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Warner Music Group Drops DRM for Amazon
SirLurksAlot sends us to Ars Technica for an article about the Warner Music Group's decision to allow DRM-free music downloads through Amazon. This reversal of Warner's former position has been underway for some time, and it boosts the number of DRM-free songs available from Amazon to 2.9 million. Quoting:
"Warner's announcement says nothing about offering its content through other services such as iTunes, and represents the music industry's attempt to make life a bit more difficult for Apple after all the years in which the company held the keys to music's digital kingdom.
I've downloaded several albums and I'm very happy with it. Odd mix of bit rates (some are about 224 kbit VBR, others are 256 kbit fixed rate), but no complaints with the music. I just wish their library was larger.
Only real complaint is that the album downloader (that allows you to get the album discount) only runs on Windows & MacOS. Write a Java client and get with the program, Amazon!
DRM is bad. Let it die, and soon.
I have a sudden feeling that I'd like to buy something from Warner's catalog off Amazon.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
A sudden outbreak of common sense
Since Amazon launched their MP3 store, I've been trying to pick things up there if possible, then fall back on iTunes as a secondary source -- specifically because of the lack of DRM. Good to know the selection's about to jump.
I still would rather buy the CD and encode losslessly (I made a new word!).
This isn't about record companies deciding DRM is bad. It is about making sure Apple doesn't control the distribution of digital media.
As DRM dies the fools will start using digital watermarking to sue people who leak to p2p networks. This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue. Eventually this fact will sink in among judges, but before that happens thousands of people will have been burnt, new draconian legislation will have been passed, and music sales will have fallen even more.
Following this the process of suing based on watermarks will wane, but the distributors will instead disconnect people from their websites if they find their watermarks on p2p. The result will be that those burnt ( weather guilty or not ) will migrate to filesharing.
In essence, despite the obvious fiasco that is DRM the same garbage will continue due to greed and stupidity. Really, DRM in one clothing or another has been arround for some time, it as never been successful, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. It will continue this way for quite some time still.
I already have an mp3 of Watermark, which I ripped off "Paint the Sky with Stars" (Ironically a Warner brothers recording.) I legitimately bought the CD.
Enya is one of those artists where it is better to buy the whole album, nearly all the tracks are excellent.
It seems to be that the music industry is pulling a "new coke" method of marketing: come out with a new product that sucks (DRM-laden "music"), and then all reap the rewards when they revert back to the original (real and liberated music). This will make everyone feel like they're "sticking it to the man" by purchasing this new flavor, when in fact the industry is in fact reverting back to the old tried-and-true method.
/do/ with this music that is being sold to me without expressed limitation. Do I now have my fair-use rights back because I don't have to violate the DMCA by breaking copy protection? Or is breaking copy protection now back within my right because the industry is trashing DRM in general?
This begs the question: what exactly can I
Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.
-d
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
There's one reason we're seeing DRM-free music: Apple.
Every internet whiner and hazmat-suited protester put together didn't make a noticeable fraction of the impact against DRM that Apple did via their refusal to buy into Microsoft's DRM or license their own to others. They turned the labels tools to control customers into a distributor's tool to control the labels, and now the labels are caught in their own trap, and desperately thrashing and gnawing at their limbs to get away (by selling DRM-free to everyone but Apple).
But, since Apple haven't had the industry-crushing success they had with music in the video market thus far, and no one else looks likely to repeat Apple's feat, we may be stuck with DRM in the video market for a while.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
The first/last time I tried to purchase an online album from Amazon (just last week) I was informed that the service is only available within the US. So altho Warner may have recognized the "anti-DRM winds sweeping the globe" it seems that the DRM-free zone has distinct limitations.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Could it be that this is the result of Amazon's decision to simply stop selling music altogether?
(For those that didn't notice: About a week before Christmas, you couldn't buy any music from certain distributors at Amazon for a few days in some EU countries. They wanted Amazon to take the (as the music industry calls it) "legal" distribution ways instead of buying their CDs in areas where the record industry sells them for a penny per dozen to have any sales at all. Amazon complied and pulled the cheap records. And every other record from those studios. One week before spendmas. They also announced that "the talks are not over yet", so... is this what came out of those talks?).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Try explaining why your neighbors music isn't accessible from device B. It's funny, because you can tell it's one of those technical explanations they almost would like to understand but long before the end of the explanation you know they've got the gist of it. There's no good reason.
That I think is the difference between digital music and movies. Everyone now has multiple music play-back devices and through the success of a limited number of formats people have begun expecting simplicity. Portability. With movies the average person doesn't carry the same expectations so the perceived limitation and resulting backlash are much more manageable.
Quack, quack.
Quack, quack.
What I'd like to be able to do is easily share a track with a few friends (not really P2P, just mail or what have you) for music I really like so they can check it out. But if music is watermarked that means if any of those friends share in turn, and someone else eventually (lets say by accident) shares the same file via P2P - you may just be liable. It still kind of introduces a chilling effect on the world of music sharing as it should be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But, since Apple haven't had the industry-crushing success they had with music in the video market thus far,
I can't find a good link, but have you seen the new NPD figures for online video sales?
Apple is crushing all takers. The share of TV shows was around 80-90% of the entire market - the share of movies lower, but still I think about 60% with the rest split into many smaller pieces. Apple also just inked that deal with Fox to include iPod compatible video files, that I assume are DRM'ed using Fiarplay, on Fox DVDs. That's a lot of people using more and more of Apple's DRm for portable video devices, which is the same path music took for them...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Last I heard, iTunes might have 90% or more of online music sales, but about 3% of online music distribution.
The other 97% is free distribution (and redistribution) by folks not charging for it.
Yeah, Apple's sales are certainly "industry crushing" alright.
They only have a few Warner artists on the site now.
I can't find anywhere in the article where it says when this will happen. I just checked and these tracks aren't available on Amazon's MP3 music store yet... I was ready to buy over $100 worth of music if these artists have their music available...
true. that's what I get for not proofreading. you must listen to geeknights.
To defend the usage, I'd say this is a circular argument as posed by the industry. Because I have no rights as the consumer, they can release music without DRM. Since they release music without DRM, I have the right to copy for personal user without violating the letter of the DMCA. But it is true that the DMCA prevents copying music. Therefore, I have no rights, because I have no rights.
Logic, like law, can be manipulated to say almost anything.
-d
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
> It's certainly not the outbreak of common sense this will undoubtedly being tagged as. It's simply that
> they saw their sales hurt more by pushing DRM rather than dealing with the "loss" of "only" selling us
> music once.
No, I don't think that is the reason at all. In the end they would probably have won on the take it or leave it tactics with DRM. Most people were lining up, buying iPods and giving each other iTunes gift certificates like good little consumers. No, what did it was fear and greed. Fear among the music cartels that Apple and Microsoft were about to become a duopoly and control all access to media... i.e. replace the music (and eventually movie distributors) companies as the gatekeepers. Really, once they were distributing most music it would have been a totally natural step to start signing up artists directly.... Apple already IS doing that with indy acts. So fear of being cut ALL the way out was motivating them to find a way to create enough retailers in the digital download space to avoid being marginalized.
Now consider the greed and fear at Amazon, Walmart etc. They could read the same tea leaves. Walmart with it's huge iPod display and shrinking sales in their CD dept and the uneasy reality that the Walmart online music store will NEVER be compatible with the Apple or Zune DRM scheme. I.E. every ipod or Zune sale is helping Apple and Microsoft dismantle Walmart's current huge percentage of nationwide music sales. Ditto for Amazon, selling the crap out of iPods, each one sold eating away at future content sales unless they found a way to 'kick the table over' and change the rules of the game.
Odds of convincing either His Steveness or the Borg to open up their DRM system being zero, even with the full unified might (yea, as if) of all of the media megacorps, the only way out of the hole they had dug themselves after considering the file compatibility matrix of the huge installed base of players was unencumbered mp3.
Democrat delenda est
It has everything to do with the fact that Apple won't budge on their $0.99 cent tracks and that makes the labels mad. Apple already sells DRM-free tracks for EMI through iTunes Plus. All the labels could if they wanted to, but they won't. In the years since they killed off the original Napster they've done nothing but sit on their hands. Then Apple came along and filled the void consumers were begging for: legitimate online music sales. They don't care who it is or what the method of distribution is, what they care about is that they control it. They can't control Apple, PlaysForSure is a bust that even Microsoft has abandoned, so they turn to the next biggest thing: Amazon. We'll see how that plays out.
As of the time of this posting, I cannot download any Madonna albums from amazonmp3.com
Some jerk might try to pull this, but I'm pretty sure that the actual labels themselves won't do this directly. Why? Because it's a qualitative difference from what they are doing now.
:)
Right now they are suing people with all kinds of dubious legal theories, but they're still arguably within classical law interpretation.
Outright framing individuals crosses a line into pure fraud, and if correctly proven by a defense team, will smash that label a giant penalty.
"Your honor, I'd like to call Bruce Schneier for the defense expert."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sigh. I know it's a losing battle (go ahead, waste your off-topic mod
point) but see http://begthequestion.info/ . Some pretentious
ignoramuses who were unschooled in logic - it was first some
journalists, I think, who relatively recently popularized the misuse -
picked up this phrase somewhere without knowing what it means, thinking
it made them sound "intellectual". To repeat their error makes you
sound, well, benighted in the eyes of many.
I fail to see how this effects Apple in any way. The iTMS will continue to sell Warner tracks whether or not they remove the DRM, and people will continue to buy them whether or not they remove the DRM. It seems like Slashdotters just have an affinity for "sticking it to the man", regardless of thinking if something actually does "stick it to the man".
In response to those who think all DRM and proprietary formats are evil, you're thinking about it all wrong. Some of you are even admitting to buying CDs. CDs are a proprietary format that only works in a closed system. Sound familiar? You can't take audio in CD format and play it on an iPod, or a turntable, or a cassette player, or anything other than a computer or CD player. Same goes for FairPlay. You can't play anything encoded with FairPlay on anything other than iTunes or an iPod/iPhone. And yet, nearly everyone has a CD player, and nearly everyone has iTunes or an iPod, so the argument of a closed system become invalid simply due to the rate of adoption. Just because you own a device that doesn't work with a particular format doesn't give you the right to complain. Just as people who own Laserdisc or Betamax players don't have the right to complain about DVD or VHS formats not playing on their devices.
I've purchased music from Amazon and have been extremely happy with it, and I've purchased non-DRM tracks from the iTMS and been happy with it. Hell, I'm happy with the DRM tracks on the iTMS. But I use iTunes and an iPod. These things work for me. If I only owned a Brand-X PMP, I'm certain that I'd be happy with Amazon and whatever Made for Vista nee PlaysForSure formatted media I purchase. Or, I'd buy frikkin' iPod because the media I wanted was in a format that worked with it. Outside the Slashdot bubble, it's clear to me that this is also how the majority of people feel.
Bottom line is this: moderation is wiser than fanaticism to a point, and DRM is not a point far enough to make fanaticism wise. Yet. When it starts restricting playback to one solitary device, then we'll talk.
A proprietary format is one that only works on devices by a certain manufacturer. Such as Itunes working on your Ipod, but not on other mp3 players.
Everyone has a CD player because there are hundreds if not thousands of companies that make them.
Anonymous because I'm lazy
I just bought my first piece of music in 6 years. My recording industry boycott is now over. Nicely done, guys.
I have been wanting a copy of Killswitch Engage's take on the old Dio song: Holy Diver, but they didn't have it. I checked and yep, it's there, so I bought myself a copy of it.
I had looked into buying it as a regular CD, but it was only offered in some special edition (read especially pricey) version, so I was planning on waiting until they either came out with a "best-of" album or just doing without (piracy is NOT an option for me, so if I don't buy it, I just do without.)
I typed the wrong PW - DOH!