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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!"
Paul McCartney was one of the biggest proponents of that attempt to get retroactive copyright extension of sound recordings a few years back. Maybe he's changed his attitude towards copyright since then.. or maybe he's just interested in making a buck (or a bob) any way he can.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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
Come on man. Feel free to buy the FLAC and convert it to your preferred format. It's lossless compression, you can't ask for more.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Meh, some obviously will. But what's the quality on that MP3? And of course the obvious realization: you can bet a lot of people in the music industry watch these experiments very carefully.
If more people just find a way to get the album without paying for it (because that's obviously easier without the DRM... though still not completely trivial for the average fan) ...then they will be forced back into DRM-based approaches.
It's a money experiment. Dunno how they'll measure exactly... I suppose they can at least monitor in some way how widespread the album becomes on the various p2p networks & torrent trackers; if it explodes, you may not see this approach again.
Paul McCartney was one of the biggest proponents of that attempt to get retroactive copyright extension of sound recordings a few years back. Maybe he's changed his attitude towards copyright since then.. or maybe he's just interested in making a buck (or a bob) any way he can.
Yeah, I don't think he's doing it because he's suddenly anti-copyright.
This is a particularly good time in the history of the recording industry to be one of the "good guys" who drops the DRM and gets press for doing it.
Notice the huge free ad he just got on Slashdot?
And think about it -- if you're choosing between paying for a Metallica vs. paying for this one, what goes through your head?
* I hate that @#$%in' DRM...
* Metallica! Those DRM-loving pricks. @#$% 'em, I'm just getting this one off the internets.
* McCartney! He removed the DRM... Maybe I shouldn't rip him off.
It's a marketing experiment. 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.
DRM free or not it's still rubbish music - who cares either way?
Weird, complaining 320 kbits is too much then asking for a lossless download..?
Not really. The advantage of FLAC, or the CD is that you can encode it to MP3, OGG, etc, at any bitrate, without needing to re-encode. Re-encoding from one bitrate to another, or from MP3 to OGG hurts the quality much more than encoding just once (from a lossless source).
When you have the FLAC, you have any format you want.
Flac *is* lossless. I have no intention of loading that into any players, merely it's a good lossless source that allows me to record to whatever format I wish to play in, namely ogg. Suggesting a proprietory format as an alternative really is not the way forward :-) I thought everyone here wanted out of proprietory formats.
That's the whole point of the issue. Digital copying has the recording industry running around like a chicken with their heads cut off.
A digital copy never degrades. Assuming no corruption (which good protocols prevent), the 5 billionth copy sounds just the same as the first. So in essence, a copy is just as good as "the real thing". They panic and insist that DRM is a "must" because otherwise, people will copy those songs wholesale.
The thing that they forget though is the same thing that drove them into the frenzy in the first place: DIGITAL COPIES DON'T degrade. If I want to pirate a song, I generally don't go to my buddy who bought a non-DRM'd copy. I'd go to a sharing site. Since a digital copy doesn't degrade, then as you said it only takes ONE copy of the song without DRM to spawn as many non-DRM'd copies as are necessary to quench the thirst of the masses.
In the end it's STUPID. Anybody who wants a free (regardless of legality) non-DRM'd copy of any song or movie knows exactly where to get it. The only people who get affected by the hassles of DRM are the people who wish to obey the law. So, ironically, they get a worse product than the pirates. Rather than the copy being "just as good" as the real thing, it's now actually BETTER.
Try to sell an inferior product at a higher price with nothing more than a law that most people see as antiquated, and it's not going to fly. Particularly when the vast majority of offenders of this law are never prosecuted, and you have a recipe for the collapse of an industry. The solution is simple. Provide a SUPERIOR product, and a REASONABLE price, and people will buy it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain