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Epitaph Selling MP3s
ElJefe writes "According to SonicNet, Epitaph Records (Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX') is going to start selling songs and albums in MP3 format on Emusic. The songs are 99 cents each, or $8.99 for a whole album.
The article quotes the president of EMusic [Ed: "SDMI will die" guy] as saying "You go where the customers are, and they're going to stay with MP3." Although I'm not a huge fan of any of the bands, it's nice to see someone using MP3 instead of SDMI.
" The site also has yet another article on SDMI that says
SDMI will treat copies like physical objects, limiting copies to a number specified by the content
distributor.
Offspring left Epitaph after their 3rd album, "Smash" came out. Bad Religion left Epitaph before that. The only thing keeping Epitaph afloat is that the rest of their bands haven't left yet. Look for that to happen shortly though. NOFX should be leaving for their lead singer "Fat" Mike Burkett's label "Fat Wreck Chords" if they have any brains. And their other bands are getting to the point where they are pop music (at least temporarily) and could be bought up by Sony in a heartbeat. Epitaph will go under because Brett Gurewitz (former lead singer for Bad Religion and owner of Epitaph Records) will spend all his cash on his heroin habit and continue to anger his bands to the point that they all leave. Anyways, enough ranting. When Epitaph goes under, what happens to the "license" of the MP3's?
I wish they'd stop basing the price of a downloadable album on the price of a CD. Does anybody think that the first company to implement internet age pricing *wouldn't* be wildly successful ?
The RIAA is only one member of the SDMI consortium. Real Networks, Yamaha, HP, AOL, Microsoft, Adaptec, Compaq, AT&T, National Semi, and the BMI/ASCAP types all have their hands in this.
It goes without saying that all these co's are a lot more influential than an indie punk label.
But yeah, I agree. Down with SDMI, rah rah.
I still don't understand how this "limiting the number of copies that can be made of a song" thing is supposed to work - how can they possibly stop people from copying *files*?
The best part was at the end where they mention
some company called Allegro that is selling
"mp3 removing" software. Just how stupid are
companies? Here is my patented mp3 removal
software, use it and send me a dollar OK.
find / -name "*.mp3" -exec rm -f {} \;
I hope its at least 160.
I don't like how 128 sounds.
Well, the price point isn't quite there. The 99 cents per song is okay, I think; for the moment there's too much overhead in billing schemes. But $9 for an album is a bit much. It should be down to $5 or so, unless the album is REALLY GOOD, and the distributor thinks he can get away with pricing it up.
If you feel cheated by not having a physical medium, just burn it to CD-R. 8vP
Epitaph hasnt retired any of their back catalogue items, so you can still Get the old stuff. That's what keeps a bland, er.. band, and sometimes a label, afloat. Offspring rereleased their old stuff on the new label, but you might still see the little Epitaph logo on there, showing that Epitaph is still getting a little chunk of change from the record sales. That is a lot smarter than just letting a band out of a contract outright, or just selling them, especially when they're a hot item.
STECK
steck@icelab.net
So does old Bad Religion.
If you can get the Bad Religion lyrics, you should read them even if you don't like their music. They have a very good sight (?) on todays society.
You appear to be the person to ask this question of. If the artist only really makes about fifteen cents per CD and promotional costs are deducted from this why can't a downloadable album be sold profitably at 99 cents ?
I'm 44 years old and I haven't bought a CD in over ten years because the price is too high for something I might not like. There are probably millions of people out there like me too. I checked your site out and saw the little samples and the 99 cent songs but that still isn't enough to get me back in the market. How about 99 cents an album ? (downloadable, not a cd)
epitaph is not owned by sony. That rumor comes up now and again but it aint true
It's in the spec.
The four copy thing is a little misrepresented. They're saying if you own a cd, rip, encode, and SDMI tag a song, you can only make four of them (SDMI'd )at a time. You can make more, but you have to do the process again. The assumption is that you're not going to want to dump the song that you're legally entitled to copy into more than four players at any given time, thus cutting down on people making mass dupes.
It makes sense in a way.
You can do whatever else you want to the song in other formats. And remember, SDMI doesn't cover algos or encoding schemes, it's just a copy protection device.
What was more irksome to me was the fact that a portable player is not allowed to slap the SDMI tag on, that has to be done on the computer (or whatever) side. Sure, it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint, but it utterly precludes someone from producing a single, handy device any time in the future. You gotta buy at least two things.
Heh. Which again, makes sense from a business standpoint.
That still doesnt stop me from ripping a cd I bought (Because I liked the low quality I downloaded for free) and giving it to you.
--nrl
Instead of 'analog sampling the speaker output' I just crack it opne, and reroute the speaker wires to the audio in of my stereo, or, send it right back into my computer for re-digitizing... hmmm?
...end of transmission...
What people dont understand is that the cost of the CD's has nothing to do with productin cost. In only cost a label like Sonya dime or so to make a CD. The cost of cd's are because of promotional cost, markup from the label to distributor, distributor to reseller, and reseller to public. Until the prices of CDs go down, the prices of mp3s shouldnt see a big price drop. Why does software cost so much? Uhh? It doesnt cost 180 dollars to package Windows 98. The cost has nothing to do with packaging.
Jeff Knox
You wouldn't think that in the middle of a gung-ho article about the success of mp3, they would know better than to include that most-proprietary of formats that is RealAudio?
Who's with me here? I for one can't stand RealNetworks stuff! I'm sure it's a wonderful format, but it requires their ugly, unstable player, which keeps expiring, forcing me to download it over and over again, while they keep trying to sell me their "Plus" version, and which, when it installs, changes my Netscape prefs, making itself the default player for all the media types (to be fair, QuickTime does this too -- Grr!), and doing everything it can to stop me from saving anything locally. No application is entitled to modify config files belonging to another application without my permission. Aside from being incredibly rude, things that do this are my prime suspects when my prefs file gets corrupted. And why won't they let me save files locally? Who owns this machine anyway?
For all I know, the expiring-version thing might have been just for beta, but I doubt the rest has changed. I wouldn't know, though, because I refuse to touch the stuff anymore. Unfortunately, that means that whenever some wise guy puts something up only in "Real" formats, it's inaccessible for me. I guess now I know how the rest of you feel about those QuickTime codecs without Linux players. My message to web designers: Fewer Formats, Fewer Clicks.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I've been thinking about this. I'm not up on the theory, but I would believe that it probably is possible to watermark a track pretty much transparently (by doing something more sophisticated than twiddling the low bits), so that it would be very hard for a filter to destroy the watermark without also losing significant fidelity.
As you said, who wants low-quailty tracks? And whatever quality the original is, the filtered bootleg is going to be lower, right?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Now if Matador and Merge
:)
Matador has - http://www.matador.recs.com/mp3 is the address if I remember correctly. It's not big or anything, but they're throwing the "gimme free music now or else I'll pout" crowd a bone.
slightly off topic, but, yes, Neutral Milk Hotel is an Elephant 6 band, but E6 has become more of a recording consortium than a label. Beulah is on Sugar Free, Apples in Stereo are on SpinArt, Olivia Tremor Control are on Flydaddy... only a few assorted EPs and 7"s have actually been released on the Elephant 6 label.
The more you know...
Not only did Tom Waits recently say that he'd commit to Epitaph (I believe the recent quote was that they are "a bunch of dedicated guys who actually care about the music that they're producing"), but Epitaph has been stretching its fingers past the "punk" scene: into blues and folk. So this doesn't just mean that punk will become readily accessable, but so will other genres.
MP3s for sale, well, I support, but I don't think they're the hottest idea. I've always been a big fan of music in general, and therefore a big "try before you buy" advocate. Sell the songs for 99 cents and you might have some buyers, but drop the bitrate or dub them to mono and put 'em out for free and you'll get a following. How many times have we heard Hip Song X on the radio, said, "Oh, I'll buy that album," then found out the album sucks, or the band is overproduced and can't play three chords live, or some other horrible situation? The way I see it is that MP3s are a nice way to reintroduce musicianship and integrity to the industry, things which have long gone unrecognized. They allow independant artists who are talented to get recognized and popular artists to have a chance to truly prove their worth. It's been said millions of times: set the water level and society will swim to meet it. Now we can hear Hip Song X on the radio and then go and find the rest of the album somewhere to determine whether or not its worth our $13.99 or greater. If it isn't, oh well. That band will have their moment and then fade away, perhaps faster than usual. However, if it truly is a great record that deserves notice, it will be noticed and bought and exhalted, despite what the big six and other critics think.
I'm just ranting, really, at this point, and we all know the virtues of MP3s. Epitaph is taking a step in the right direction. Now if Matador and Merge (Superchunk's label, with Neutral Milk Hotel, Rocket From The Crypt, Portastatic, Magenetic Fields, Ladybug Transistor, and Third Eye Foundation, amongst others) and Touch & Go (Jesus Lizard, Blonde Redhead) and SubPop (a whole buncha bands, even though the label tends to get sneered at) and, hell, Grand Royal (Beastie Boys' label, now with Lucious Jackson, Ben Lee, Butter 08, and some other fairly hip groups) would open up and do the same thing, we'd really be cooking with gas. Show the RIAA just what they're up against.
I'm happy at any rate, this is Tom Waits' new label.
that maybe true, but when you are driving 70mph down a busy interstate, you cant tell the difference between an mp3 and a song from a cd.
At least, I cant.
...when I first read the "headline" that one of my favorite groups in college was recording again. That'd be Epitaph that made "Outside the Law" on Billingsgate. Too bad.
BTW, to keep this slightly on topic: My $0.02 is that MP3 is a great idea for making samples of each song on a CD available. Long gone are the days when radio stations used to play most of the songs on an album/CD. Now you just get the bit hit single ("With a bullet? With a bullet!"). Not enough for me anyways in order to make the decision to buy a CD.
I'd like to know where the poster who said he was paying US$15 for CDs was buying them. The last few times I've looked in a music store at the local mall the average price was in the $18-$19 range. Last time I paid as low as $15 was when I bought a CD that Richard Pinhas was selling at his show in Chicago. I actually prefer buying them that way; at least I know that the artist is getting the lion's share of the money and it's not going for lights and floor space rental at a megamall. Mail order CDs are usually a much better buy as well (but you gotta know what you're looking for).
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
SDMI can only be dumped to a portable mp3/SDMI player *three times*?
All the more reason to *not* get one of those players then. The technology just doesn't support it. If you want to shell out the big bucks, you can get an hour's worth of music on those things. But if you want to listen to something different and don't want to pay ~$50 for another memory module, you'd have to erase it and dump a different set of files to the device. Meaning you can only take the SDMI files with you three times.
portable mp3 players are a nice idea, but the technology/market isn't up to a point where they're yet feasable as an affordable portable listening device. You're better off getting a soundcard with an optical output (like the Xitel Storm Platinum ) and recording those songs onto minidisc. Cheap, swappable storage, and if you can listen to them on the computer, you can dump them on as many minidiscs as you like as often as you like.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
Indie labels like Epitaph and Fat sell to distribs for anywhere from $6.50-$8.00.
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
Flaw #1 is of course that just capturing the analogue output and digitizing that would be a breeze, and the quality would be CD-like (at least, much, much better than what MP3 encoders claim to be CD-quality)
... They better be cheap...
Flaw #2 is simply that some hacker will spent a few weeks and crack the security.
Flaw #3 is that the "storare box" will be either to big (heavy) to carry around as a portable player, or to small to be able to contain all i want.
Flaw #4 is that if the "black box" fails, you'll lose your data, without a chance of recovery. That wouldn't happen if your CD player broke down...
Flaw #5 is that you'd have to purchase boxes for your car, the bathroom, the living room, the computer room,
GCS/MU d- s+: a- C++$ USH++$ P- L+> E W++$ N o-- K- W++@ O-- M- !V PS Y+ PGP- t+ 5(+) X- R tv? b++++ y++(+++)
At US$0.99 a song - I would much rather buy individual tracks instead of a US$15 CD with 9 songs I dislike and 1-2 I really like. Once auto MP3 players become less expensive I will never use CD's again. With MP3's I can store all my music on cheap medium (ie 18gig IDE, w/r CDs, etc) instead of hauling a bunch of scratched audio CDs around with broken cases and best of all, CD changers will no longer be needed (10 disk just isn't enough). I look forward to the day I can pay 10 bucks to download 10 _really_ good songs onto my laptop, home, and auto system.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
If you're looking for a particular song you (or at least I) probably don't have the time to surf the web and scan newsgroups for a free copy. Even if you do, after you download the ~4meg song you have no idea of the quality. The sites that become popular as "free MP3" sites will attract attention and get shut down. I will save myself time and just by the MP3 - $0.99 is just so cheap. Besides, what's to keep me from ripping a CD sending it as MP3 to all my friends? Also, CDs can now easily be copied using CD writers. MP3 or CD - they face the same problems.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
MP3s can't be like the radio because some people download entire albums @128/160/192/256kbps which is very close in quality to a CD
Go to the site and click on Punk O Rama 4. They want 4.99 for the entire album. IIRC the cd costs $3.99 (unless the price has gone up from punk o rama 3, i really haven't checked). The point is production costs are $0.00, atleast for a cd it costs them something like $1 to produce. They should want less money for the mp3s, not the same ammount. And even $8.99 isn't that great of a price. From what I've heard thats about the same that they sell cds to record stores for. So if this works for them they will make more money (again, $0 production cost). It's nice to see that they are still screwing the customer.
-matt
You don't even need a sound card to rip the "protected" formats. Just write a dummy sound card driver that does nothing but redirect the output to a file. Digital copy, no D/A conversion. Copy protection in general doesn't work. Even when companies were doing interesting copy protection on computers it didn't work.
-matt
that only the RIAA record companies (there's only six of them AFAIK) really givea rat's ass about SDMI. The companies that don't have much to gain from supporting SDMI because the big six would buy them out or subsidize them are beginning to support the open formats (MP3 and 4). I just think this really proves that the RIAA has no one's interest but their own when they propose all these closed formats. Down with the RIAA! Free Antarctica!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
*sigh* Ok, yes, that's cute, but you're still having to make an analog copy. (And I guess after that, you can make as many digital copies as you need to.)
But I was hoping someone would tell me that my idea was implausible, or that some aspect of it, higher upstream, wouldn't work because ________. Instead, I'm just seeing silence. If what I described works, then SDMI may be similar.
BTW, once they have a closed black box that uses a secure protocol (with the chips all dunked in epoxy so you can't easily anaylze it ;-) to store and retrieve music, they won't have just stopped digital copies. It'll also be easy to add "features" like usage counting/logging, and automatic "uploads" of those logs to the record companies, as part of the download protocol, so they can bill for on a per-listen basis. They'll get everything they want.
Ugh, I don't like this. We gotta do something, or else it's going to really happen.
I think the best defense it to talk the musicians out of it. Many of them (well, at least in the metal genre) are pretty accessible. Or better yet, prove to them that they can make money selling MP3 music, by pointing to Epitaph's success (assuming Epitaph actually succeeds).
Without musicians, the SDMI backers will have nothing to protect, except for "corporate music" which will probably generate enough revenue to keep 'em going, but shouldn't effect everyone else too badly.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I have an entirely speculative idea on how SDMI might work, based simply on how I would do it, if I were a music industry asshole. You're all going to hate it, but maybe it will be fun to poke holes in my idea. Gee, I'm just begging for flames, aren't I? :-)
The goal: Minimize the exposure of digital data in plaintext form. If the data ever passes through a user-programmable computer system or a network, it must be in encrypted form.
The first thing I'de do is tell users to forget about any delusions that they will ever be able to play SDMI music through a conventional sound card. As many others have mentioned, it is impossible to protect the data if that happens, because someone will just use a virtual soundcard driver to slurp up the plaintext data. Likewise, SDMI music "files" stored on a general-purpose computer must never be reusable. In fact, your SDMI music is not going to be stored on the same drive your Windoze system is....
And here is the gimmick: I would design a spec for a black box that plugs into a USB or firewire port. This box would be an embedded computer with hard disk. This system would be used for all SDMI storage. Users would never have access to music files on their own hard disks which are accessible by general-purpose computers.
Downloading music from a server would really be a transaction between my storage box and the server. There would be a secure encrypted link. That way, the data can pass through a general-purpose computer, so users can use the internet, web browsers (with a plugin, of course), etc. to get the files. But the data would be encrypted and useless at any point between the server and my box. Only as it is written to my embedded system would the data be decrypted. (And it would probably be scrambled, like DVD is, before writing to HD, in case some cracker takes the HD out of my box.)
Playback would be the same idea: a secure link between the embedded box and a SDMI speaker.
Tada! Impossible to copy data (except by analog sampling the speaker output) and all the user has to do is buy a USB SDMIdrive and USB SDMIspeakers. Fire away if you see any technical problems.
And if you think you see a marketing problem (e.g. "Users would not buy the fucking box and new speakers") then I'de like to remind you that we're talking about the same kind of people who throw away a perfectly good P100 because it didn't run Win98 fast enough, and they "upgraded" to Win98 because someone sent them an MS Office 2000 document. So don't try to tell me that consumers aren't suckers or that they reject bad ideas.
I think I see some ways to attack SDMI, but it's going to be a long hard battle, where you're not only fighting a large industry, but also fighting the hypnotized herd who funds it... It will be like Windoze all over again. Please point out my logic flaws, because this is getting depressing.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I could be proven wrong in two years, but I quite honestly doubt that the online sales of MP3's will do much better than SDMI. I'd rather buy good old hard plastic Compact Discs, wouldn't you? Buying MP3's I'd feel like I was being cheated out of my money. Here's a bunch of data that I'm getting that I could make a million copies of, that I probably could've copied from my friends... and I'm paying green money for it! Yes, it costs a little less than an album, but I don't mind paying a couple bucks extra if it means I can just swivel my chair to the right, scan around, pull an album out of my CD rack and pop the CD into my drive. There's something about that that feels better than scanning through a bunch of playlists.
Don't get me wrong: I love MP3's, I've endcoded 11GB of them so far, and until I buy a second CD drive I'll be playing them when I know I have to swap a lot of data CD's in and out of the computer. But still...
There's no link from the article, but it's talking about this .
SDMI means nothing.
Who in their right mind would buy digital music that gets stored on their hard drive when they could buy a CD and not have to worry about losing the data or accidently deleting it.
The pirates won't stop pirating. MP3 encoders won't stop coming out. MP3 players won't stop coming out. Rio won't go away.
RIAA can't stop MP3 any more than they can stop Microsoft from using their Word document format. All they are doing is trying to provide a "legal alternative" for the consumer buzz about MP3. I don't buy it, probably nobody who has MP3s will, and the new consumers won't see any advantages SDMI offers over a real CD.
So who cares? The MP3 "industry" and underground have nothing to fear.
How do they plan to keep Mr x, who downloaded a $.99 song, from sending it to everybody he knows?
I don't really understand why everybody seems to think downloadable music is such a great thing. Maybe when MP3 sound quality improves (like, to CD quality), and the portable players can hold a reasonable amount (at least 300 MB) for a reasonable price (sub $200), it'll be great. But for now I really see it as "the way to listen to songs you don't like enough to actually buy."
Honestly, I've bought more CDs since I started listening to MP3s than I ever did before. Download a song, find out you love it, download a couple more from the album, love them too, buy the whole album.
From what I understand, the amount of money the artists make off radio plays is insignificant; it's all about the publicity. In that regard, MP3s can just be the new radio. Let everybody download the new single for free in 96 khz, then if they like it, they can just go buy the cd for the regular ridiculous price.
But what do I know. I know I have 5 more problems to do solving recurrences for my Algorithms class, and it's due at 11 am, and it's 4:30am right now. Sigh. What a slacker I am.
rooooar
Epitaph was originally created by Bret of Bad Religion. From what I have heard, Bret sold out, not Epitaph is own by sony. But nothing will be the label of Crass Records.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
tell that to epitaph (or any other company).
they'll crap themselves that the market will fall out from under their cds, and then they'll be left with a bunch of plastic on their shelves.
the only way e-music companies can get big labels to allow mp3 distribution is to present them with a model that is very similar to the current cd market. The labels probably don't want to shift millions of mp3s for a small price, they just want to make sure they aren't left out in the cold if the whole thing takes off.
+++++
+++++
The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
The RIAA is stupid, SDMI is just silly, MP3 will conquor all, and the music industry
will be the next cultural relic to fall to hackers. Yippee!
Moving on...
since all the freely available mp3 encoders and decoders won't go away anytime in the future.
Any protected digital music format needs to be decoded and played back through the soundcard.
There are plenty of soundcards with digital output. It's impossible to hinder people to make high quality MP3s from the digital signal.
And there are still those old fashioned audio CD thingies. They are easy to rip and won't go away anytime soon.
One can restrict future portable MP3 players. Yes. But that's it.
Can someone please explain to me how this SDMI scheme of only allowing 4 copies of a track on your computer and only allowing 3 of them to be copied off to another medium? It seems like there are just too many easy ways of circumventing this plan to make it a feasible way of controlling piracy. What's to stop someone from using non-SDMI compliant programs to manipulate the files after they've been ripped and encoded?
If the watermarks survive the output stage of the soundcard, then sdmi enabled players may still not play them (or is that sdmi-II)
anyway, don't hold your breath coz sdmi is dead in the water
also, it is the copyright holders own decision as to what licence/format they release their music on, somewhat similar to the case with software.
I support the right to release sdmi crippled music, I just don't expect anyone to want to bother downloading it and playing it.
But then again, a lot of ppl eat McDonalds, so don't underestimate marketing power.
-- Reverend Vryl
Havent thought of that one. I think it could work.
#include "various_economic_and_marketing_reasons"
// sorry, gettin lazy after like 5 posts
With all of the hoopla that has been going on lately about MP3s, it seems like everyone wants to throw those "obsolete" cds out the window and download more MP3s.
I'm just as guilty about downloading tons of MP3s as the next guy, but let us not forget that the sound quality of an MP3 is nowhere near as good as a cd. Yes MP3s are easy and convenient and I love them, too. But they are not as good.
-
-
It is possible for your mind to be so open that your brain falls out.
OK, Kiddies, you want to make the RIAA look stupid, convince people that SDMI isn't worth the trouble, thwart the record industry's monopoly on music, and guarentee MP3 a long, successful life?
Recognize efforts like these, and pay a measely buck for guarenteed, easy, and fast access to songs you like that puts money in the artist's pocket too.
He has had more than one trip to rehab, if I recall correctly. And he is notorious for asking his bands to do things that no other independent labels would ever dream of. Virtually every band that has hit it big on Epitaph has been very, very tempted to go elsewhere, and with good reason.
No, it doesn't stop you, but who would be there, waiting for you to give/trade it to them. The majority of the people who hang out in those mp3 chats, etc. just want their song, and don't care about the quality. and yes, you could put it up on a web page, but most wouldn;t spend the tme to look for it, and find your page. People are lazy . Although you could still burn your CD (This is a _good_ thing), and give it to your friend, the majority of the people who might want it would be gone.
Colin Davis
Most of us here agree that SMDI is a "bad thing" right? This just shows us yet another reason. They are against the public interest, and will ultimetly recive the same fate as DIVIX (don't get me started about that) But, if SMDI isn't the anwser, how do you ensure that the record companies will still recieve vast quantities of cash?
The solution is to release songs in an open format (like MP3, etc.), free for use, but encoded AT A LOW BITRATE. Make sure that the files are below CD quality, and give them away for free. The reasons for this follow:
1) people are, in general, lazy. Johnny just came home from school, and wants to listen the the newest song by band Foo. He is much more likely to go to foo.com, and download the song, then he is to spend 10 minutes looking for it on some pirate server on the internet.
2) The Music industry has had a long standing, (unspoken, as far as I know), agreement that people could record songs off of the radio, beacuse the quality is not as good as what the studio can release. When people want quality, they will run down to the store, and pick up a CD. This is the same thing that woould happen with the MP3s.
3) This solution would allow bands (if they wished), to release higher quality samples. Because MP3s are still encouraged, and still work in all playuers, this would not be a problem
4) The low-bitrate is easier on the majority of the internet users, who use a modem. Faster downloads would make their songs accessable to a wider market. The new idea could also be advertised as "Enhanced for faster download", instead of "Crippled to steal your money".
Colin Davis
I'm not sure why anyone would pay for digital music under the current distribution system. Download lower quality songs for a *slight* price break? No thanks. Not to mention that I have to pay for the storage... And, when my HD bites it, I lose all the songs that I haven't burnt to CD yet. What a mess. For a few bucks extra, I get a relatively permanent CD (plus booklet) that I can create MP3's from at any bit rate I like.
Before I pay for digital music, I need to know that I can download songs I have paid for anytime I want. I want the company to keep track of the songs I have paid for, and to make the songs available for download by me at anytime (at higher and higher bit rates and in different formats as times change). That way, I can pay for a song once, and never have to worry about losing it. This way, the music companies can still control the music (I don't agree with them doing this, but it is inevitable that they will try) by making the music players unable to save to disk; you will need to download a song each time you want to hear it. Plus, each portable device can be given an encryption key, and the PC music players can encrypt the song for one portable device only. That way, per download, you can only send the song to one portable device, and can't trade from one portable to another. Furthermore, each download could be watermarked with the owner's information. If said owner distributes his songs, the record companies can trace it back to said owner.
Of course, there will always be ways to circumvent any security measure. The only thing the record companies can do is make their distribution so much more convenient that the majority of people don't bother to pirate. It looks like they can do that, too: with the new satellite networks going up (designed to provide digital music to cars across the entire country), record companies could stream songs I request (that I have purchased already... Or, they could implement a pay-per-play system) to my devices (each with a separate encryption key). That way, only devices I have authorized can listen to my songs (I can register my friend's car radio so I can listen to my songs in her car), and the record company can make sure I am only listening to one song at a time. Under this system, I have every song I've ever owned available to me at any time on any of my home or portable devices. On a pay-per-play basis, I have virtually every song available to me, all on a portable satellite device. Pirate MP3s just don't compete with that sort of convenience, even if they are free. Record companies remain in control, can charge for songs, albums, pay-per-play, or even stream me advertisements and give me the songs for free. And it seems as though the technology to distribute songs in this way is almost available.
Unfortunately, the artists lose under a system like this. Once again, the record company gets rich while the artist gets squat per album sale. Oh well, once a proletarian, always a proletarian.
I think this is cool. Epitaph has always rocked.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!