Who would pay more for a DRM-less song on iTunes? Say, $2.50? The labels won't budge unless they can get more money.
What makes you think that iTunes would increase the price due to dropping DRMs? (not accusatory, just wondering)
eMusic is DRM free and its quite a bit cheaper then iTunes. 14.99 for 65 songs. I'd guess that the price might even go down.
Plus, especially when it comes to infinite supply products (MP3s) a price drop would definately increase demand and they would sell more.
Selling 4billion at a penny each is much better profit then 1million at a dollar. There isn't really any long term cost (buying CDs to burn them onto to ship them to stores). 1s and 0s are free Everyone wins. Its just music industries that don't want to sell it for any less then so much.
There are two issues going on here with the Norwegians. One is licensing Fairplay, the second one, which is probably Apple would never ever want to do is to open up iTunes for direct connection to non-iPod players.
Back in the iTunes 2.x days it actually used to support players other than Apple's such as the Rio 500. That was just mp3 files though and not store purchases and was probably more a fallout feature of the old SoundJam code than anything else.
So, it's not unheard of that iTunes could support other devices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tundraboy
iTunes is one of the biggest advantages iPod has over its competitors. It's half of the user-friendly experience that makes the iPod so attractive. It sounds like the Norwegians want any old MP3 player to be able to interact with iTunes just like an iPod. And it's no surprise that Apple vehemently opposes this. The Norwegians are asking Apple to hand over their competitive advantage to its rivals. Apple invested money and time to develop this great content and device management service for iPod owners and now they should let other players benefit from it? This is like Coke being told to hand over its recipe to Pepsi.
I must say the Norwegians are out of whack on this. No company is under any obligation to share its lawful competitive advantages with the competition.
That's it though. The Norwegians are arguing that it's an unlawful feature.
Bearing in mind the settlement with the Beatles early in the month, and Jobs' letter, I think the only thing holding Apple back now from releasing DRM free music on their own is the contracts in place with the major labels. There's a backstory here beyond DRM and I reckon it's Apple wanting to be a 'record company' releasing any music onto iTunes direct from artists even without having to pay the record companies squat. Jobs realises that the iTunes store isn't going to make money as long as the record companies take so much of it.
It'd be better for Apple as they'd get a bigger cut of the .99c and probably better for the artists too if they got paid a fair share too.
(Note to the AI owners: Could you add the multi-quote feature that MacRumors uses? This would make it much easier to create posts like this one)
Quote:
Originally Posted by hubfam
Here's an idea burn a .05 cent cd of your music and re-import it. Done! NO DRM!
This will work, but there are two problems. First, it violates the iTunes Store's license agreement (the fact that you aren't likely to ever be prosecuted doesn't change this fact). Second, the sound quality will be degraded unless you re-import using a lossless format (WAV, AIFF or Apple Lossless.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by iPeon
And spend the next hour re-inputing the tags back into each and every song, unless of course you don't mind seeing only track numbers in your library and not being able to find the song you are looking for.
Not true. If you burn a CD from iTunes, iTunes records that disc's TOC in a local database (the same one it uses to store info about purhcased CDs). The tags will be available when you re-import, if you do it on the same computer.
If you do the re-import on a different computer from the one you used to burn the disc, then yes, the info will be lost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caliminius
What kind of "research" did he do in 2 days to come to the conclusion that Apple could remove the DRM in 2-3 days?
It is well documented that the files you buy from iTMS do not arrive from the server with DRM. Your local copy of iTunes applies the DRM after the file is downloaded. (As a matter of fact, intercepting the packets of the download was one way FairPlay was cracked, before Apple changed the protocol to prevent this.)
It wouldn't be a big deal to add some data to the download to tell iTunes not to apply DRM to new downloads.
I don't think Johansen was talking about retroactively removing DRM from songs that were already purchased and downloaded. But that isn't a technical issue - iTunes already does this as a part of playback. The only hard part (and this would probably be a really hard part) would be to make sure it doesn't get removed from the wrong files.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. H
That isn't accurate. AIFF is a "wrapper" file-format for containing PCM audio.
Even that's not accurate. AIFF is a container-type file format. It can contain audio in many different representations, not just raw uncompressed PCM. There are also various kinds of compression that may be used with AIFF.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight
I wonder how adding songs to the iPhone would count towards you user agreement.
Until the iPhone ships, we won't know for sure, but my guess is that it will be treated just like an iPod.
Hey, I illegally downloaded my first mp3s to my IBM 200Mhz Pentium computer (with 3GB hard drive) in the fall of...get this...1997! A dude named Chad at our school had hundreds of mp3s shared to the entire campus network. One day he was talking about "mp3 this" and "mp3 that." "What are these mp3s of which you speak?" I asked. It was that day that music changed for me forever.
Now that I'm older and wiser I cringe at the idea of using pirated software, listening to pirated music, etc. Having a friend who's a musician and being a video content creator myself, I have a better understanding of what it means to not get paid for your stuff because boneheads want to distribute it without your permission or compensating you. I also like to compensate the author/artist for their good work. I'm one of those strange people that buys an iLife 5-pack for all the computers in our house instead of installing the one copy over and over again.
I can see why the big record labels think that DRM is a good thing, but Steve did a great job of giving a clear argument as to why DRM doesn't work and isn't necessary. The way I see it, he's right.
The record labels need to remember, too, that a LOT of people who illegally download some crappy mp3 go to a brick and mortar store to buy the CD later. A give and take helps them make more money!
The record labels need to remember, too, that a LOT of people who illegally download some crappy mp3 go to a brick and mortar store to buy the CD later. A give and take helps them make more money!
Then again, sometimes, downloading an artist to see if I like them has saved me from buying some truly awful albums. On the whole though, I buy more albums now since it's much easier to hear artists that aren't featured on radio via the net be it legally or not.
Even that's not accurate. AIFF is a container-type file format. It can contain audio in many different representations, not just raw uncompressed PCM. There are also various kinds of compression that may be used with AIFF.
PCM does not rule out compression. You will note that I did not say anything about whether the audio was compressed or not. I just said that AIFF is a PCM wrapper, which it is.
If you can provide me with a link to a standards document describing the use of non-PCM audio inside an AIFF wrapper (i.e., not some proprietary hack-up of AIFF), then I will be more than happy to stand corrected.
Who would pay more for a DRM-less song on iTunes? Say, $2.50? The labels won't budge unless they can get more money.
I think what they should do is LOWER prices for the basic, 128-bit tracks when they undo DRM. Remember, you're competing with free. What you have to do then is offer more value. iTunes should add a "music preference" engine like Last FM, a subscription service, and DVD Audio with 5.1 tracks. More services I can't imagine, too. So then, you could go to the iTunes store and pay 49 cents for a basic track, 99 cents for 5.1 surround, 1.99 for the CD with video, and $12.99 for a DVD audio. Something like that. And remember, Jobs wants to have every track ever recorded -- maybe 5 million would be enough at the moment, to have a reasonable sampling of all the world's music. All of it accessible to a search engine. Beats the pirate boards right there.
And the RIAA members should license the music, not to "pirate" sites, but to "swap meet" sites. Get a buck or two for a download of an old CD. The music would be legal, but would include nothing released this year, say. How do you deal with an explosion of ways to listen to your music? License it, fools! Then the pirates get a cut, the uploader gets a cut,
The only people who would be hurt would be the payola radio stations, which are dead anyway, and Bronfman, one of the true goofballs in the music industry that the big evil dope Gates has recently bribed.
If you can provide me with a link to a standards document describing the use of non-PCM audio inside an AIFF wrapper (i.e., not some proprietary hack-up of AIFF), then I will be more than happy to stand corrected.
Technically, there's no such thing as an AIFF wrapper. AIFF is a sub-format of EA's IFF standard file format. The AIFF chunk in an IFF file is PCM uncompressed audio.
There are many other sub formats such as 8SVX audio, ILBM images, ANIM animations that can be wrapped in IFF.
It makes sense to discuss Steve's essay but what gets me is everyone is just talking about the one part where he mentions eliminating DRM altogether. Steve didn't call on and demand the labels to drop their DRM convictions. He stated 3 possible scenarios for distributing content online and what would be involved to do each of them. Was he successful in starting a worldwide debate? Yes.
EMI is looking to experiment with opening more of their back catalogue DRM free.
Apple should embrace this and begin to offer music that has no DRM for record label that agree to it. That will make it easier for consumers to pressure labels that stubbornly refuse to give up DRM.
Quote:
Steve didn't call on and demand the labels to drop their DRM convictions.
He described no DRM as the best way for music interoperability. He told European consumer groups to pressure music labels to drop DRM.
I am finding myself agree with Electronic Frontier Foundation as well. Why not make FairPlay optional? Also, why not strip FairPlay from Apple-produced contents as well (e.g., Texas Hold 'em and Vortex iPod games)?
I hate how the music industry makes it look like they have a choice. If they pull their music from iTunes, people will go back to stealing it. Get rid of the DRM and they mite sell MORE songs, because now zune/zen/ and who ever else can use iTunes super easy layout. This could make loads of money.
This is why I'm still scratching my head at Apple's willingness to dump DRM.
Don't Apple's competitors have the most to gain?
Again, I think this has nothing to do with DRM and everything to do with appeasing the regulators in those countries that are raising hell about it.
iTunes does not get CD tracks names from a CD that you burnt yourself. When you burn a Music CD in iTunes, it changes the format to AIFF That strips the Tags.
It doesn't get it from CD, but it get it from internet. I did it recently and it perfectly found all names. If you have changed tags then you probably will lose them, if not - you're good to go.
I recently added some mp3's to the library and those did't had any tags inside. I buned them to CD to listen in my car (still no tags), and then later ripped it on my office computer, and it found all track names.
Here's an idea burn a .05 cent cd of your music and re-import it. Done! NO DRM!
You're abosolutey right! I've been saything all along. That's the way around DRM rip a CD using the DRM files and it converts it to CD format and then import it back to an MP3 or lossless. You don't loose nor notice any real loss in quality. Why the big stink over all of this? Are people that lazy?
You're abosolutey right! I've been saything all along. That's the way around DRM rip a CD using the DRM files and it converts it to CD format and then import it back to an MP3 or lossless. You don't loose nor notice any real loss in quality. Why the big stink over all of this? Are people that lazy?
Apple Lossless is larger and can not be played by iPod shuffles, nor other MP3 players. MP3 is lossy.
Geez, give this re-rip thing a rest people. It is not a viable solution.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has nothing to lose, and their statement about stripping the DRM immediately shows their complete lack of business sense. Idiots.
Uhm... what? DRM does nothing but hurt the business. It's the labels that refuse to admit it. They're going to hold onto DRM until they can get away with not selling CDs or other forms of non-DRM music. It's their goal to only sell DRM music. That's why they won't give it up.
Apple Lossless is larger and can not be played by iPod shuffles, nor other MP3 players. MP3 is lossy.
Geez, give this re-rip thing a rest people. It is not a viable solution.
It's not viable for audiophiles (apparently, like yourself.) But I'd argue that no lossy format, including iTunes purchases wouldn't be viable for audiophiles.
Re-ripping does cause a loss in quality, but in many circumstances, that's not a problem. For instance, when I play songs in my car, wind and road noise make it impossible to hear what's been lost.
If those of you are concerned about quality then you should be demanding to make AIFF downloads rather than MP3's. You could then rip yourself a CD instead at full quality sound. How close is lossless to AIFF? Anyone have the numbers or details?
The thing we all need to keep in mind (you too Europeans) is that you are not tied to buying music downloaded from iTunes instead you can rip your CDs, friends CDs to MP3s. Nobody is twisting your arms on this one. It's not like you don't have a choice. Everyone knows that DRM is attached to the iTunes downloaded music and if you didn't before purchasing you should try reading before buying. I'd also venture to say that if people bought over 2 billion songs so far on iTunes then they are okay with DRM otherwise they would have sought CD's or MP3s elsewhere.
I'm now guessing that those of you crying foul against Apple are generally happy with the iPod but are what, "paranoid, anxiety stricken, anxious" or what ever emotional state of mind you must be in? You are suddenly panick stricken, "oh my God, I'm stuck with this system?" What?! You think Apple may leave you high and dry? Nobody likes to be backed into a corner do they?
If you don't like the way the system works, MOVE ON and quit whining. Oh My God! What a concept! "I can choose a Zune or Zen or something". That's the beauty of Capitalism. You can purchase whatever your heart desires.
Comments
Who would pay more for a DRM-less song on iTunes? Say, $2.50? The labels won't budge unless they can get more money.
What makes you think that iTunes would increase the price due to dropping DRMs? (not accusatory, just wondering)
eMusic is DRM free and its quite a bit cheaper then iTunes. 14.99 for 65 songs. I'd guess that the price might even go down.
Plus, especially when it comes to infinite supply products (MP3s) a price drop would definately increase demand and they would sell more.
Selling 4billion at a penny each is much better profit then 1million at a dollar. There isn't really any long term cost (buying CDs to burn them onto to ship them to stores). 1s and 0s are free
There are two issues going on here with the Norwegians. One is licensing Fairplay, the second one, which is probably Apple would never ever want to do is to open up iTunes for direct connection to non-iPod players.
Back in the iTunes 2.x days it actually used to support players other than Apple's such as the Rio 500. That was just mp3 files though and not store purchases and was probably more a fallout feature of the old SoundJam code than anything else.
So, it's not unheard of that iTunes could support other devices.
iTunes is one of the biggest advantages iPod has over its competitors. It's half of the user-friendly experience that makes the iPod so attractive. It sounds like the Norwegians want any old MP3 player to be able to interact with iTunes just like an iPod. And it's no surprise that Apple vehemently opposes this. The Norwegians are asking Apple to hand over their competitive advantage to its rivals. Apple invested money and time to develop this great content and device management service for iPod owners and now they should let other players benefit from it? This is like Coke being told to hand over its recipe to Pepsi.
I must say the Norwegians are out of whack on this. No company is under any obligation to share its lawful competitive advantages with the competition.
That's it though. The Norwegians are arguing that it's an unlawful feature.
Bearing in mind the settlement with the Beatles early in the month, and Jobs' letter, I think the only thing holding Apple back now from releasing DRM free music on their own is the contracts in place with the major labels. There's a backstory here beyond DRM and I reckon it's Apple wanting to be a 'record company' releasing any music onto iTunes direct from artists even without having to pay the record companies squat. Jobs realises that the iTunes store isn't going to make money as long as the record companies take so much of it.
It'd be better for Apple as they'd get a bigger cut of the .99c and probably better for the artists too if they got paid a fair share too.
Here's an idea burn a .05 cent cd of your music and re-import it. Done! NO DRM!
This will work, but there are two problems. First, it violates the iTunes Store's license agreement (the fact that you aren't likely to ever be prosecuted doesn't change this fact). Second, the sound quality will be degraded unless you re-import using a lossless format (WAV, AIFF or Apple Lossless.)
And spend the next hour re-inputing the tags back into each and every song, unless of course you don't mind seeing only track numbers in your library and not being able to find the song you are looking for.
Not true. If you burn a CD from iTunes, iTunes records that disc's TOC in a local database (the same one it uses to store info about purhcased CDs). The tags will be available when you re-import, if you do it on the same computer.
If you do the re-import on a different computer from the one you used to burn the disc, then yes, the info will be lost.
What kind of "research" did he do in 2 days to come to the conclusion that Apple could remove the DRM in 2-3 days?
It is well documented that the files you buy from iTMS do not arrive from the server with DRM. Your local copy of iTunes applies the DRM after the file is downloaded. (As a matter of fact, intercepting the packets of the download was one way FairPlay was cracked, before Apple changed the protocol to prevent this.)
It wouldn't be a big deal to add some data to the download to tell iTunes not to apply DRM to new downloads.
I don't think Johansen was talking about retroactively removing DRM from songs that were already purchased and downloaded. But that isn't a technical issue - iTunes already does this as a part of playback. The only hard part (and this would probably be a really hard part) would be to make sure it doesn't get removed from the wrong files.
That isn't accurate. AIFF is a "wrapper" file-format for containing PCM audio.
Even that's not accurate. AIFF is a container-type file format. It can contain audio in many different representations, not just raw uncompressed PCM. There are also various kinds of compression that may be used with AIFF.
I wonder how adding songs to the iPhone would count towards you user agreement.
Until the iPhone ships, we won't know for sure, but my guess is that it will be treated just like an iPod.
What, like in 2002?
OMG. I am old.
Hey, I illegally downloaded my first mp3s to my IBM 200Mhz Pentium computer (with 3GB hard drive) in the fall of...get this...1997! A dude named Chad at our school had hundreds of mp3s shared to the entire campus network. One day he was talking about "mp3 this" and "mp3 that." "What are these mp3s of which you speak?" I asked. It was that day that music changed for me forever.
Now that I'm older and wiser I cringe at the idea of using pirated software, listening to pirated music, etc. Having a friend who's a musician and being a video content creator myself, I have a better understanding of what it means to not get paid for your stuff because boneheads want to distribute it without your permission or compensating you. I also like to compensate the author/artist for their good work. I'm one of those strange people that buys an iLife 5-pack for all the computers in our house instead of installing the one copy over and over again.
I can see why the big record labels think that DRM is a good thing, but Steve did a great job of giving a clear argument as to why DRM doesn't work and isn't necessary. The way I see it, he's right.
The record labels need to remember, too, that a LOT of people who illegally download some crappy mp3 go to a brick and mortar store to buy the CD later. A give and take helps them make more money!
The record labels need to remember, too, that a LOT of people who illegally download some crappy mp3 go to a brick and mortar store to buy the CD later. A give and take helps them make more money!
Then again, sometimes, downloading an artist to see if I like them has saved me from buying some truly awful albums. On the whole though, I buy more albums now since it's much easier to hear artists that aren't featured on radio via the net be it legally or not.
Even that's not accurate. AIFF is a container-type file format. It can contain audio in many different representations, not just raw uncompressed PCM. There are also various kinds of compression that may be used with AIFF.
PCM does not rule out compression. You will note that I did not say anything about whether the audio was compressed or not. I just said that AIFF is a PCM wrapper, which it is.
If you can provide me with a link to a standards document describing the use of non-PCM audio inside an AIFF wrapper (i.e., not some proprietary hack-up of AIFF), then I will be more than happy to stand corrected.
Perhaps you are thinking of AIFF-C/AIFC?
Who would pay more for a DRM-less song on iTunes? Say, $2.50? The labels won't budge unless they can get more money.
I think what they should do is LOWER prices for the basic, 128-bit tracks when they undo DRM. Remember, you're competing with free. What you have to do then is offer more value. iTunes should add a "music preference" engine like Last FM, a subscription service, and DVD Audio with 5.1 tracks. More services I can't imagine, too. So then, you could go to the iTunes store and pay 49 cents for a basic track, 99 cents for 5.1 surround, 1.99 for the CD with video, and $12.99 for a DVD audio. Something like that. And remember, Jobs wants to have every track ever recorded -- maybe 5 million would be enough at the moment, to have a reasonable sampling of all the world's music. All of it accessible to a search engine. Beats the pirate boards right there.
And the RIAA members should license the music, not to "pirate" sites, but to "swap meet" sites. Get a buck or two for a download of an old CD. The music would be legal, but would include nothing released this year, say. How do you deal with an explosion of ways to listen to your music? License it, fools! Then the pirates get a cut, the uploader gets a cut,
The only people who would be hurt would be the payola radio stations, which are dead anyway, and Bronfman, one of the true goofballs in the music industry that the big evil dope Gates has recently bribed.
If you can provide me with a link to a standards document describing the use of non-PCM audio inside an AIFF wrapper (i.e., not some proprietary hack-up of AIFF), then I will be more than happy to stand corrected.
Technically, there's no such thing as an AIFF wrapper. AIFF is a sub-format of EA's IFF standard file format. The AIFF chunk in an IFF file is PCM uncompressed audio.
There are many other sub formats such as 8SVX audio, ILBM images, ANIM animations that can be wrapped in IFF.
BTW, Ours rocked last night.
Apple should embrace this and begin to offer music that has no DRM for record label that agree to it. That will make it easier for consumers to pressure labels that stubbornly refuse to give up DRM.
Steve didn't call on and demand the labels to drop their DRM convictions.
He described no DRM as the best way for music interoperability. He told European consumer groups to pressure music labels to drop DRM.
I hate how the music industry makes it look like they have a choice. If they pull their music from iTunes, people will go back to stealing it. Get rid of the DRM and they mite sell MORE songs, because now zune/zen/ and who ever else can use iTunes super easy layout. This could make loads of money.
This is why I'm still scratching my head at Apple's willingness to dump DRM.
Don't Apple's competitors have the most to gain?
Again, I think this has nothing to do with DRM and everything to do with appeasing the regulators in those countries that are raising hell about it.
iTunes does not get CD tracks names from a CD that you burnt yourself. When you burn a Music CD in iTunes, it changes the format to AIFF That strips the Tags.
It doesn't get it from CD, but it get it from internet. I did it recently and it perfectly found all names. If you have changed tags then you probably will lose them, if not - you're good to go.
Here's an idea burn a .05 cent cd of your music and re-import it. Done! NO DRM!
You're abosolutey right! I've been saything all along. That's the way around DRM rip a CD using the DRM files and it converts it to CD format and then import it back to an MP3 or lossless. You don't loose nor notice any real loss in quality. Why the big stink over all of this? Are people that lazy?
You're abosolutey right! I've been saything all along. That's the way around DRM rip a CD using the DRM files and it converts it to CD format and then import it back to an MP3 or lossless. You don't loose nor notice any real loss in quality. Why the big stink over all of this? Are people that lazy?
Apple Lossless is larger and can not be played by iPod shuffles, nor other MP3 players. MP3 is lossy.
Geez, give this re-rip thing a rest people. It is not a viable solution.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has nothing to lose, and their statement about stripping the DRM immediately shows their complete lack of business sense. Idiots.
Uhm... what? DRM does nothing but hurt the business. It's the labels that refuse to admit it. They're going to hold onto DRM until they can get away with not selling CDs or other forms of non-DRM music. It's their goal to only sell DRM music. That's why they won't give it up.
Apple Lossless is larger and can not be played by iPod shuffles, nor other MP3 players. MP3 is lossy.
Geez, give this re-rip thing a rest people. It is not a viable solution.
It's not viable for audiophiles (apparently, like yourself.) But I'd argue that no lossy format, including iTunes purchases wouldn't be viable for audiophiles.
Re-ripping does cause a loss in quality, but in many circumstances, that's not a problem. For instance, when I play songs in my car, wind and road noise make it impossible to hear what's been lost.
The thing we all need to keep in mind (you too Europeans) is that you are not tied to buying music downloaded from iTunes instead you can rip your CDs, friends CDs to MP3s. Nobody is twisting your arms on this one. It's not like you don't have a choice. Everyone knows that DRM is attached to the iTunes downloaded music and if you didn't before purchasing you should try reading before buying. I'd also venture to say that if people bought over 2 billion songs so far on iTunes then they are okay with DRM otherwise they would have sought CD's or MP3s elsewhere.
I'm now guessing that those of you crying foul against Apple are generally happy with the iPod but are what, "paranoid, anxiety stricken, anxious" or what ever emotional state of mind you must be in? You are suddenly panick stricken, "oh my God, I'm stuck with this system?" What?! You think Apple may leave you high and dry? Nobody likes to be backed into a corner do they?