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Sony Announces DRM-Free Music at Amazon
sehlat brings us a New York Times report that Sony has agreed to start selling DRM-free music from Amazon's MP3 store. This comes days after Sony revealed plans for physical MusicPass cards that would allow DRM-free access to a small portion of Sony's library. Now that all four major record labels are on board with Amazon, some are expecting Apple to make moves away from DRM as well. From the NYTimes:
"Sony's partnership with Amazon.com also underscores the music industry's gathering effort to nurture an online rival to Apple, which has sold more than three billion songs through its iTunes store. Most music purchased on iTunes can be played only on Apple devices, and Apple insists on selling all single tracks for 99 cents. Amazon, which sells tracks for anywhere from 89 cents to over a dollar, offers the pricing variability the labels want."
correct me if I'm wrong- but amazon only sells drm free tracks - and itunes sells a few drm free tracks. i don't think anyone is arguing over who did it first.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Plus you get a nice plastic case, sleeve notes & a nice shiny disk that sounds better in a reasonable hi-fi than any lossy downloaded file.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that good music albums (of which there are thousands) do not have just one or two good tracks - that particular property is reserved for the "great unwashed" who never shop beyond the shelves of their local supermarket for music.
You mean ***PAY*** someone to cause the heads of my hard disk to write a few ones and zeroes????
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The next step will be the determining factor in the future of media sales. Will you buy MP3s, unrestricted, for a reasonable price? Or will you continue to download it for free via Limewire?
I'll continue to download the albums, listen to them and then either buy the CD (if I liked the album) or delete what I downloaded (if I didn't).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I'm holding out for FLAC. Then we'll talk.
If you've ever opened a typical modern music file (uncompressed or compressed) in a Waveform editor, such as Audacity, and have seen the obscene amount of clipping, square waves and unnecessary loudness that has been introduced by sound engineers pandering to the loudness craze, I'm not sure we're quite ready to appease the music industry. If they can't even trust us to use a volume dial, to turn up a quiet track (which I'm sure we do anyway)... things are pretty dire.
To illustrate, use the 24-hour rule and find a copy of a classical music file or anything else you know has been produced well; let's take Holst's "Jupiter" as an example. Opening this up in Audacity shows how music should be recorded - way below the +1/-1 peak level, but rising every so often to deliver a punchy sound, and with a difference between quiet and loud parts. Then open a mainstream pop record. It's probably stretched to the limit, with peaks being chopped off, all the same volume - you get the idea. Musical abuse, basically. That's not saying there aren't exceptions, but I'd say even one record on the market with its dynamic range squeezed down to tiny proportions is too many. And there's far more than one record currently committing these "crimes".
Don't forget to delete the files after 24 hours of use though. I am not responsible if the hired goons come round and break down the door etc.
First bring back dynamic range. Then bring in FLAC. Because your choice of codec matters little if they ruined the studio copy in the first place. Then we'll talk.
No matter how great people think AAC is, the iTunes Store's 128kbps CBR is low to begin with. Losing any more audio quality is a shitty option, especially if you need to use high bitrate re-compression to minimize the additional loss in audio quality.
Apple and the music labels allowed this DRM "workaround" because it's a shitty option. It's the modern equivalent of pressing the tape recorder next to the radio's speaker.
You're expressing frustration, but don't paint "the other sources" as the way to go. Of course it takes effort to get the bands signed to a download store... this is what we all cheer for, "sticking it to the Big Label".
What you're describing is a market opportunity for labor. As I understand your post, once the majority of small labels are signed, you'll be content. This becomes a When-Not-If scenario. My projection is three years if a dedicated negotiating force buckles down with no more white noise interference.
Then there will always be the bleeding edge bands who formed last week, and it will be the thing to do to get them signed as a favor, in return for comped cd's *for services performed*.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Quote:
IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
This is true though. Unless the MP3s are 192kbps as I rip all my CDs at, I'm going to keep buying CDs rather than just downloading. I also like to have CDs anyway to play in the car (maybe my next car will have an MP3 player, but I dont want to bother spending any money upgrading my current one, a 6 CD changer is enough for me right now..). Not everyone who doesn't choose to download this will be a pirate, but I am tempted to buy some albums just to show my support for the lack of DRM..
which is totally what she said
I'm not sure if you are joking or not, but in all seriousness, I'd rather have the stereo that plays mp3s from data CDs then an external unit like a Zune or Ipod.
In fact the various iPod docking stations out there would drive me absolutely nuts if I had one in my car. Who the hell was the moron that came up with the idea of putting a bright blue led on a device used in automobiles that are presumably driven at night? Besides white, is there a worse possible color choice for this application? Couldn't they have used red leds?
Hell, it's not just the iPod docking station either. Why the hell do most bluetooth headsets flash blue leds when turned on? Red is a hellva lot less distracting in a dark environment. The worst part is that most of the headsets on the market already have red leds -- they've just chosen to assign them to something else and flash the blue one for 'power on'. At least a handful of them let you disable this "feature", of course then you have no idea if the thing is turned on or not....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Exactly. This is why they are abandoning DRM. They realized that the only successful DRM gave Apple the power to force them into a particular pricing model. They'd rather give up on DRM than see that happen.
The cake is a pie
I have what I think is an awesome idea for Amazon. Give everyone who buys mp3s a free S3 storage account. For every mp3 purchased, create a virtual link to the file in their S3 account.
Now you have a backup of all your purchased music at no charge, which you can download at any time at standard S3 download rates. And, of course, you can feel free to use that S3 account for other purposes if you like. But there's no monthly fee for storing the mp3s since Amazon only needs to keep a single copy of each song for all users.