that whatever the original subject here was doesn't support Macs, but whatever.

Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay!

[hoggoth]

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.

Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay!

[Bender0x7D1]

I doubt this service will last since the majority of customers are going to be too busy downloading music to spend time clicking ads.

Ads work well when people viewing those pages are interested in the topic, and might want more information, or details on how to buy the items, (or similar items), discussed on the page. With this scheme, they are interested in downloading music, which they are already doing. So how are the ads going to appeal to them? Especially considering that they are interested in free music.

Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay!

[tppublic]

There is more than one way to skin a cat. I don't see why their model is the problem everyone posting here makes it out to be.

If you don't like it, so what? You aren't in their target market.

You see, you are presuming that everyone want to take the limited music with them and/or that one cares whether the music works after 30 days. I don't. Let me explain why:

I'm not interested in renting music I already know about. I want to rent music I don't know about, so I can decide if I want to buy it.

While the cost aspects (due to the ads) aren't a perfect analogy, think of this like test driving a car. I want to drive the car for a short period of time on reasonable terms, not only experience it under 25 MPH in some dealer lot. DRM gives me the ability to legally 'test drive' the music. I want to sample music - meaning the whole song (or close to it), not some maybe-but-perhaps-not-really-representative 30 second sound-byte that Apple provides. I already use AmieStreet.com (since the samples are much longer), and I'm open to other alternatives (yes, I know about Napster and Rhapsody, and no, I'm not shelling out $10 a month)

Once I sample a song and decide I like it, I will go acquire the music elsewhere - either on a physical CD (if I like enough songs on an album) or though another source (iTunes, etc.). That will not possess DRM, since I have never paid for (and don't intend to pay for) DRMed music. [That's like buying the car you test drove, for those following the analogy]

The purchased song will get placed on my iPod so that I can take it with me. I'm happy, I'm only transporting music I like, and their business model works in the process, because I can use them to explore. So I'm sorry, but I'm failing to see why their model isn't a good one.

Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay!

[TheRaven64]

If you don't like it, so what? You aren't in their target market. But who is their target market? Go outside. Take a look at what people are using to listen to music. Last time I checked, it was something like 80% iPod, 20% mobile phone (mostly Nokia). These both support AAC, but don't support WMA. Take a look at what normal non-geeky people are using to play music. Mostly CD players. How many people listen to music only on a Windows PC of a PlaysIfYou'reLucky device? People laughed at the original iPod that only worked with a Mac, but I suspect it had a larger potential market than this service...

Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay!

[GPL Apostate]

Yes, but any iPod enthusiast will tell you that it's a very gentle DRM. You can burn it to a CD, then rip the CD to a .wav file, and play the .wav file back through an old 8-bit sound blaster card on a Windows 3.1 system to the line input on a cassette deck. Then play the cassette back into your Mac II's sound input to record an .aiff file and from there encode it to MP3. Alternatively, if your SparcStation 10 is one of the rare ones with the sound options, you can record to .au instead.

not mp3!

[douthat]

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.

Re:not mp3!

[douthat]

It should be noted that the Slashdot editors changed the title of the article from "Universal Offers iPod-Resistant MP3s" to "Universal Offers iPod-Resistant Music"

Like selling screen doors to submarines....

[Shoeler]

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.

not MP3 - WMA

[Animaether]

as noted in the comments to the DailyTech article itself. Slashdot editors ftw.

Re:not MP3 - WMA

[purpledinoz]

The music industry really baffles me. First of all, what average consumer really knows which label their favorite bands are with? I'm sure most people are like me, and really don't care which band is with who. And when these labels start fragmenting how consumers are able to get music, it will just confuse the consumer, and just push them towards piracy.

Re:not MP3 - WMA

[TheGeneration]

The music industry really baffles me. First of all, what average consumer really knows which label their favorite bands are with? I'm sure most people are like me, and really don't care which band is with who. And when these labels start fragmenting how consumers are able to get music, it will just confuse the consumer, and just push them towards piracy.

I once dated a guy who worked for Universal in their licensing department. I guarantee you Universal doesn't understand that the average consumer has no idea what label an artist is on. When you work for a company like Universal you hear these entertainment names constantly, and it gets hard to separate that constant work related input from what you know about an entertainer from the non-work world.

In the end Universal is crippling itself. This isn't new for Universal. They were one of the last studios to begin moving their film archive onto DVD, 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.

Universal is a company that has consistently put out the absolute minimum in frills, done the least possible it could in order to sell the item, all the while charging a premium for the DVD. This goes for Movies, and now more recently for Music. In the end they want to charge the CD price premium without providing the CD level quality. Apple won't let them screw their customers like that and so Universal is cutting off it's own nose to spite it's own face.

In the end we can live without the labels, and unfortunately Universal hasn't learned that fact yet. There'll always be great music out there, with or without them.

According to this article iTunes now is the third largest music retailer with 10% of the market (Wal-mart at #1 has 15% of the market.) Considering that Apple has nearly 90% of the digital music players market, Universal's attempt to move it's catalog onto Amazon (which is ranked #4 in the US for music retail) may have been an ill thought out strategic move when matched with the fact that the files only coming in (non-iPod supported) WMA format. In this case it appears that Universal has overestimated audience demand for their music library. Screwing yourself out of 10% total music sales in the US could easily result in Universal not seeing another artist enter the top 10 sales lists until the iTunes boycott ends. Most of todays generic corporate created artists lack any sort of long term market draw or memorability without the corporate backed marketing and chart positions generated by sales. That is the significance of Universal's ill thought out strategy to force Apple's hand.

I could also go off onto a tangent regarding Malcolm McDowell's Tipping Point and how the "cool kids" likely to cause a tipping point effect for an artist are probably the "cool kids" who of course own iPods. An artist without the "cool kids" support is going to find him/herself increasingly less relevant to mainstream consumers. This of course is a harder idea to support with actual numbers, for me it's just a gut feeling that this decision is going to have that sort of anti-cool impact that could result in the wrong kind of "tipping point" (ie, people abandoning an artist.)

Re:not MP3 - WMA

[QRDeNameland]

Excellent post...but I'd like to point out that The Tipping Point was written by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm McDowell is this guy.

United States of America and Canada only

[cerberusss]

Our Apologies. At this time, the SpiralFrog Web site is available only to residents of the United States of America and Canada.

No problem guys, apologies accepted! I know some Russian sites that happily cater to the western European crowd :-)

WMA, not MP3...?

[riceboy50]

This was found in the comments of TFA, so take it with a grain of salt:

They're using Microsoft's proprietary .wma container files with streams decompressed using Microsoft proprietary WMA codecs. Even if the music is free, they're still bound to a player that supports a particular version of Microsoft's proprietary DRM.

And again...

[Microlith]

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.

"iPod's"

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Won't play on Zune either...

[antifoidulus]

since it seems to support "Plays for Sure" which doesn't play for sure on a Zune.....

Re:Won't play on Zune either...

[syrinx]

Well, guess we'd better find both Zune owners and give them the bad news.

no Zune support

[ksheff]

looks like the million or so Zune owners won't be able to use these files.

Q: Are files downloaded from SpiralFrog compatible with the iPod or Zune?

A: Songs and video files that you download from SpiralFrog are not compatible with Apple's range of iPods or Microsoft's Zune.

Where Apple is NOT competing

[CommandoCody]

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.

Re:That long?

[KingSkippus]

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.)

Great for all 10 Zune users!

[mmeister]

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.

Even better business model

[PPH]

I'm going to release content that won't play on ANY platform and grab their market share.

So there!!!

Re:Ears alone would be good enough

[veganboyjosh]

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...

Re:Which begs the question...

[larry bagina]

(non DRM) AAC is supported by:

• iPod
• Zune
• Zen
• SanDisk
• PSP
• Walkman
• XBox 360
• PS 3
• Blackberry
• Nokia
• Sony Ericsson
• Motorola
• Samsung
• Palm
• Anything running windows mobile
• ...

Prior art from a bygone era

[snowwrestler]

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.

Simple DVDs good

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Re:Simple DVDs good

[Hijacked Public]

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 Yeah, you're telling me.

The average movie is what, 2 hours or so? Figure if you went on a movie watching marathon you'd have to do this inconvenient cursor shuffling 12 times a day. That would have to be like 30, maybe as many as 40, remote button presses in a day. How on earth 'they' expect the average consumer to put up with that level of atrocity is beyond me.

That is not even considering the wear and tear such a thing would put on my fingertips. And how much life it takes off my AAA batteries.