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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 $8.99 for a whole album.
The article quotes the president of EMusic [Ed: "SDMI will die" guy] as saying "You go where the customers are, and they're going to stay with MP3." Although I'm not a huge fan of any of the bands, it's nice to see someone using MP3 instead of SDMI.
" The site also has yet another article on SDMI that says
SDMI will treat copies like physical objects, limiting copies to a number specified by the content
distributor.
Offspring didn't rerelease the Epitaph stuff on their new label (Columbia). Their first (self-titled) album from 1989 was originally self-released, and they rereleased it in 1995 on Nitro Records (their own label) which is distributed by Epitaph (hence the Epitaph logo on it). Their two Epitaph records (Ignition and Smash) are still only sold by Epitaph.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
First of all, NOFX did already leave Epitaph for their own label. However, there are still 3 or 4 of the older NOFX CDs that Epitaph has the rights to. Epitaph also has the rights to two Offspring CDs and around 6 or 7 Bad Religion CDs. They also still have Rancid, Pennywise, and quite a few other good bands.
As for Brett Gurewitz, he was never the lead singer of Bad Religion. He was the lead guitarist and co-songwriter (he wrote about 1/2 the songs, with the other half being written by the lead singer, Greg Graffin). He's been on and off of various drugs for the last 20 years. However, I don't think he personally runs the label much anymore. He was particularly upset when The Offspring left his label before the end of their contract (he finally agreed to let them go in return for some payments in order to avoid having to sue them). Rumor has it he's going to be rejoining Bad Religion for their 20th-anniversary album in 2000.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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 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...
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
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.
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The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
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