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Chronicling the Failures of DRM
Barence takes us to PCPro for a look at the failures of DRM and a discussion of its impending death. Quoting:
"Luckily, DRM is dying, at least in the download sphere. Napster's Dan Nash believes that DRM-free is 'the general way things are going.' In his opinion, record companies 'have no choice but to adapt;' those that 'stick to DRM on a pay-per-download basis will not remain competitive.' In the US, Napster has joined Amazon in selling DRM-free content in MP3 format from all the major labels. ... Going DRM-free makes sense not just for consumers, but for the industry. Deutche Telekom says three out of four technical support calls its Musicload service had to deal with were the result of DRM. And when it offered a DRM-free option to artists they saw a 40% increase in sales."
It's spelled Deutsche Telekom, not Deutche.
There are three things I want from an online music store.
So far the only store to do that was allofmp3.com, now mp3sparks.com. Sadly even when mp3sparks.com is up you have to travel some strange paths to fund your account. Magnatune.com has the right idea as well, but their catalogue is much more limited.
Loose lips lose spit.
your post lacks coherence and content; please, remedy this in the future
Check out Baen's online publishing record - a non-DRM based seems to be working out for them. Admittedly, they're in something of a niche market and only cover a small portion of that subset of literature, but it's still interesting to see it works.
...as a matter of fact, this week.
Had a customer come in with a problem. His old computer was dying (hardware, bad capacitors on the MB), we copied his data to a new PC he purchased, set him up and out the door...
Boomeranged. seems he had audio files, some purchased, some of his own creation, in ATRAC format. Of course, he could not play them on his new PC. Seems that Sony recently dropped ATRAC and shut down their licensing servers, too.
Fortunately, we were able to resurrect his old PC, which was still in our boneyard, and run it long enough to export his DRM'ed files to WAV. Lost his meta-data, cost him a couple hundred $ in labor, but we got his stuff. He left happy, and we talked with him about DRM and how it hosed him.
When It Counts.
slysoft cracked it on easter. iirc, or maybe it was after that, but they charge you like $80 for their hd tools on a download only basis... physical media, costs more, of course.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Even better, their CD program got me buying books I never would've gotten into before. I never even looked at David Weber because I wasn't into military fiction. One of John Ringo's books came with the March series and most of the Honor Harrington series(which I saw frequently, but never picked up, even for free) on CD.
The March series was interesting and now I'm even checking out the Harrington stuff, although it's a bit poli-sci talky for me. Plus, he has some okay fantasy-ish stuff that I wouldn't even have noticed, having written him off as a mil-fic writer(I prefer old-school SF(asimov) or recent sci-fi-fantasy like McMullen's Miocene Arrow).
That one CD that cost maybe a buck or two has netted them two dozen paperback sales, half a dozen hardbacks, and more I'd get if I had the cash or the shelfspace to buy whole series at once.
It's even helped out other publishers, e.g. S.M. stirling has some Baen reprints of things I'd liked in the past, but his emberverse series(write faster!) is published by roc and I've bought those in hardback after seeing him on Baen's catalog reminded me of his existence.
Maybe that's why they've been the most successful online music retailer to date.
It surprises me that more people haven't jumped over to Amazon. Maybe it's because of ignorance, I dunno... but you can get DRM-free MP3s there, encoded at 256kbit. When I use their download manager, and I have iTunes running, the song/album I downloaded automatically gets imported into iTunes.
As long as you still have your log in information, you should still be able to listen. Assuming you've got a computer that can run their program.
If I stop buying, say, Sony albums, what does that tell Sony? What does it tell them of my reasons? Money doesn't leave any clues, and it's not as if they can spot an extra twenty dollars spent on, say, tomatoes and say that that's where my money has gone.
They spend lots of money on market research. The watch what each other is doing. They watch P-P to see if piracy is really a problem (it is). They test the market.. Spend a few extra cents on iTunes for DRM free.. Amazon has DRM free for no extra.. Hmm, Amazon suddenly has a lot more sales.. They follow the money. They tried DRM and it failed. They noticed that less than a few single digit percent of songs on an iPod were encumbered by DRM. They noticed the biggest technical problems faced with purchased music was DRM related.
Sony put out some DVD's with extra DRM. My wife picked up Open Season for the kids and it wouldn't play on my Linux box. They got the message when I called and complained. They sent me a replacement DRM free (standard CSS) replacement free of charge and they know I won't buy any more broken DVD's.
Stopping purchases is part of the solution. Calling tech support for broken products is the other way to send the message. DRM kills sales and requires tech support is the message sent loud and clear. If my vote didn't count, they would never have made a normal DVD replacement.
The truth shall set you free!
At .99 per track, you are pay $15-$20 for an 'albums worth' of music anyway, almost as much as a CD.
Or, you pay $9.99 for the full album, no matter how many tracks are on it, except for some albums which are cheaper ($7.99, $5.99, etc.)