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Paul McCartney Releases Album As DRM-Free Download
Medieval Cow writes "Sir Paul McCartney has a side project called The Fireman and he's just released their new album, Electric Arguments, as a digital download. Why this is of interest to this community is that he released it 100% DRM-free. You can purchase just the digital files, or if you purchase a physical CD or vinyl copy, you are also given access to the digital download. Not only that, but the download is available in 320-kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, or even FLAC format. If you're interested in trying before you buy, you can listen to the entire album in a Flash player on the main page of the site. It's so nice to see a big musician who gets it. Bravo, Sir Paul!"
...usually like to release DRM-free, or even free, period (Radiohead, NIN. etc.). With certain exceptions *cough*Metallica*cough*.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
I'm impressed that he lets you try the album before you buy it, and that it's in flash. Of course, nobody would ever download the file and convert it to an mpeg because that wouldn't be honest.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
In fact it's been there since the 20th November.
One point to make though is that Paul McCartney is the sort of guy who can afford to go DRM free, if this album is ripped, lobbed on bit-torrent and limewire then Macca is unlikely to be out on the streets through lost revenue. Its great that he has done it but the _fear_ of being ripped off is going to be less for one of the biggest selling artists of all time than it would be for the average band.
Kudos indeed, but this isn't just a random artist choosing DRM this is the bloke from the Beatles who co-wrote the first hit for the Rolling Stones and the Frog Chorus.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
FLAC you say? Oh my...
Get some Vorbis in there and we're set.
This is an excellent step, hopefully more artists will start doing this.
Also it's great to listen to the album first in a flash player. I remember when Slayer did this for their 'God Hates Us All Album', through that I didn't *have* to download a dodgy copy at all, just went out and bought it.
Let's count the number of posts that occur before the first complaint about "no ogg vorbis".
#DeleteChrome
How righteous of him. Surely next album to be released is Abbey Road.
Or not. Because he doesn't own the rights -Mike probably does. Or because even since 1969 it still is a cash cow.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
And Radiohead did it a year ago. If anything, it's disappointed it hasn't caught on than anything else.
http://everythingthathappens.com/ Great album, too.
Anyone know good sources of legal free downloadable music? There's a lot of it out there, but sometimes hard to find. Here's what I've stumbled upon recently.
Don't whistle while you're pissing.
A McCartney album that's actually worth the money!
Looking at that website and reports on some others that program seems like a bunch of malware to me.
http://blog.gilluminate.com/2007/01/27/how-to-download-super-from-erightsoft/
http://blog.monkeyless.com/2006/07/16/erightsofts-super-video-converter-looks-safe/
Because he's made hundreds of millions of dollars using the old system now it's painlessly easy for him to be relaxed and enlightened denouncing the system that gave him the lavish lifestyle he now enjoys.
Perhaps FCC Commissioner Taylor Tate will make it her personal project to ban his DRM-free album as unfair competition?
This is good news, even if it's another major artist, rather than the whole record industry!
The producer that is the other half of the project - Martin Glover a.k.a. Youth is well known in music production circles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Glover
His side projects Dragonfly Records and Liquid Sound Design lean towards the more psychedelic aspects of trance and dub. The liquid dub styles promoted through Liquid Sound Design in particular are releases that are well worth a listen and feature some really stunning production values.
http://www.liquidsounddesign.com/index2.htm
It's the kind of music you generally won't hear anywhere else ... try it! :)
Peace,
Andy.
How big is it again? I gotz to no!
I don't think this is so great... He has made his money. What we need is for the rest of the musicians to follow the example - now that will make a difference.
Need an ISP in South Africa?
he didn't use flash for the preview... It's a defacto DRM for those who don't have the plugin (yes there still are!) :-(
Appart this it's a nice move, regardless if I ever buy it :-)
I vaguely remember that he was one to the people consistently pushing for extensions to copyright length here in the UK.
Note how here in the UK copyright is now Life + 70 years ...
In my opinion, his choice for DRM free formats is a natural followup to the same considerations that lead Recording Companies to go ahead and support the new Amazon music store which sells DRM free music in MP3 format: they were scared shitless that Apple was becoming the Microsoft of the Digital Music Distribution world and thus the de facto gatekeeper for the future of music distribution.
That and he can afford it, seeing that he's gonna keep getting payed for the rest of his life for his 6 months of light work in 1966 and all little pieces here and there of followup work ...
I know parent is fishing for lols, but how long before steam (valve) get their arse into gear and start offering music?
Could easily build into the steam overlay to control a media player, combine each games soundtrack into your playlist, allowing you to listen to whatever while you play :)
...
Paul McCartney has an estimated worth of $1.6 Billion so it's not as if he's going to be affected by people pirating it so is far better placed than up and coming groups to be able to afford to take the hit.
$1.6 Billion in the bank allows you to be able to afford to have altruistic ideas.
However, the vast majority of musicians aren't in such a position so need the sales.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Too bad anybody but John Lennon's and late Beatles from related groups music sucks shit.
The only reason I didn't download other drm free ones in the past was the lack of flac or ogg. Flac is best of course, as it's just like buying the album for real. Using one price for the globe is also cool. I never expected it to come from Paul McCartney though considering comments from him in the past. I've never downloaded an album illegally in my life, but then I've never bought an album via a download either till now when finally someone makes flac available. To be honest though, I'm mainly doing it out of principle to support good sense finally. I'd like to see Madonna's albums like this, I wouldn't have to all the way to the shops :-)
I tried to purchase the album, I wanted the FLAC version. It prompts saying I don't have flash! I'm using FreeBSD. There is no flash for FreeBSD. Why flash is required for a purchase? I used to buy books from amazon and Addison Wesley over the net. They don't ask for flash. Sir, Paul McCartney, you have got a fool to design your website. You lose business.
So he has a butt load of money. The fact is that he took the step and a lot of artists have been inspired by his music so perhaps they will be inspired by this move and follow his example. Does it really matter if he needs the money or not? Oh and it doesn't matter if you like his current work or The Beatles his name is very well known in the music industry. If more big name artists take steps like this then things just might start to change.
Discipline Global Mobile (see also King Crimson, Robert Fripp) has been offering their full catalogue in DRM-free MP3 and FLAC for ages now, and purchases also are downloadable via Bittorrent. There is some wicked stuff there, I can tell ya.
The very first step towards DRM-free
It's also been on eMusic since November 24.
When you have been famous for years, to the extend just your name is known to almost everybody, abandoning the classical publishers not only ie easy: it gives you MORE advertisement (e. g. a paper hree on /.)
OTOH, when you are a completely unknown new band, then you must be courageous. I for one will be happy when there'll be a post here listing the last ten courageous little groups trying http://magnatune.com/ .
And in case you were among the happy few knowing Magnatune, let's mention a foreign, minuscule one for classics mainly: Zig-Zag
Herve S.
When they released Death Magnetic, they put a flash player on their website so you can listen to the whole album to see if it's worth buying. You can still listen to it now : http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601231
I was very surprised at the time that nobody seemed to give a flying fuck, I thought it was a very interesting move, especially coming from Metallica... It was not even mentioned in online reviews ffs! I hardly saw any mention of that anywhere, and had to add it myself to the Wikipedia page (it was deleted instead of being expanded, natch).
Really, I've no idea why, but nobody cared. At all. (Not even fans, before you say noone cares about Metallica period)
This album sells extremely well, btw.
A) Even post divorce he has a personal fortune of some GBP800m so he can afford to put out DRM free music
B) Pretty much anything he's done since about 1972 has been crap (sorry, but really guys...)
C) Except the Frog one
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Big freaking deal. We are back to 1982 - digital music without copy prevention - plus the internet. This is where we would have been over a decade ago if the MPAA hadn't taken the DRM detour.
I guess the guy deserves some credit for not participating in the DRM clusterfuck, but he's still a decade behind where the industry would be if all the cocaine snorting suits running the business weren't a bunch of colossal idiots more intent on putting the internet genie back in the bottle instead of getting their proverbial three wishes and moving the industry into the modern era.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I won't buy his new album unless it's provided in a better-than-lossless format. I insist that the album quality increases by a minimum of 15% with each generation of copying.
I estimate that at that rate, I could start with the Wings album Wild Life, copy it 173 times and end up with Abbey Road.
they are printing a vinyl and sending it ?
Read radical news here
But selling music downloads 'DRM free' is not new. I haven't bought any physical CD's for a year or so. Nowdays I buy music from Amazon, they have a section for MP3 downloads (tracks and albums). Generally the albums are priced less than the CD counterparts, and you don't have to pay for shipping. (You also save a trip to the vets office)
These mp3's are DRM free, I can just copy them to SD cards and put that in my mp3 playwr.
There is a lot of talk here on slashdot about other digital formats (FLAC , OGG) but I have never seen a digital music player that supports those formats (only MP3 and WMA . The other formats may have better compression, but who cares when HD space is so cheap.
yet another half-dollar rap "artist"?
I am guessing "no", but I'll ask just in case.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I'm sorry my mod points just ran out. With Flac it's almost trivial to transcode to any format you want, and you don't have to worry about losses. I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC, and made a "second" library using AAC for my ipod. I wish I could keep the two libraries sync'd, but for some reason media monkey won't do it (transcode failures, not the inability to sync to a folder). Still, it works well, and if I decide to switch formats in the future, I just transcode again.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Address the man properly for goodness sake!!! You peasants!!
Just purchased the MP3 version. It is, as claimed, mpga 320K, DRM-free. In addition to the tracks, you get cover artwork and liner notes as jpgs.
The range of purchase options is very interesting. $8.99 for MP3 files and artwork, $12.99 for a CD, $29.99 for a direct metal mastered double vinyl record, and $79.99 for a DVD containing 24bit 96Khz tracks, and a second DVD containing multi-track session files for a selection of the album tracks.
The purchasing experience was flawless: create an account, give a credit card (with optional choice of saving the number or not; I chose not), get a zipfile of the downloads. Not a wasted keystroke or mouse click.
This really is the way I want to purchase my music. Two big thumbs up from the consumer angle. Lots of choices, low prices, immediate downloads, supports the artists.
The perfect shopping experience.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The site seems to be using some sort of Flash animation to process the payments and it's not on an SSL / HTTPS URL. At least, not in the usual sense. It says data is sent using SSL in the Flash animation itself, but there's no padlock in the browser, etc.. so no guarantee it really is using SSL.
(For what it's worth, I ran netstat to check it is using SSL, and it appears to be. But does Joe Public know that when they're told to look out for the padlock icon?)
Am I missing something? I've bought dozens of DRM free albums over the years. Nothing on Amazon MP3 or 7Digital.com has DRM as far as I'm aware, so how is this news? At first I thought the album was also FREE (price wise), but it's not - you have to pay for it, so I don't get why this is a story??
Unfortunately, it includes "Wonderful Christmastime".
since the albums are both released under a creative commons license that allows redistrbution here are some torrent links
Ghosts: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4061815/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I-IV_%5B2008_FLAC_Lossless%5D
The slip: http://dl.nin.com/data/dl/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_The_Slip_-_Flac.torrent
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
He's still releasing albums?! I thought by now he'd be reduced to playing at the local Waffle House for the free coffee refills.
Sheldon
After all, most slashdotters are not anti-copyright. The industry position on DRM is based on confusing DRM with copyright and (ironically) compensating musicians.
Acknowledging a sizable die hard "information wants to be free" contingent, I think the consensus position here is that artists should be able to make money with copyrighted but DRM free music, priced reasonably, and packaged for convenient purchase and use. True, that means the only the most efficient distributors make money, which is bad for some cherished institutions like the neighborhood record shop, but it should mean more music being heard.
I would venture that listening to music is a habit. Habits, once acquired, lead to purchases. In an ideal world for musicians, people would go through life in a habitual cocoon of music. The problem with most DRM schemes is that they work against the habit by making using a song in some context a conscious economic transaction. For similar reasons, I think that unlimited copyright terms work against the habit of music. There's only so many times you can listen to Louis Armstrong recordings from the 30s, but the education in jazz makes you more likely to buy recent recordings.
While the notions that DRM and extended copyright work against the habit of music are consistent with each other, they are neither necessary to each other. One can believe one without the other. This seems a reasonable test of the DRM notion, one that is entirely within the rights for McCartney to attempt.
Now, I happen to think that at this point, if the Beatles catalog was in the public domain, there'd be more people interested in McCartney's recent music. He'd make less money, but he'd get a lot more new fans. However, even if he were inclined to do such an experiment (which he is apparently not) he'd have to buy out others with a proprietary interest in the old copyrights to do it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
McCartney is listed in The Guinness Book Of Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history (wiki) ...is now down with the kids and anti-DRM. A bold and brave move eh?
Yes it is. For new and upcoming bands.
Sir Paul should just do it anyway because he can.... and he is..
but!
Fuck him for the frog song.
We're the good guys, right? DRM is evil (true that), and we offer alternatives. But the fact is that before DRM came along, piracy of music on the internet was rampant. People (good and bad) didn't give it much thought since it was just so easy to copy. We now say "give it to us without DRM, and we'd gladly pay a reasonable price." But for most people, this is a lie. If it weren't for DRM, they would have no concept of the value of the thing they're copying. They would not have "paid a reasonable price" because they would just have downloaded it for free. Only when they were threatened by having that taken away did they think about opening their wallets.
The RIAA and DRM have been an important corrective event in our society. Because of them, we have become more aware that the producers of this content have a right to protect their investment. Whether you're an artist publishing a song or a coder licensing under GPL, respecting copyright is important for our economy, our access to artistic works, and our freedom.
We still have an uphill battle against the RIAA and their efforts to lock down every little bit of content and take away our right to listen to the content we paid for on any device we wish, let friends listen, etc. When the dust settles, a happy compromise will be reached where sharing with a friend (who will probably turn around and buy the whole album as a result) is reasonable fair use, while the same is not true for posting the copyrighted work on a P2P sharing network, completely taking away the livelihood of the artist who created the work.
My favorite band is They Might Be Giants. Not all of their stuff is fantastic, though, so I have sought ways to listen before buying. But in the end, I have legally bought and paid for every one of their albums. Maybe that's mostly because I'm a fanatic, but I also see it as a statement of respect to people whom I want to produce more of the same kind of brilliant stuff.
After all, once it is in digital form, why pay?
There'll probably be more freeloaders, since the people who *wanted* to get their music for free but couldn't figure it out will have an easier time of it. But if sales are boosted enough by the good press and goodwill, the experiment will have succeeded.
what is hard to figure out about "www.thepiratebay.org"?
The absence of DRM will not mean more piracy. It takes only a single breach, a single copy stripped of DRM protection, to assure everyone who wants it over the internet gets their wish.
I'm getting really tired of assertions like this one that less drm = more piracy.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I just hit the Website, listened to some of the tracks via streaming audio, liked them, so I bought the album. I was also one of the minority of people who chose to pay for Radiohead's "In Rainbows," where I had the option of selecting whatever cost I desired, including nothing.
In each case, I chose to pay for the work both because I liked the product and because I want to encourage artists to release music in a similar manner in the future. Am I an idealistic fool? Perhaps so, and it wouldn't be the last time I was called that. That is a badge that I wear proudly.
-Z
Really, I've no idea why, but nobody cared. At all.
"Godwin's law! Godwin's law!"
ok, with that out of the way.
Metallica is to the internet, p2p, and college students everywhere what hitler was to judaism.
If you were just beaten by your husband and he went all 'honeymoon phase' on you, would you actually believe him or would you recoil in disgust?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
oh yeah, that guy from Wings.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"All that we're saying/Is give DRM-Free a chance."
Yeah, a big musician who gets it, right.
Um, no. Heather Mills took all his money and his pride and now he needs to re-ingratiate himself with the public and make some chump change.
Yes, it's cheaper at $9 that the $16 you'd pay at Walmart, but it is still too expensive. I'd say $2, maybe $3 is the right price.
At $9, people will still use unauthorized copies.
Price it fairly, and people will buy it.
Here are the songs "Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight" and "Sing The Changes":
http://www.thefiremanmusic.com/assets/mp3/
Error 001
Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.
FLAC and ALE (Apple lossless Encoding) are both lossless formats, so you won't lose any audio information on the conversion.
Looking for tools there is:
- XLD: http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html
- xAct: http://xact.sourceforge.net/
If there are any other please reply to this post.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
A better link for xACT is: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14246
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
This is not such big news. Amazon.com will already sell you music in mp3 format, without any DRM. You can buy pretty much any commercial album or song you want.
There are differences between the McCartney deal and Amazon.com, but although they may be significant for some people, I don't think they warrant the breathless slashdot summary:
And by the way, amazon has gone out of their way to offer Linux support. (If you buy an entire album, you have to do it via an external application, and they've released versions of the external application for several linux distros. Personally, I prefer an OSS alternative called clamz.)
Find free books.
I know parent is fishing for lols, but how long before steam (valve) get their arse into gear and start offering music?
I would guess never. Alright, yes, you've got a point here:
Could easily build into the steam overlay to control a media player, combine each games soundtrack into your playlist
However, I would never consider buying music or movies through Steam, only games.
You see, with games, Steam offers a clear advantage, despite the DRM. I usually have to run proprietary Windows-only software anyway (the game), but if I get it through Steam, I can re-download whenever I want, I get a community (achievements, friends, etc), and I get these as an overlay on top of whatever game I'm playing.
All for the price of forcing me to be online all the time, which I was going to anyway.
Contrast this with music. Yes, it's nice to be able to re-download whenever I want. However, with DRM-free music, I can back it up however I want, mostly negating that advantage. I can also play it with free software on Linux, or convert it and push it to just about any device which can play music at all, even burn CDs, share/lend it to my friends...
All kinds of advantages to DRM-free music, which I'd lose by getting it through Steam.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
He could have a perfectly clued up position about DRM and be completely clueless about copyright.
Praise where it is due, not so gently persuasion where it is needed ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The small time artists have nothing to lose: few people are buying their stuff, so to make a living they have to get off their asses and actually do some real work (like playing in concerts, the infamy).
People that have made it big are realising that they are being copied all around the place, so the only thing they can do to beat piracy is to be more convenient than free. A pirate could never put a service like the one McCartney is offering,
Big artists now know that insisting in asinine DRM is against their own interests and with horror are trying to adapt (Madonna is no longer affiliated to a record label, but a touring company, Prince released his latest CD for free as a gift that came with a newspaper).
Recorded music will become free advertisement for artists who will make their living from actually working, once they have an stablished name they will be able to set up shops to provide services around their music or to allow convinient digital shops to sell their wares.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
LOL. Maybe the only thing he gets is that you pirates will steal his work regardless of how he protects it. What you don't get is that the sales of this album is basically meaningless to Sir Paul's savings account.
DRM-free does not reduce piracy. Stealing someone's property, no matter how effortless, is eternally wrong.
The change we need is not the removal of DRM, but your lack of ethics and monkey-morals.
Leave it up to the Artists and they do the right thing (MOST of the time).
Of course Paul is of a different mindset than most, and he is from a generation of generosity and love. Go figure, he supports the "humanistic" way to deliver art in today's modern technology.
Paul, and folks like Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Pearl Jam and many lessor known artists are showing the world how its going to be done in the future. The technology we have today is so impowering and so many people give up their rights to be empowered by the technology. So many just buy into DRM schemes and all of these ass backwards ideas that hurt progress.
It really amazes me today, just how much an artist... especially photographers, musicians, film makers etc... can do so much of their craft on a computer at home and simply distribute through the internet themselves. This is such a revolution that suits are still afraid of it, but those that dare embrace the amazing technology and concepts it brings... are simply going to find themselves ahead of the game and apart of the progressive evolution of society. The times are a changing... and I sure hope that we embrace this power, rather than limit it from all of us as humans. It is the most important revolution in information and self involvement into society that we have seen in sometime. Everyone can now have a voice, and deliver it...
The interesting thing is... I still feel like we take this all for granted. The revolution is still in the distance... its not quite here, despite the world being "connected".
Soon enough though, and as more folks like Paul McCartney see the potential... the more we will all be closer to being a more advanced civilization.
I would be interested in the 96kHz/24bit version but at $80 its a deal breaker. Give us a more affordable flac version of the higher resolution source. Seems like vinyl is the best option here - given that you have a nice player, which I don't, and it's mastered on virgin vinyl from the high resolution source. Or, at least give us a SACD version mastered from the high resolution source.
The only good piece of music Mc Cartney ever did was the frog chorus. ;)
According to RIAA Radar it's not "RIAA-free".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Thanks for reminding me about Magnatunes:
The list I have purchased so far:
Any more, anyone??
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Well, considering it's the first release from a member of the best-selling music group of ALL TIME, I'd consider it news. I'd assume if this "experiment" goes well, he'd be very likely to do the same with the rest of his catalog.
The ability to download DRM free Beatles would proclaim the end of DRM music forever and finally kill the CD. Not just artists from EMI and whatnot. (I'm sorry, but if you're charging the price for a CD and giving me lesser quality, I'm going to go out and buy the CD.)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I'm a long-time Beatles (and thus McCartney) fan, and quite frankly, this is a typical marketing move Paul has made hundreds of times since the '60s. Come out and look like the good guy battling the evil ways of the recording industry, but in fact, he's really looking to get his music heard any way, shape or form. McCartney's peak writing days are behind him and now he's willing to give away his music. Sad.