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Universal and Sony Plan "Free" Music Service
Damon Tog writes "Macworld reports that Universal Music Group has enlisted the help of Sony to join forces in a new music service. The price of the subscription is expected to be built-in to the cost of digital music players, leaving the music 'free' to the consumer. 'The plan is still in flux and faces several hurdles, BusinessWeek notes. Among them is finding a business model that allows the hardware makers to subsidize the cost of the music. In addition, the labels have tried to develop their own online music services before without success.'"
How is the music from this service going to be tied to the particular player that is paying for it, and what obscure file format will it be? It would be foolish to think that the RIAA would be generous enough to distribute MP3 files that will play with anything.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
The reason there have been so many failed music stores, especially when they have been built by the root content distributers themselves, is they don't want to take the time (and therefore money) to sit down and develop (not just build) an easy to use, intuitive, open music distribution software. They are marketing driven, and as such, this software it looked at from a marketing stand point. Full of buzzwords and trends, but no strong basis on what people want.
/rant
People want music in several formats.
People want music that plays over all devices they own.
People want music in varying quality, and are willing to scale the pay of a song to the quality.
People are not willing to pay more than a song is worth. (This is the biggest issue for the labels)
If a service is build instead of a program, the company will be successful.
insight through the mind
Personally, I think that this plan is great, I hope it works well, because I am fed up with the music industry at large.
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
This is a sign that more of the labels are starting to realize they need to change with the times and will (hopefully) stop blaiming the lack of interest in buying CDs on piracy alone. With any luck more things like this will start to happen soon as companies start to test the waters of new business models.
This could be a great thing for both consumers and corperations, if they are willing to start trying new business models, it means we as customers could very well wind up with new innovative ways to enjoy media that doesnt leave you feeling like you just got ripped off.
http://interserver.net/
I'm surprised at this move - I would have thought that they would go for a yearly subscription model with the first year free.
Macworld reports that Universal Music Group has enlisted the help of Sony to join forces in a new music service.
Initial reports indicate this offer is really "heating up", but that's only because the music players use Sony batteries.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Record execs: "blah blah blah, blah blah blah"
The label's business model isn't needed any more. These are their death throes.
- Free as in speech (you're free to do what you want with it)
- Free as in beer (you get it for free)
- And now there's free as in Sony (we're free to fuck you after we have your money)
No thanks, Sony and UMG. Fool me once, can't get fooled again.So, would said player let you load any of your own music on it? Or is this a device where you get to hear how great whatever artists a limited set of studios thinks are good enough for you?
It's like radio, but with more room to roam in your cage.
The problem is that selling cages to consumers has traditionally led to them escaping, or not entering in the first place in great numbers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Among them is finding a business model that allows the hardware makers to subsidize the cost of the music.
Er, right.
The music industry has an even worse problem coming up. The music player industry will probably be eaten by the phone industry. Most newer phones have some music player capability. And the phone guys have a network in place that can distribute the music. The problem for the labels is that the telcos want a much bigger piece of the revenue than iTunes takes. Sprint started at $2.50 per song, back in 2006, and they kept most of that. Early in 2007, they dropped the price to $0.99 per song. It's not clear how much of that Sprint keeps, but it's probably more than Apple does. Plus, Sprint gives away a few songs a week to each customer, sends out audio streams, and probably doesn't pay the labels much for that.
From the label perspective, this is much worse than iTunes. iTunes is an online retailer. The telcos are the customer. The music labels are headed into a situation where they have about five to ten customers, all much bigger than any music industry company.
Among them is finding a business model that allows the hardware makers to subsidize the cost of the music
We have already seen that most of those that pirate music still purchase CD's - in fact we consistently see that those that pirate music are the *highest* purchasers of music. Why do they need to incorporate this - it is already subsidized in the outrageous cost for a CD?
Allow it to play anything and make your money off 15 dollar CD's like they always have. Put lyrics, art, higher quality recordings (that is, non-compressed just like they currently do), and other things most music enthusiast want for the music they really want and let everything else go. For quite a few years now those purchasing music do so because they want too and feel they get value from their money, not because they have too or lawsuits. In fact my bet is that there are more that refuse to purchase because of the lawsuits than they gain from people refusing to download.
Even though I used the term "outrageous cost" I purchased quite a number of CD's until I finally got fed up with what they were doing, I haven't purchased one in years (nor have I downloaded music - while they like to pretend otherwise they know that also supports them in their crusade). While I thought it was over priced having a decent copy with the CD jacket was worth the cost for the stuff I liked.
At some point that will *have* to be the business model as Pandora's Box has been opened on MP3's and other compressed music (the only impediment to non-compressed is hard drive space and that will most likely be "fixed" some day also). They can't close it and *must* come to terms with it somewhere down the road - it is just a matter of how much "collateral damage" there is in the interim.
Not to mention I am willing to bet that many would pay quite a bit extra for a player that offered you indemnity to lawsuits from the RIAA (that is - your downloads/uploads are legal) and they would still get the CD purchases they are currently getting, plus the ones they have turned away from their lawsuits. They really should look at this as tons and tons and tons of free bandwidth. Heck, I would even side with them on harsh punishments if they just required a copyright notice (complete with some advertisement) with every download - in a sense a BSD licensed music download. Still plenty of reasons to purchased a CD, lots of free advertisement, and lots of free bandwidth.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
where I can download an album in a lossless format so I can convert it myself.
Playing Let's Pretend for a minute, if I owned an online music store I would offer music in MP3 format and also FLAC for the advanced users.
People could then download the FLAC versions and use some crappy tool that I provide to convert it into a selection of different formats.
Oh, and albums would be downloaded in a single zip file. If Radiohead can do it then so can I.
Summation 2
First, anyone who thinks it's "free" is nuts. Any price "bundled" into the player or phone service will per passed along to the end user.
And as such, here's a better question: What happens to the music when you stop paying the subscription?
Most subscription services of that type cancel all of your music when you're done. Are you going to want to pay two or three years worth of subscription fees and end up with nothing?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
First (and fatal) flaw: if you're going to roll the cost of the music into the price of the player then it's going to be far more expensive than any other portable player. Even a "minimal" 4 GB player holds about 800 tunes - even if the labels are unusually generous and only charge 50 cents per tune as a license fee - that's a $400 surcharge over the price of the player hardware.
But it probably won't get to the point where these players are being ignored by shoppers. If there's a fixed fee up front for all the music you can play and multiple labels involved - can you imagine the discussions about who gets how much of that license fee? Those people are every bit as bad as you imagine and this alone will prevent any meaningful cooperation between the labels.
So things aren't going to change any time soon - portable music players will continue to be loaded from CDs and "other distribution systems" with a very small number of purchased digital tracks.
So let's see - the major record labels get together and create a single service and set uniform pricing rules. That sounds like cartel and probably highly illegal under American copyright law, to say nothing of European law.
all this means is you'll pay through the nose for the player, it'll be locked in to their service and some where down the track they will turn it into a subscription based system to milk you.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Will this be included also in the price of these players or will it be waived?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
why does my mind scream trap when it comes to the riaa lables making a free music service.
What manufacturer would take on an open ended commitment of $60/yr? Even with Apple's legendary profit margins, they would be losing money by absorbing a $60 levy on their low-end iPods ($79 Shuffle, $149 Nano) and that's just in the first year! I can't see the situation being any better for other MP3 player makers.
From TFA, Apple allegedly get $0.29 from every $0.99 iTunes sale, i.e. the record companies get $0.70; I'd bet that $0.29 has to fund the credit card charges and infrastructure costs while the $0.70 is pure profit for emailing one master song copy to Cupertino. Does the music industry not realise what a good deal they have here? Pretty much every attempt at 'going solo' by a major has ended in disaster, indeed the quoted article states that Sony are closing their on-line music stores: how much did they lose there?
I think we're witnessing the beginning of the end of the 'traditional' music company and these sort of suggestions are just spasms from a body that doesn't know it's head has been cut off...
sorry SONY, I no longer need you.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This is a great move, because it will reveal the absurdity of the present locked player situation. Its a classic stage in industry evolution. Stage one is, some company (Apple) comes out with a format for purchased tunes which will only play on its own player.
This creates two incentives. The first is to increase the sale of tunes, since the other players depend on the tunes not the player as their main business. So they want more tunes sold. But as long as there is an Apple monopoly of sold tunes, this isn't going to happen, and there is nothing they can do about it.
The second incentive is to compete with Apple as a retailer.
So, because of the success so far of the Apple strategy, all they can really do is emulate it: come up with another store, another player, a different format, and tunes locked to it. Since they have to overcome an incumbent, they will be reduced to making his attractive by initially lowering the price of the tunes and using a different locked format, to make people use their player. This will be a replay of competing format wars that we have seen with hardware formats in the past.
We will then move to the stage, which we have seen previously in media with different consumer formats, where consumers still refuse to buy the stuff because they hate incompatible formats. After a while of this an unlocked standard will emerge. I don't mean a standard that is not copy protected, but one does not lock purchased tunes to players from one particular vendor, or make them be purchased by one specialised bit of software or currency. It will work just like CDs and DVDs do now: buy your content wherever you want from one of a variety of independent outlets, using whatever payment means you want, and play it on the player of your choice, from one of several manufacturers.
The Apple strategy has worked well for a while, but it has within it, like all DRM based attempts to tie up your use of what you buy, the seeds of its own destruction. It is not a sustainable business model longer term. The present model for music and CDs was. The only thing that is destroying it is overpricing from the content publishers.
Apple is far better placed to deal with the implosion of the business model. Its trivial to take locking off the iPod and iTunes store. And if the money falls out of the tunes market, it hardly affects them. For the content owners, their whole model is falling to bits in well defined stages that we have previously seen in other format wars. It is what is coming towards us.
A local music store has a special on now, 4 CDs for $20 (Canadian, about two-fifty American). Now that's more like it. I spent $40 there this week but on old, crappy stuff that today's listener wouldn't care for. I'm still expecting the now-ripped songs to self-destruct or something in 12 months.
Headline: We're offering MP3's for free!
Very very small print: You need to install this rootkit software to make the MP3's work, but we're telling you in advance this time, so you can't sue us.
Copyright enforcement: If you do something we don't allow to our MP3's, we reserve the right to make that Li-ion battery in your MP3 player go up in smoke. Just see all those laptop batteries as examples of how to enforce copyright!
[not aiming comments at specific companies mind]
Take Nobody's Word For It.
What. You mean like AllOfMp3? Somebody should just buy them and their technology and run the same system in the west with real royalty payments. But then it wouldn't be so cheap. And I wouldn't be able to use the Russian service.
until they free up the source and go GPLv3!
Oh wait...
This one's for free.
Create your music DRM free. Distribute it via your own tracker. Create some software for it that encorporates some PGP key exchange so "free" software can't access it. Load that software with P2P worked ads.
Effect: Since P2P software is usually notoriously slow and/or long running, people will see your ads. This will cover for the losses due to DRM freeness. Good PR is a given, even and especially amongst geeks, who have been criticising DRM for ages now and who are generally the loudest critics of DRM, and generally it will be seen as a good step forwards. Yes, the software will be cracked and the ads removed. This crack will not arrive at the masses, none have so far. 80+ percent of your userbase will watch the ads, they're used to it and don't see it as an intrusion. After the years of abuse, I would not recommend trying to collect data from your users, the fear of repercussions later would certainly cause many to give false data wherever possible.
You can use those ads to promote new acts and create more hype about artists you want to push. You could even push those songs down the P2P pipes to your customers, claiming those songs as freebies. Sample it down to 128kbit or less, and people will go out and get the "real thing" after listening to it.
For the MI critics here: The MI wants to make money. The way to this is either lock things down with DRM 'til nobody wants it anymore or offering them an alternative. This is one. It's viable. And something both sides could agree on. Business is a "give a little take a little" world, and will only be done willingly by both parties if both parties get the feeling that they got a fair deal out of it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The real question is: who put them in charge? Their proposed exit strategy for media distribution sounds as "shoot us in the leg". If I had any stok or option on those companies I would consider selling them now before is too late.
1. Alienate your customers by refusing to alter your business model
...
2. Once they all hate you, alter your business model
3. Profit
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
this is all very good for the consumer but what about artists, i'd like to know how this would be included in royalties for each end every artist in the world, i cant see how they are going to make that work! there's more to it than just saying its free, but hey, record companies already screw the artists. Will they have a log of who downloads what then they dip into the bank of cash that the mp3 players make and pay them? Questions Questions!
no sir, no can do. a corporate giant's credibility depends on its behavior towards customers in all its branches. if i get screwed over by some corp in any of its services or products, i dont go idiotically buying another of their product. and im not even talking about the rootkit gig.
Read radical news here
People want music that plays over all devices they own.
People want music in varying quality, and are willing to scale the pay of a song to the quality.
People are not willing to pay more than a song is worth. (This is the biggest issue for the labels) No, no, no. Nono. No!
We've figured it out now. People want free (as in beer) music! That's why we have rampant piracy and such lackluster sales. Right? Duh. Those mindless buggers care for nothing but free. But since these music-playing handheld machines still are selling like hotcakes, there must be some way we can get money from them instead!
Obviously we just have to make music "free", and people will buy... erm, rent... er, hang on... enjoy (yes!) our music again!
Trust us, our plans are brilliant this time!
Oh... and I shouldn't write this... It's supposed to be a secret, but here goes: Since this "free" service obviously needs to be limited to the specific devices that are paying us, there must be some DRM involved. That means that we can at any time change this into a pay-per-play scheme. See how clever we are!!!
We should have done this sooner! World domination! We've learned now! Those selfish consumers want nothing but free, so we'll give them "free", all right. Ha! this time, we cannot loose! Brilliant, I tell you!
I lost my sig.
If some real investigative journalism were going on, the article would be titled "How Sony and Universal plan to lobby Congress to force hardware makers to pay the record companies for a crappy music subscription service that consumers don't want."
Spiralfrog already offers 'DRM' tied downloads supported by advertising for some major labels, the downloads can be copied to 'plays for sure' media players but not burned to CD. Of course because it uses windows DRM its Windows + Internet Explorer only Meanwhile imeem AKA 'youtube for music' lets you stream music uploaded by its users, providing the music is licensed from Sony, BMG, Warners or one of their other partners, it's a cooler approach in some ways because the user generated side of things gives you access to stuff that would never be heard on a catalog driven site. It works in any browser with a flash plugin so it's totally multiplatform, providing you just want to listen rather than download(and rate, comment, tag and all those other social things).
Crush the evil 'Fake' Steve Jobs!
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Universal is really trying to get control of the music business back from Apple. Looks like they're willing to use any means necessary to do so.
There's a huge Catch 22 here. I'm all for competition, but if they win, and crush the iPod, do you think we'll be better off? They're the music business after all. Out to screw the customer and the artist. In the end, we'll all lose out.
Andy
I think most everyone else had best not be drinking anything when they read his plaintive cry, though. Bad for keyboards and monitors...
I don't trust UMG any further than I can throw them. Then offering free music is like a fox offering 'free meals' for hens. At this point, there is only one thing Universal Music Group could do that would make me happy - and that would be GO BANKRUPT. On the day they finally fall apart, I'll be the first person dancing on their proverbial grave and rejoicing.
I must be dense (or did not have enough coffee yet), but TFA did not seem to specify the file format or even if there is DRM or no with this new service "they" want to set up. Are we talking about MP3, AAC, or some proprietary format like WMA?
And whilst it did not state it, I am under the impression this service will be purposely incompatible with the iPod: am I right?
I still don't understand why these companies are trying to hurt, no, kill the iTMS: no one prevents them to sell their stuff (to be polite) via other stores. I mean, if Steve Jobs wants the iTMS to keep a uniform+simple price structure for "his" store, why not let him have it whilst selling the same stuff on other download services/stores the way they want it to?
No matter what the Apple hatebois say, it's not as if Apple has the same kind of stranglehold on the downloadable music market that M$ has on the computer+software market. You can't avoid M$ in Real Life (*) whilst you can avoid Apple in audio & video. You can always buy another player and/or subscribe to other services to get the same music -- in fact, there is more non-iTMS music exclusivity (**) than there is iTMS-only music out there.
So "they" should let Steve sell stuff the way he wants, sell the same elsewhere the way "they" want and just let The Market(tm) decide. How can they loose? They'll always get their money, so what's the problem?
Or is it just insane, out of control greed, that makes "them" see red because they can't milk out that very last penny out of the consumer?
AC
(*) For example, try sending you CV in PDF instead of MSWord and see the reaction you'll get.
(**) One (bad) example is Saint-Preux, who sells his music only via FNAC in WMA.
http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/total_music_uh_huh
What I want is the option to buy an MP3 player that will indemnify me ("legal exemption from liability for damages") from any repercussions from MP3 downloads. If I buy this player, I have purchased the right to play whatever MP3 files I find online from RIAA member labels.
Or not even purchase the player, but just a certificate or something. Why don't they offer this so people who want to be honest can be? Your only real option is to buy music on CD to have a legal copy of it. Why isn't there a web site where you can register an MP3 you downloaded somewhere and pay $0.99 for it or whatever?
This would make more sense than these crazy DRM schemes and crippled players and non-standard audio formats that get cracked before they are in the wild.
Right now with the album sale model (and even the iTunes per-song sale model), the more popular a group is, the more money it brings in and the band and label each get a cut. Under this model, the labels get pretty much a flat fee and decide which groups to budget it to. There is absolutely zero incentive for a band who wants to make it big to buy into this load of garbage.
Steve Jobs
February 6, 2007
With the stunning global success of Apple's iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to "open" the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let's examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.
To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in "open" licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.
The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the "big four" music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world's music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.
Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.
To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader's computer or portable music device. To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still "hide" the keys which unlock the music on the user's computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.
The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple's DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.
With this background, let's now explore three different alternatives for the future.
The first alterna
Technically that statement is wrong.
By the definitions set forth in print and media by the law teams for the RIAA, just ripping a copy of a CD in a computer constitutes theft. Thats their words.
It apparently doesn't matter that the "fair use" doctrine is in play here either. They are attempting to rewrite law as they go along and waiting for someone high up to challenge them on it.
They will ultimately kill the traditional business model of the record/CD medium, and also the rights by any human to hear any of the legacy music until they decide when and where.
Your only remaining music WILL come from new artists writing and performing songs by which the RIAA cannot come by and park on.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
1. Have these guys ever heard of antitrust laws?
2. Don't they realize that their antitrust combination to try to defeat Apple would be a flagrant violation of antitrust law?
3. Why are they incapable of just trying to compete with someone in a fair and open way?
4. Who in the US would be stupid enough to patronize their new venture and thus subsidize their RIAA lawsuits against the American people.
5. SONY BMG are the guys who just testified in Capitol v. Thomas that it is illegal for people to copy their cd's onto their computers for personal use.
Anyone who would buy anything from these companies is an idiot.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
This reminds me this salesman.
I have been screwed by Sony before, and won't buy their craptastic overpriced proprietary junk again. This is the Sony that is pushing ARCOSS, BD+ and every other DRM-poisoned abomination known to man on us. Does anyone think they are doing this bec1ause they want to - its a desperation move because their multiple attempts to fall back on their tried and true strategy of ass-raping their paying customers has failed them in this market. Even if this worked, as soon as the got c1ritic1al mass they would c1ome up with a way to screw the people who had been taken in.