Amazon AutoRip — 14 Years Late

An anonymous reader writes "Amazon just debuted a new service called Autorip, which grants you MP3 copies of music when you purchase the CD version. This is a technology people have been trying to introduce since 1999, but only recently have the record labels — and the courts — seen fit to allow it. 'Robertson's first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called "Beam-It" that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. ... Licensed services like iTunes were still years in the future, largely because labels were skittish about selling music online. But Robertson believed he didn't need a license because the service was permitted by copyright's fair use doctrine. If a user can rip his legally purchased CD to his computer, why can't he also store a copy of it online? ... the labels simply weren't interested in Robertson's vision of convenient and flexible music lockers. So MP3.com was driven into bankruptcy, and the "buy a CD, get an MP3" concept fell by the wayside.'"

Comments

The biggest flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that I now have mp3s for CDs I gave as gifts. Unfortunately, my friends and relatives seem to have different music taste than I do, so now I have the Chicago soundtrack and Hannah Montana mp3s.

Re:The biggest flaw

[SQLGuru]

On the plus side, you can buy CDs as presents and get the MP3 to keep for yourself.......so Amazon might still have a slight problem to fix.

Re:The biggest flaw

[jaymz666]

if you mark the order as a gift, i.e. buy off a wishlist, it won't be added to your library

Re:The biggest flaw

[SQLGuru]

Who said you had to check the box to give it as a gift. ;)

Nice, but that raises a new question.

[geminidomino]

Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Marcion]

Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?

Because you they want you to buy it twice. (Unless your smart like Cory Doctorow who lets you have the ebook free to try before you buy the paper one).

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[DavidClarkeHR]

Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?

Well, you [technically] can.... the question should be why can't we legally get a copy of the e-book, when we pay full price for a dead tree book.

Also, why are e-books still so expensive? The amount saved by avoiding regular distribution channels should knock more than 10% off the actual book cost ...

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[CNeb96]

Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?

I bought a book on machine learning from Manning - they do the popular "In Action" computer series http://www.manning.com/catalog/by/subject/ and they do give you a free non-drmed ebook (includes PDF, ePub, and Kindle) with every physical copy of the book you buy. http://www.manning.com/about/ebooks.html "If you did not buy the pBook from manning.com, you can still get the free eBook in all available formats by setting up a Manning account, and registering your copy."

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Lumpy]

I would subscribe to magazine more if the E version was not attached to a crashy nasty app AND were less than or even the SAME AS a print subscription.

Cycle World, is about $9.00 a year for a mailed to me subscription, It's $11.99 on the ipad. yeah. BITE ME Cycle World, I'll just torrent the issues from Pirate bay.

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Threni]

Er..no, it's the same thing. It was written once, and typeset, edited etc. The it was a) printed in book form, and b) rendered into a pdf (or whatever). Exactly the same content. And my kindle can be read in exactly the same places a book can be, sunlight or otherwise. And when I read the same thing on my Android phone, I don't need any form of light as it's backlit. And if it were convenient/practical to print a pdf, or scan a book into a pdf I'd do that and not give a fuck about the law of it (I'm in the UK, where ripping CDs to MP3s is illegal, and I've done that for every single CD I've ever bought, and I don't give a fuck about the law there either).

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[MaskedSlacker]

Actually it demonstrates the flaws (from the publisher's perspective) of the traditional bookselling business model. Books (dead-tree format) are sold on consignment. They are shipped to retailers, without payment, and money comes in as retailers sell them. Unsold copies get shipped back and destroyed (which costs money). Because returns are a cost it is sometimes cheaper to discount the book just to get rid of it (even at a slight loss) without having to return it. Ebooks don't have this flaw, so there is no reason to discount them.

Not that you should be sympathetic (I'm not), but it's a little more complicated than boundless greed.

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Runaway1956]

"How do you buy 'it' twice when the 'it' is two different things,"

That is so, so wrong.

My wife never bought a video cassette because she wanted a video cassette. I never bought a music casette because I wanted a cassette. Never bought a floppy drive just because I wanted a floppy drive laying around. Ditto with CD's, DVD's, ebooks, real tree books, or whatever.

It's the CONTENT you're paying for.

I want to watch the movie, or read the book. That's why I pay real money for it. The book is the same whether it appears on screen, or I have to hold the book open. The movie is the same whether it's on DVD, or video cassette. And, I only expect to pay for it ONCE to be entitled to use it as I see fit.

Even if the content is edited so that it is more usable and/or appealing in a new format, it's still the same stuff.

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Jafafa Hots]

"How do you buy 'it' twice when the 'it' is two different things, unless you're talking about the text itself and not the form, formatting, etc.?"

You might better address that question to the Supreme Court, since they are the ones that ruled that it is NOT two different things, and that there is such a thing as fair use.

Maybe you can convince them to change their minds, um... because.

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Jafafa Hots]

Exactly.

In an interview in the mid 1980s, an RIAA exec admitted that they were trying to get away from "selling" music and wanted to go to a "pay-per-listen" model. Mot even pay per format - they want pay per listen.

This was in the same article that he justified continued high prices for CDs, which were twice that of LPs (they were later found guilty of price-fixing) DESPITE the fact that CDs cost far LESS than LPs to produce.

His justification for colluding to fix prices to make a CHEAPER product to produce more EXPENSIVE to purchase was that it was a better value due to sound quality.

So apparently a massive increase in profit margin due to illegal activities = "a better value."

In short, the content cartels are scum.

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Unsold copies get shipped back and destroyed (which costs money).

That may be true for hardcovers, I don't really know. But for softcovers the practice has been to rip the front cover off and send it back, while letting the retailer dump them in the trash. Same thing with magazines. I learned how it all worked as a young teenager when I discovered that once a month, the convenience store near my school bus-stop would load up the trash-bin out back with an entire month's worth of porn magazines, all missing the front covers. What they couldn't legally sell to me, I could now dumpster-dive for free.

Re:Nice, but that raises a new question.

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally understand that wanting a free ebook version when you buy the paper version as the digital version ads little expense once you factor in having purchased the book from an online merchant with digital distribution capability in place (assuming it was digitally stored before printing). But seriously, an audiobook version requires them to hire (hopefully good) voice talent and a studio to record the reading.

what about resales?

[loshwomp]

Auto-rip raises an interesting question about resales. It appears that Amazon is granting downloads for CD purchases (even retroactively, for CDs purchased years ago). If I've since sold the physical CD, Amazon would not know that. Furthermore, I could deliberately game the system by buying CDs and immediately reselling them.

I know, it's a stupid edge case, and I could already do this by ripping my own CDs today and subsequently selling them, but it's exactly the type of "problem" that keeps the recording industry up at night.

Re:I used to use that.

[DavidClarkeHR]

Really a shame that service got buried by the dinosaur music industry....

Now I'm going to start worrying about the raptors of the music industry ... thanks a lot.

Re:ugh, mp3-only

[jsdcnet]

it's 256k mp3 (like all amazon purchased mp3 music). since you have the actual cd you can make a lossless copy. most people will be fine with 256k.

Why would I want a CD if I have a MP3?

[onebeaumond]

I don't see the value of a free CD with a MP3 purchase, oh wait...

Re:I didn't want the CD anyway

[Lumpy]

"CDs are big, bulky, and easily damaged. Why are we still using them?"

Because its the only way to get full quality DRM free music.

That's not how MP3 used to work.

[NotSoHeavyD3]

You didn't rip anything. MP3 actually had loads of CD's already ripped and on their servers. You put in a CD in your PC, it would get some data off of it(effectively a hash) and then used that info to figure out which CD it was and allow you to stream the rip from MP3.com. So for they'd have a rip of say Led Zeppelin IV on their servers. Everybody that put that CD in their PC could access MP3.com's rip of Led Zeppelin IV and stream it but nobody who used the service was actually ripping their own copy of Led Zeppelin IV and putting it up on the MP3.com's servers.

Re:Amazon: welcome to the 1990's; 128 sucks

[seligman]

It varies depending on the album. Recent purchases I've made have been encoded using LAME 3.97 with its V0 setting (~245 kbps VBR), this seems to be the default for MP3s encoded by Amazon. One self-published album I grabbed that was MP3 only was 320 kbps CBR. The MP3's I've downloaded via the site and via the downloader are bit-for-bit identical.

It's a pitty Amazon isn't more forthcoming on what the encoding is before you buy it, but I'd imagine whatever album you grabbed was simply provided to them as a 128 kbps file from the source.

Re:I didn't want the CD anyway

[MaskedSlacker]

Alright, but every other format has the same problem. CDs are still higher quality than compressed files of the same track.

Re:I didn't want the CD anyway

[Scarletdown]

"CDs are big, bulky, and easily damaged. Why are we still using them?"

Because its the only way to get full quality DRM free music.

And if you get tired of a CD, you are free to resell it, give it to a friend, trade it to someone for something else, donate it to a thrift store, etc.

CDs?

[Charliemopps]

People still buy CDs? It seems that the MP3.com idea may have saved CDs... tied the license to the CD itself, so you got to buy that to get a legit MP3 license. Instead they kept their heads up their asses for 15 years and the world moved on. Artists: I can get your music for free, at any time of the day or night, from nearly anywhere in the world. I can have your entire album in under 5min. It's easier, the quality is often better, it wont get scratched, it's free, there's no taxes, it's environmentally friendly... Think of a new business model. The universe is against you on this one. Trust me.

For clarification

[Agrippa]

2 clarifications for the summary, since I was the 10th engineer at MP3.com and worked there from 1999-2003:

- We lost to the record labels/publishers not because we gave people access to their music, but because we compiled the music library and streamed it without paying the labels/publishers any royalties. Our strategy was to buy a copy of the CD ourselves, rip it, then claim fair use doctrine when we streamed it to someone else who also owned it. This was a supposed grey area in the law that got cleared up REAL FAST in a media-friendly district court. Services that you see now are paying royalties on what they stream. MP3.com later sued its lawyers that gave the advice on the so-called "grey area" it tried to go through.

- We where not a Silicon Valley company, we where in San Diego. Perhaps if we where SV we would of gotten better legal advice :p

Re:Helpful.

[reub2000]

That extra $6 is so that you don't have to be embarrassed by a Taylor Swift CD lying around your house.