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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."'"
And in a few months time, they'll evaluate and state that the consumers aren't ready yet for DRM-free music.
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'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
Odd as it is, there is a point to your comment though.
Non-paying people get a BETTER product all-round than paying consumers.
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[...] 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.
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.
- 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.
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
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".
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.
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
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.
Yes, and these nations are either Cambodia, in Southeast Africa, or in the Middle East. Every other nation is a signature of the Berne Convention, and respects copyright.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Absolutely. And you not only get a product without limitations, but a better product too, because you can download something other than Britney Spears.
It's a complete misunderstanding on Sonys part on how basic economics work:
An illegal copy basically is a COMPETING PRODUCT, with no limitations, for a better price.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
I bet that the majority haven't heard of it, or at least have forgotten most of the details (including Sony's involvement), and that most of the others don't consider it that big a deal, even though they should.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
And still the PS/3 fanbois don't understand why it is BAD BAD BAD that blu-ray is winning.
Although Sony should study the rest of your and GP's comment to end the stupidity, your last sentence reveals an alarming lack of either scruples or thought.
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?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Not every country has the ridiculous fine/damage levels as the US. This means that in some countries, you could get caught without being indebted for the rest of your life.
What annoys and at the same time greatly amuses me is that if you walk into a store and steal a CD and get caught, you have a choice of paying a small misdemeanor fine or can demand a criminal trial where you are presumed innocent until found guilty of a misdemeanor and pay a relatively small fine.
But if you infringe copyright by downloading you will be offered to pay a several thousand dollar settlement or go to civil court where you are presumed giolty and have to pay up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If we didn't have the best legislators money could buy would our laws be so brain-dead? I've said it before, when they start writing respectable laws I'll start respecting the law.
That hooker I paid last night really sucked (journal coming soon). But she didn't suck as much as Sony.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
And yes, I did once leave my PC on for a wek trying to download one album.
That illustrates something I've been trying to say here for a long time, and that is that downloading isn't that damned convinient. Pirate Bay or Morpheus are good for indie music, but if you're looking for the top 40 the easiest, cheapest, and still legal way is to plug your radio's headphone jack into your sound card, sample a top-40 station and spend five minutes showing EAC where to make the cuts.
If you live in St Louis you can have seven rock albums every Sunday night. Sure, they're FM quality rather than CD quality but if you're ripping to MP3 it doesn't matter anyway.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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."
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.
But they would be livid to the point of tears if their work was copied and sold commercially.
I can already hear the bellyaching...
pennies per track is an overstatement even in low volume.
Let's see, cheap entry-level hosting let's say with DreamHost is $6/month, and that includes 5TB of bandwith. The average song is aproximately 5MB, so this works out to a million songs downloaded for $6. So not only does it not cost -pennies- per track, infact it doesn't even get close to a single penny for a track.
Instead, you can serve up 1500 tracks -- and pay a single penny for the bandwith consumed by all of them in sum.
Physical distribution over the internet is MINDBOGGLINGLY cheap.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I honestly can't believe people even consider this an ethical question. Lots of stuff is made with miniscule effort, that doesn't mean the person who makes it doesn't deserve to be paid. Go take an economics class.