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Yahoo Exec Says "Enough DRM"
bogess writes "Yahoo! Music General Manager Ian Rogers recently gave a speech to some music executives about the future of the Internet music business and promised his company will not be involved in Digital Rights Management anymore." Another straw in the wind: Nine Inch Nails has now followed Radiohead in ridding themselves of the labels and going independent.
What record labels are finally learning is that just because they can steal, doesn't mean the majority of people will.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
It seems that in recent days, the draconian overlords of music (RIAA) have won a local battle, suing and winning from a poor woman over $240,000 for about a dozen songs, and lost the entire war. Consumers kicked them to the curb 5 years ago. Now artists are starting to do it. Artists know how much companies take and how much they get. Its very likely that artists getting paid directly by fans for music on the web may have a better payday than if they stayed with the company. In general, it seems they won the battle and lost the war.
I haven't purchased music for years because of the behavior of the labels, and nope, I haven't been downloading illegally either. If some of the big groups are going to divest themselves of their overlords, I'll be starting up with the purchasing again.
It is great news that established artists are able to leave the big labels behind.
But has any music artist achieved anything like their success without the marketing power of a major label behind them?
I do understand that making enough money by playing music to have a decent standard of living and support a family should be enough for a real artist.
But is there even a remote possibility for an independent artist to win the lottery and make it to the big time without a major label?
If this has happened already, please enlighten me because I've missed it (I know who NIN and Radiohead are, but haven't heard of any, so you have some serious convincing to do.)
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Not so fast, but RIAA and its beloved DRM will fail, within the next few years. RIAA still has control over majority of the music market. Not everyone is well-informed to know and seek for better alternatives. Some are happy to follow whatever the record labels throw at them. Only through words of mouth and coverage by media will people learn, and ditch the record labels for the better services. What RIAA fails to realize is that a successful business is all about what the customers want, not what the company wants. There are countless examples of failures because the company lost touch with the people. And here we are just witnessing another failure in making.
I am not a shill, I am a satisfied customer.
Here's my take:
For a long time, people here complained about iTunes, and essentially said, "Just give me the damn MP3s at a reasonable price". I agreed with them. Along came emusic, and that's what they did. I chose to support that decision with my wallet, which is the only real vote we have in the marketplace.
So I took a chance with the "free" trial. Yes I had to give up my CC, but I figured that if these guys are ripoffs, they aren't going to last long.
What I saw when I got into their site was a breath of fresh air. I have very eclectic musical tastes, and the breadth of their selection was simply astounding. I realized right away that I was not going to have any problem choosing 90 tracks every month for the forseeable future.
Sure, if you are looking for "mainstream" mega-label stuff, it's mostly not there. But if you're fucking tired of the crap you hear on radio, and like to hear other genres than just 70's rock, wow.
You are entitled to your petty objections about emusic, but I will not stop "shilling" for them. For me and many here, emusic kicks ass. It's time to stop whining on slashdot, get out on the market, and vote with your wallet.
Doing anything less is "selling yourself short as a consumer."
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I keep hearing the phrase "bands make most of their money from touring etc not from CD sales".
If this is true, then Radiohead aren't losing any money by giving away their music. They're just building a fan base by giving away music instead of building a fan base by getting a label to sell CDs. It also means that DRM protects the label and actively damages the band.
Has the internet finally created a world in which the bands don't need labels any more? Perhaps in 5 or ten years time, we'll see that the labels will morph into music marketing companies who are hired by bands as necessary. Either that, or they'll have to start paying the bands a decent royalty on CD sales.
To er is human.
As the guy in the article points out, it is trivially easy to move bits from one person to another.
If I amass a 1,000 song collection with mp3s, won't it be trivially easy for me to "share" my music with all my friends? Wouldn't that really help build my reputation with them? And wouldn't those who received the free music be inclined to give away their music to others as well to help build their reputation?
It's good that the record companies now understand the scourge of DRM, but I don't see how the artists win in this scenario.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Not everyone is well-informed to know and seek for better alternatives. Some are happy to follow whatever the record labels throw at them. Only through words of mouth and coverage by media will people learn, and ditch the record labels for the better services. Most of them are bound by contract to the labels for a certain time or number of releases. It's not that they don't know to switch, but that they can't.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I must be an oddball then. Despite my being technically sophisticated enough to download pretty much anything, I still mostly buy my stuff - software and movies included.
Why? That's the legal way. As long as they don't screw stuff up, I prefer being legal.
I've dropped literally hundreds of dollars at webscription.net, which not only allows me to buy DRMless books, but to redownload them whenever I want to. It doesn't take two minutes and an internet connection to open them. It'd take two bookshelves to hold them all if I'd bought physical copies. I appreciate the saved space.
Basically, don't try to sell a product that's measurably inferior to the pirated version. I've heard everything from 20 minutes of unskippable ads(a disney DVD), condescending 'don't steal movies' ads, music with DRM so computationally expensive that playing them on a portable player sucks out half of the battery life, unable to play on average(or even top of the line) systems, installs root-kits, huge hassle when you change computers, etc...
*I'll normally download cracked executables for games even though I purchased it, that'd make for an interesting court battle when they claim I pirated software and I produce a receipt from before they say I downloaded it.
I don't read AC A human right
There is no inconsistency. However by moving the goal posts each time they're reached simply reveals the true motives.
After the file format is changed the excuse will be the music itself isn't good enough to pay for.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
In the last few weeks we have seen a number of advances in the world of DRM. This article is an excellent and eloquent statement of what a nonsense DRM really is. Critically, it is written by a guy in a very influential position. Coupled with the launch of Amazon's MP3 service (sadly only in the US, at least nominally) and the continuing deluge of bad publicity for DRM, the labels will eventually have to see sense. Oh, they won't just crumble overnight. There will continue to be a spate of ugly trials and the RIAA will even win some (especially when the defendants are stupid enough to lie in court), but actually all that achieves is more bad publicity for them. They'll cling on to their outmoded business model for as long as they can, but it can't and wont last. It's about time!
There is no inconsistency. However by moving the goal posts each time they're reached simply reveals the true motives.
I think you're confusing "moving the goal posts" with taking things one step at a time.
If we all demanded everything we wanted right off the bat, we'd be labeled as nutjobs and nobody would pay any attention.
If you ask for one thing at a time, it comes off as more reasonable. It's the same approach you take to any big problem. You're not going to solve world hunger by tomorrow through one big air drop. It takes baby steps.
Yes, the quality of music will be the next complaint. Or pricing. That's nothing new. That's not "moving the goal posts". These are all things people have been saying for a long time, but first things first - DRM is the more important issue at the moment.
I've never heard anyone complain about .jpg images at 90 quality, demanding lossless versions of the same image, except for people who use the image as source material in other productions, yet for some reason it's cool to pretend to hear things that aren't there.
.jpg image rather than a 90% one. It's just fine until you go to print it out, but then it's all fuzzy. A 192 kbps MP3 would be like a 75% quality one - good for most hifi stereo systems, and 256kbps would be getting into 'golden ears' territory, especially if they go back to the masters to do the encoding.
128kbps MP3 isn't just lossless, it's also low enough that many people with decent-good systems can hear the differences.
Sure, it's fine for most portable/computer purposes, but it's more like a 50%
And I am by no means a golden eared person, but I could easily hear the difference between a CD and the 128mbps mp3 when I hooked my computer into my receiver. Sure, somebody might come along and say it was my encoder, but at that bitrate there was simply a lot missing.
Still HD space is cheap, and the higher quality can always be downcoded for usage in a player. It can also be billed as a selling point - better quality than the pirates.
I don't read AC A human right
You say "If you do X I'll stop pirating your music." They do X, you don't stop like you said you would you instead come up with a new X. Seems like moving the goal posts to me.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Company says "CDs will cost $5 more than LPs or Cassettes, but that's just until they stop being experimental - then the price will come down". CDs become the default medium, price doesn't drop.
(And company still gives artists lower royalties per unit for CDs using the same argument).
Company says "We will continue to market CDs, but we need to get the CD standard and definition changed."
I'm not saying you're wrong to characterize what some listeners are doing as moving the goalposts, but that's some listeners, while others do come back to the market and buy music if their particular complaint is addressed. Meanwhile, the RIAA has been moving the goalposts on its own in various ways, and until recently, it hasn't been some members, it's been a totally unified 100% action.
Who is John Cabal?
You are correct, of course, that filesharers are acting out of personal greed, as are the RIAA member labels. But so what? The American revolutionaries were acting out of personal greed; they didn't want to pay taxes to the British government. But we still call them freedom fighters. The question isn't whether people are acting out of noble motives; it is whether or not their greed is justified.
At the time of the American revolution, the British government made all the same arguments the RIAA members make now. The British government / RIAA can say that they paid to create the desirable item, that they paid to promote it and make its desirability evident, that they have the courts and legal system backing their ownership of it, and that people who take it without paying are thieves - or if not thieves, then some other kind of criminals (copyright infringers / tax avoiders). Freedom fighers are always criminals, because if the law respected the freedoms they (greedily) desire, they would not have to fight for them.
So yes, filesharers are acting out of personal greed. But that doesn't mean their cause is wrong. The principled argument in favor of filesharing is that copyright exists not to convey absolute property rights to the creator of a work, but to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences; that this implies the public has an ownership in copyrighted works just as essential and protected as that of the creator; and that current copyright law excessively rewards the creators of works without giving due consideration to the public interest. If you buy this argument, then filesharers are freedom fighters, regardless of their motives.
-Graham
Is this really good?
When they say no more DRM, I doubt their plan is to 'sell' songs without DRM. I think this means that songs will be distributed as a service and that the service will be supported by advertising.
And I, for one, am sorry that everything we do has to be supported by advertising. I don't like advertising. I prefer to pay a reasonable fee.
I don't blame Yahoo. They came out with a great music subscription service that went absolutely nowhere in the market. And, regarding DRM, they have been consistent in their rhetoric against it, but have not had the power to do anything about it.
Why it is the responsibility of software, hardware, etc to enforce the DRM?
Are the car manufactures required to implement speed controls so you do not break the speed limit?
I really hate that Microsoft is trying to enforce the DRM - why is it there responsibility to do it?
If Microsoft is required to implement the DRM so Microsoft can provide a DVD decoder for the movie then Microsoft should say fine we will not include your decoder - if the user wants to play your company's DVD on our software OS you should provide your own DVD player/decoder (BTW: Microsoft is not responsible if through some patch or update your software no longer works). From Microsoft point of view I would be pissed at the DVD company rather than Microsoft.
I just do not see why it DRM is trying to force hardware and software developers to be the police. Do they get extra pay every time some tries to break the DRM?
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
It's just incrementalism - the same strategy used to get people accustomed to DRM in the first place.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"