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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.
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.
- 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.
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
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