Does DRM drive even honest well-meaning people to piracy? Yes, of course it does.
Reader and music lover Jarrett tried to send the following “detailed, passionate complaint letter” to Rhino, but their only reply was:
450 Server configuration problem
Good for us, because Jerrett decided to send his letter to us. So, without delay, here is “How I Become A Music Pirate” by Jarrett.
Jarrett writes:
How I Became A Music Pirate I thought I was the music industry’s dream consumer.
As a 40 year old male with a long-standing passion for “all things music,” I’ve spent a bundle on my collection. In college most of my waking hours were spent wandering around record stores, swap meets and record conventions, much to the dismay of the women I was ostensibly dating. Then again, the fact that I also worked as a DJ at the radio station and hung out with obsessive record collector types probably didn’t help matters in the romance department.
Then while in grad school in the 1990s, I became busy replacing many of my vinyl releases with CD’s. At the same time, entrepreneurial music industry types began to exploit the market for out-of-print recordings by reissuing long out-of-print records on CD formats, which of course I instantly snapped up.
So here I sit circa 2007 with a house filled with over 1000 vinyl records and around 800 CD’s. If you figure about $12 per recording as an accurate average, that’s somewhere around $20,000. Not a bad chunk of change for the music business, I say.
Last week while I was busy importing my CD’s into iTunes so I could listen to them on my iPod (a most tedious task), I hopped on the internet. iTunes was busy importing a Luna CD, one of my favorite bands, so I decided to see what they were up to since they disbanded a few years back. After a few clicks in Google, I found a blog site describing a posthumous, internet-only release of a collection of covers the band had recorded throughout their career. While I already had many of the songs (they were often featured on b-sides and imported singles, etc.), I couldn’t resist tracking down this compilation. As I read further on the blog site I encountered a link to a .zip file containing the entire collection ripped as 128kbps mp3′s.
While I must admit being tempted to simply click away and download the collection, I though to myself, “Well, if I buy the music it’s only $10, and this way I will get high quality .WAV files. Besides, it’s not like Luna were getting rich off of their careers, they could use the money…”
So I headed to Rhino’s online store, purchased the music, and downloaded the files.
A little later that evening, I tried to move the .WMA files into iTunes, when I received an error message telling me that iTunes could not import them because they were copy protected. I downloaded the files again (which took another 12 minutes) and again, the same message.
So I called Rhino customer support and after an 8 minute wait spoke with a representative. She informed me that the files were indeed copy protected so that I could only play them on specific music players, most notably not iTunes.
“You don’t understand,” I said, “These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them.”
“Well” she responded, “You didn’t actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to.”
Now I was baffled. “Records never came with any such restrictions,” I said.
She replied, “Well they were supposed to, but we weren’t able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can”
She later went on to explain that I could burn the songs to a CD and listen to them in a regular CD player, but I would need an additional Windows based music player to listen to them on my computer. But either way, she suggested there was no way the files could be played on my iPod.
Frustrated, I hung up and began my search for a Windows application to allow me to burn the music to a CD. After downloading Nero and firing it up, imagine my frustration when I receive another error message telling me it cannot locate the licenses for the music I purchased.
I call Rhino again, and this time speak to a young male CSR. He explains that I need updated licenses in order to burn the music and often the problem is that many firewalls will allow the music to pass through the firewall, but not the licenses because of their encryption schemes. Lest you think I am exaggerating, I included below the following text from their website (apparently this is a big enough problem that it warrants mentioning in their FAQ):
1. Temporarily disable all firewall and pop-up blocker software you may be running on your computer.
2. Attempt the download again
If the Licensing portion of the download is still hanging, please update the Digital Rights Management (DRM) component on your computer via the following URL: http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/indivit2.htm
The friendly CSR representative then suggests that I try once more to download the files and licenses and if I still have no luck to try accessing the internet from other providers such as a local coffee shop, library, or work computer.
“Basically, just keep downloading the music until you find a gateway that let’s your licenses through without problems”
While I would like to say I responded with something witty, I must admit to being completely flummoxed. There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems, and the best they can do is tell me to wander the streets of Seattle looking for different internet providers who might allow me to download the music that I have already paid for, music that I have spent the better part of three house trying to listen to, and which is still unusable?
How on earth have things come to this?!?!?!
Honestly, if this is the best you can do, you’re business is in really, really serious trouble.
I mean, could you imagine the consumer response if Coke could only be consumed from specific Coke-approved equipment, and then only in the specific ways that the folks at Coke wanted the product to be consumed. “drinking Coke with fast food is no problem, but we must warn you that your license forbids the mixing of Coke with any alcoholic beverages…”
In the end, I never was able to get the music to play on anything–my computer, on a CD or on my iPod. I invested $10, several hours of my time, and my reward was, well, nothing.
I’d like to say I was outraged, but in the end I must admit to feeling remarkably sad and deflated over the whole process. See, the thing is, I was raised on music. I was saved by music. I (used to) live for music. Lester Bangs wasn’t my idol, he was my soul mate (in a matter of speaking).
I’ve devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD’s of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1′s and 0′s guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad.
I would like to think that someone at a place like Rhino would care enough to not let these kinds of things happen. But alas, my suspicion is that anyone who would have been cool enough to work at Rhino in their heyday some twenty years ago would never be so callous, foolish or shallow to allow these kind of absurdities to occur.
Since I’ve resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I’ll have to resort to purchasing used CD’s & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD’s.
Call it piracy. Call it whatever you want. But at least I tried. I gave you several chances and you failed miserably at every level.
Jarrett
Well, it’s a good thing you stopped Jarrett from sharing his files on the internet. Imagine! Losing a good customer! Oh wait. It’s not free music that drives some people to piracy, it’s the lack of a quality product from legitimate music sources. —MEGHANN MARCO
(Photo: Burnsland)
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Oh yeah, and who on earth decided it would be a good idea to start a music store whose music is incompatible with the players used by three quarters of their target market, anyway?
I know they’re not the only ones, but geez, I guess you really have to have your head in the clouds to be a middleman in the music wars.
@SteveXo: Bingo. thisiskspraydad – you’re making an argument that the presence of lots of incompatible technologies (tapes, CD’s, vinyl) should be the basis for future development, and that music companies should ARTIFICIALLY continue this using DRM.
The reason all these all those formats exist is that that is what the options were at the time. Analog formats in particular are tied to their media – that’s why they have become obsolete. That created a system where consumers had to buy more than once if they wanted their media in different formats. It was a result of the limits of technology. New formats brought new benefits (portability, quality, etc), and there was mostly no way to transfer from the old media to the new media without losing some of those benefits, and so people upgraded without too much grumbling.
With DRM, there are NO benefits to the consumer with these new formats. DRM doesn’t add any new features for the customer. As far as the average consumer is concerned, WMA, MP3, and M4A or whatever are identical – any differences between them are, again, artificial, imposed by the RIAA to maintain the bad old days of analog.
thisiskspraydad, you seem to be arguing for a giant step backwards towards intentional incompatibility, needless secrecy, and proprietary shackles for their own sake.
Last point (because this is getting waaay too long
– when artists actually produce music, they use high-quality DRM-free technology to record and mix. They rejoice over and capitalize on open standards like MIDI. Shared, open, convergent technology has revolutionized the way music is made. Why shouldn’t that be true on the consumer end as well?
Wow, he finally figured out how bad drm is.. Plus, what is an audiophile like him (or her) doing with 128kbps music.. Thats too low for even me! (I can hear it).. While I will admit to not being able ot tell the difference between lossless and LAME V0 VBR, I still hate 128k…
It is (to me, at least) quite insane, the way the music industry has created a system so expensive, that so imperils its users, that they would, must resort to illegal tactics to circumvent the restrictions of the very groups that should be easing the purchasing process.
To wit, the music industry could have used their coffers to provide a Napster service before Napster. Higher quality, high efficiency compression system, fast direct download servers, no untoward crippling of the files. This alone would have eased the blow; it would have stemmed the blood loss, and at marginal cost. Filesharing would have still flourished, but at a much smaller scale and without decreasing – or even reversing the new monetary flow of the industry’s online services.
Another step? The pricing scheme could have been set to artist pay + overhead + RIAA profit. Triple artist pay, add sufficient overhead to record albums and run the service, and add some profit for the Record Industry and you’re still far below the 99 cent price of iTunes.
The record labels never even considered new pricing; an overpriced media monopoly holds up the entire Hollywood industry, feeding the media elite of our time – that money influx is the reason for the popular culture insanity that pervades our society, and they don’t wish to lose it.
Even the new record store would have been faster and farther then they wanted to go. They wanted to slowly feed customers new technological capability at a vastly higher premium – dollars a song, heavy restrictions that could be slowly removed for yet another cost.
Napster coldchecked them. They still don’t know how to respond. They’re still following through with their initial gameplan as best they can. They don’t realize that the public has seen what is possible beyond their veil of “rights management”, beyond their closed world of major label music. The need to break out of these restrictions is so strong that no sane response can curtail it, so the industry has taken to insane ones.
Lawsuits for several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Forced settlements by children, college students, senior citizens. They say that the law justifies prosecution of illegal behavior; they forget that they have gone far beyond any morally justifiable behavior in their zealous fervor. Supporting, condoning, allowing the actions taken by the recording and motion picture industries is no different from supporting, allowing, condoning forty year jail sentences for a single instance of graffiti.
It’s not just crazy, it’s very, very wrong.
I haven’t bought a CD in the stores for a while now… and when I feel particularly generous, or I really feel an artist deserves my money, I buy the CD off of eBay used.
@thisiskspraydad: How is HE dumb? Consumers shouldn’t have to dick around with things like DRM, AAC, WMA, WAV… Like he said; you used to buy a record and it worked. It just worked, and always worked. You didn’t need a special record player to play records from brand B.
Consumers are at the mercy of 2 parties trying to please the other. On the one side the record companies are treating their content like it’s the cure to all diseases and world problems, and on the other the online content resellers are trying to do everything they can to grab their tiny portion of the market and will do anything the record companies ask them to.
I’ve had my fair share of iTunes problems, and have around $30 in music that simply vanished and can’t be found anywhere.
In the end I’ve just settled for being a pirate and get my music from the Russians. I get it in any format I want, with no DRM.
THAT is going to have to be the way of the future, I don’t mind paying for my music, but I don’t like spending money for a license, if people are going to embrace digital music they’ll need to get the same sense of ownership they did with CD’s.
Copy protection just needlessly complicates. Look at all of the false copy protection errors on DVD recorders that occur w/ tapes that have picture issues (the Macrovision protection used on VHS was an artificially induced error, thus the recorders mess up).
It is (to me, at least) quite insane, the way the music industry has created a system so expensive, that so imperils its users, that they would, must resort to illegal tactics to circumvent the restrictions of the very groups that should be easing the purchasing process.
To wit, the music industry could have used their coffers to provide a Napster service before Napster. Higher quality, high efficiency compression system, fast direct download servers, no untoward crippling of the files. This alone would have eased the blow; it would have stemmed the blood loss, and at marginal cost. Filesharing would have still flourished, but at a much smaller scale and without decreasing – or even reversing the new monetary flow of the industry’s online services.
Another step? The pricing scheme could have been set to artist pay + overhead + RIAA profit. Triple artist pay, add sufficient overhead to record albums and run the service, and add some profit for the Record Industry and you’re still far below the 99 cent price of iTunes.
The record labels never even considered new pricing; an overpriced media monopoly holds up the entire Hollywood industry, feeding the media elite of our time – that money influx is the reason for the popular culture insanity that pervades our society, and they don’t wish to lose it.
Even the new record store would have been faster and farther then they wanted to go. They wanted to slowly feed customers new technological capability at a vastly higher premium – dollars a song, heavy restrictions that could be slowly removed for yet another cost.
Napster coldchecked them. They still don’t know how to respond. They’re still following through with their initial gameplan as best they can. They don’t realize that the public has seen what is possible beyond their veil of “rights management”, beyond their closed world of major label music. The need to break out of these restrictions is so strong that no sane response can curtail it, so the industry has taken to insane ones.
Lawsuits for several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Forced settlements by children, college students, senior citizens. They say that the law justifies prosecution of illegal behavior; they forget that they have gone far beyond any morally justifiable behavior in their zealous fervor. Supporting, condoning, allowing the actions taken by the recording and motion picture industries is no different from supporting, allowing, condoning forty year jail sentences for a single instance of graffiti.
It’s not just crazy, it’s very, very wrong.
I still buy cds…..overseas! I listen to Jpop, kpop, Cpop etc etc and they are not protected. I can rip using Itunes with no problems.
The only album worth buying for is the new NIN coming out next month.
Does anyone remember the time when they used to have singles? I have a box full of them and they were great. They should make a comeback!
Now I was baffled. “Records never came with any such restrictions,” I said.
She replied, “Well they were supposed to, but we weren’t able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can”
The best part is – SHE’S RIGHT! Records have come with these restrictions for 100 years.
I have an Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph that was most likely built during or before 1917. At the time Thomas Edison was locked in a bitter format war with arch rival Victor (SOUND FAMILIAR? It gets better – Edison’s technically superior format lost out!).
But inside the cabinet of my phonograph is a sticker. Here is a highlight from the text:
In other words, modifying an Edison phonograph to make it play Victrola records or vice versa violated the license agreement. Edison did his best to enforce the license, but couldn’t do too much with WWI-era technology. You can bet he would have done more if he knew how.
The license agreement also say that I am not licensed to operate my phonograph without paying the current catalog price to a licensed Dealer and that it cannot be resold except by a licensed Dealer. I’m committing an act of piracy just by winding the old thing up!
Here is an older Edison license from a cylinder record.
And here is a strikingly timely article from the NYT about Edison’s work in the recording industry.
That was 90 years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I’m 58, a computer programmer, and I’ve been an avid music listener since the days of 78′s. I own 450 CDs and countless LPs.
It puzzles me that anyone would trust their music to a disk drive. Don’t you know that it’s a question of when, not if, your hard drive will fail? What will you do then? Re-download those 5,000 tunes you found on the Internet? Do you remember where they all came from? Will those sites still available?
If your music is disposable and you don’t care about losing it, this model makes sense. But if you are passionate and knowledgeable about music, doesn’t it make more sense to have it in a format that is durable and permanent? I.e. the Compact Disk.
Besides, my time is valuable. It is actually more expensive for me to hunt for tunes, download them and burn them to CD. It is cheaper to order the CD or buy it from a store.
I love my iPod (yes, I know, it has a disk drive). You can’t drag your computer on a walk. The shuffle feature has enabled me to experience my music in a whole new way.
The music industry is guilty of many errors and abuses. I refuse to buy any CDs with DRM. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a problem in the genres I favor.
You’re all missing the point, which is that sooner or later, all the Jarretts of the world will figure out what he did and stop buying records, and if the RIAA doesn’t realize that and change their ways, they will die a long-overdue death.
@Yodayid…
Actually what I am arguing (from earlier in this thread) is
“The solution for those that don’t want to be ‘stuck’ is to stop buying DRMd music and supporting ecosystems build around DRMd music.” in the mean time it is people like Jarrett’s own fault for not investigating what the heck they are spending money on…
In the mean time…consumers have to NOT perceive music from a CD or iTunes or Rhapsody as the SAME…the DRM makes them different formats (like records/tapes/8track were all the same music but different formats). If consumers educated themselves as such (or read warnings like Rhino has on its site) we wouldn’t have the bellyaching of Jarret…he would realise his mistake in buying into the DRM ecosystem.
If I go invest $200 to $400 in a ‘record’ player I would look into it and see if it played 78s/45s/33s etc…what formats did it take. Did it play cassettes as a bonus? Why is the same expectation not made for those plunking down $200 to $400 on a ‘music player’?
@Troy F.: That’s because Edison was a jerk. He did the same thing against Westinghouse and Tesla, trying to push his Direct Current electricity format, where they were advocating Alternating Current, in what has now become known as the “War of Currents.” Edison was like the RIAA of the 1880′s. (He claimed AC power was dangerous, and used it to electricute countless animals in public displays. He was an ass.)
thisiskspraydad: The thing is, for most technologically incapable people, these things all look the same. They are a file, and when you double click, it plays a song. That’s it. They don’t know about all these different formats that have been artificially manufactured, nor should they: in the past, during each time period, there was a widely accepted format that everyone used. Vinyls, 8tracks, cassettes, even CDs. They looked different, but if you bought a cassette player, it played cassettes without asking you for a licence agreement.
Now, you expect people to suddenly become tech-savvy, know about all the different files and what goes with which. So the iPod plays ACC files, right? And MP3s? What if I buy a CD and rip it? Will they play? What if I burn those files onto a CD, then rip it again? What if I did that with WAVs? WMVs? MPEG-4s? OGGs? How is one consumer supposed to know exactly how each of these formats works in each situation? It’s not as if there are “WAV players” being sold. Everything’s an MP3 player, but suddenly none of your music’s an MP3.
Besides, what’s the point, besides screwing over ignorant people and giving the greedy industry fat cats more cash?
And it’s still unacceptable that Rhino would expect him to go to a library or a cafe to download a licence for the music he had already purchased, even when he was willing to use it on him Windows machine. Terrible customer service.
Here is what I am interested in. I want to pay you money, and to be able to download and play the music that I want immediately. I want it to play on my computer and in my iPod. I don’t even care that much about DRM.
Unfortunately, a lot of the music I happen to want is not available through iTunes. It is probably not even available at all, except maybe as a used CD, let alone a downloadable file that I can play on my computer and my iPod.
On the other hand, “piracy” offers me a reasonably good chance of the file being good (sometimes there’s a bad rip), and there’s no tangle of albums that are not on the right label, or out of print, or have been pulled due to licensing issues, etc.
The Internet has created a new way of sharing and listening to music. I couldn’t even imagine this even ten years ago, when my only sources of new music were my friends’ mixtapes, the radio, and whatever the record stores chose to carry.
The fact is that I can do something I couldn’t do before, and if the record companies can’t offer it to me legally, then I’ll just have to work around it. And I don’t feel guilty for even a second. I still go to concerts, buy T-shirts and CDs, and buy CDs directly from the artist when I can.
Do I really care about the record companies no longer having the funds to create another Britney Spears?
He wouldn’t have had that problem if he downloaded from iTunes in the first place, no?
Paul: It sounds like a pretty small label, and chances are that they aren’t available on iTunes. This is exactly the mess I was talking about in the previous post.
Ok, a little brain injection here…
1. Don’t buy DRM’d music. Period.
2. If you were dumb enough to buy DRM’d music then there are 3 options. Yes 3.
a. Burn to CD and then re-rip incurring the loss of quality due to re-quantization and basically using up a CD (at your cost)
b. Rip the damn DRM off using a DRM un-wrapper. They aren’t available for all but I have seen them for wma and aac.( This method is prefered if available)
c. Use Total Recorder to encode the song to WAV and then re-encode at 256 mp3. Total recorder sits in the background and basically intercepts any data being pumped through your sound card (after the DRM decrypt) so it’s like doing real time decryption. And it’s perfectly legal because you are intercepting the audio stream in it’s unencrypted form. And it works on ANYTHING, including games.
Kirk Out.
If the RIAA had its way, you would have to pay each time you listen to a song on a CD you ostensibly own.
This is ignorant. When you buy a book, you dont get free copies of books on tape. That’s because you own the paper its printed on, not the content.
You cant go to the CD store and trade your vinyl for CDs for free either.
When you buy a digital file, you are buying the medium, not the content. You are buying the 1s and 0s as they are configured, just as you are buy a book as it is bound. Do you expect a free paper back when you buy a hardbound?
We need to stop whining like children. If you dont like DRM protected music, dont buy it. Rhino isnt Burger King, they never promised “Have it your way.”
@AlexDitto is exactly right – a three year old could tell that a vinyl record won’t fit in a tape deck, but why would anyone even think that buying a song on itunes won’t play in a non-ipod player? The people posting here are savvy enough to know that, but why would the average person even consider it as a possibility?
This guy bought $20000 worth of plastic. (only a fraction going to the music industry, most of it wen t to distributors, etc). If he wants to play it with iTunes, he needs to start ripping. His previous purchase is also irrelevant to his Rhino situation.
@orig_club_soda: You’re confusing physical formats (paper books versus audio recordings of books), which have inherent value and costs, with digital formats, which do not. They’re trying to get something for nothing by artificially restricting what plays on what.
The reason you don’t get a copy of a book on tape when you pay for a paper book is that there are costs associated with recording the book (including voice talent, studio time) and shipping the tapes. It’s literally and physically a different product.
But in this case, the RIAA is trying to sell us the same product several times by artificially making them different (i.e. incompatible). A better analogy would be being forced to buy one copy of the book for your home, another for your commute, and another for work.
Ah, I miss the Napster days.. I loved being able to find some of the arcane & import bands which I love. I also enjoyed being able to hear all sorts of music I normally wouldn’t have found on my own. Believe it or not, I bought more CDs & vinyl when Napster was going than I have since. It’s not that I’m doing any more/less downloading than I have before, but now the true music enthusiasts are too afraid to post interesting files. Now all I see on the P2P networks are the usual bog-standard pop artists.
What I’m listening to now: Solomon Burke – Nashville
Last CD purchased: Cowboy Junkies — Trinity Sessions
Well… the music industry is gonna take a while fighting back here in Mexico, it sure is a HUGE loss for musicians, but at least i don’t see companies sueing random people. Altough they do sell every single cd for enormous prices, all variety is pretty much the current popular music market… and i just don’t think it’s worth spending money on it, at least not here.
the end of music
“If Rosseau’s work were under today’s system, his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, written in 1754, would have been under copyright until 1848 (70 years after his death in 1778), drastically reducing its distribution both within and outside France, and Rosseau’s impact as a revolutionary thinker would have been tiny.”
Oh man, that dude’s album “Rousseau Comes Alive” KICKED ASS! Everybody I knew had it.
The headline of this story should have been: “DRM found to be especially harmful to the less intelligent.”
You guys are jumping on kspraydad like he’s supporting DRM or something. You should actually read the comment before dashing off a post yourself. First of all, the guy’s not a non-techie, because he talks about the difference between .WAV and .mp3 in his letter. If it says in big bold type “THIS MUSIC WON’T PLAY ON YOUR IPOD” then even a non-techie should be able to figure out that it won’t play on an ipod.
I’m glad he decided DRM’d tracks aren’t worth the bother. I hope he becomes the poster boy for ending DRM. But it’s still his own fault for not knowing what he was getting himself into with the whole itunes on windows mess.
@Firstborn Dragon: Exactly!
I knew I couldn’t be the only person with this problem. Soundtracks to wideo games, anime, old movies, and foreign music in general are hard to find and even harder to buy.
eMusic would have my business if they had some of this music available. In the meantime there’s what I can find on RadioBlogClub and ocremix.
I don’t understand the issue with iTunes. I consider myself a music lover as well. I haven’t bought a physical cd in five years. Buy from iTunes, burn the mp3 files to a cd and the encryption is gone, you can then re-import the files in any format you need. Additionally, why use iTunes how about http://www.emusic.com I have an account for $9.99 a month that gets me 40 drm free songs. I searched and they have a number of Luna albums. Maybe you could’ve gotten your songs there and still had downloads left over from your ten bucks.
>> It puzzles me that anyone would trust their music to a disk drive. Don’t you know that it’s a question of when, not if, your hard drive will fail?
Memory is so cheap these days that it’s possible to have backup plans that would make the chances of losing your music less than losing your CDs. I have three backups of my vital files, plus a ghost of my backup drive on five DVDs I do every six months. I update one backup daily, one backup about every month and all three are synched about twice a year. My risk of losing my data is comparable to the risk of my CD collection being destroyed in a house fire. I could reduce the chance of losing data further if I kept one of these backups at a separate location.
>> RE: MP3 quality.
I agree that sometimes 128 bps is too low, especially for classical music or music with lots of highs and empty space. But I would bet money on the “Pepsi Challenge” that few people if any could distinguish between CD quality and an MP3 saved at a higher bit-rate, like 320. I agree with David Byrne who said at the SXSW that sound quality is often over-rated and rarely significant to the enjoyment of music by the general population. If you think about how most people listen to and enjoy music 128bps is fine.
Personally, though I love music I find a lot of audiophiles to be boorish snobs. (And aspiring musicians that don’t listen to other people’s music, of which there are many, are just jerks.) I SAY: Let them enjoy their 50′s jazz LPs alone in the privacy of their bedrooms while we dance together to 128bps MP3s cheesy pop tunes in the next room!
>> The analogy that a different file format is equivalent to an 8-track comared to an LP or CD.
Somebody mentioned that the different file formats is analogous to the different formats of the past (8-track, cassette, etc.). I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. An MP3 and an M4A are both files comprised of ones and zeros, the difference between the two is programmed in an attempt to force customers to buy their music from the same place they buy their player.
A more appropriate analogy would be if a company produced CDs that could only be played on a CD players made by that company and not on CD players made by other companies.
>> Do I really care about the record companies no longer having the funds to create another Britney Spears?
Bravo! I recall reading that a few years ago Mariah Carey’s most recent album (at the time) wasn’t selling enough to make up for the millions spent marketing her new release. Her contract was cancelled and she was paid a few millions.
Let me re-iterate that: Mariah Carey was paid millions of dollars for NOT selling enough albums.
(Since then, she’s rebounded on another label, but still.)
>> The music industry is gonna take a while fighting back here in Mexico
No Kidding! I remember walking through Mexico City’s Chopo music market (where almost everything is pirated) and finding a Flaming Lips cassette (in 2000). I don’t even thing the Flaming Lips was releasing albums on cassette. What I find interesting there is that in spite of Mexico’s rampant media piracy, Mexican bands still make it big. I don’t see Los Tigres or Café Tacuba starving and their fans are all probably “stealing” their music. But these bands succeed because they pack stadiums and make millions from tickets and other royalties.
>> Buy from iTunes, burn the mp3 files to a cd and the encryption is gone, you can then re-import the files in any format you need.
So each time I buy something from iTunes I should not be bothered by the fact that I have to burn it and rip it to remove the DRM?
Put it this way: not only have I not purchased a CD in years — I haven’t used a CD in years, either. I don’t even have any blank CDs. I don’t even have a CD player (except the external CD/DVD drive on my computer). In fact, it’s my goal in life to get CDs and DVDs out of my life completely.
“Jozef says:
I hate to bring it up, but listening to music is not a basic human right; it’s a privilege.”
What communist overmind controlled hovel did you just crawl out of? “Hey everybody, you don’t have a right to your culture! You have to pay for that particular privilege.”
Farking troll.
You know, it’s not just that the copy protection is intrusive, obnoxious, and downright broken. It’s not just that the people he talked to at Rhino were incompetent, or even unhelpful.
It’s just that one gets the feeling that apart from the author, and hopefully the band, you get the feeling that nobody in this story gives a single, solitary shit about music. Even – no, especially – the ones who work for the record label.
And that’s just sad.
@cindel: Actually, in my experience CD’s in Japan have more draconian DRM than in the US. Most of the CD’s sold on Amazon Japan are CCCD, or Copy Control CDs. I’ve been able to rip most to itunes, but some have given me trouble.
Also, it was DRM(like RCE) and the inability to play CDs/DVD’s that I had legally purchased on a player that I had legally purchased that led me to places like http://www.doom9.org/ My guess is that the absurd piracy statistics quoted by the MPAA/RIAA actually includes the vast majority of legal purchasers like myself who just want to be able to use what they paid for…
@cindel: Actually, in my experience CD’s in Japan have more draconian DRM than in the US. Most of the CD’s sold on Amazon Japan are CCCD, or Copy Control CDs. I’ve been able to rip most to itunes, but some have given me trouble.
Also, it was DRM(like RCE) and the inability to play CDs/DVD’s that I had legally purchased on a player that I had legally purchased that led me to places like http://www.doom9.org/ My guess is that the absurd piracy statistics quoted by the MPAA/RIAA actually includes the vast majority of legal purchasers like Jarrett and myself who just want to be able to use what they paid for…
I’m right there with you, Jarrett. Your pain has been felt by all music lovers trying to break into the digital age.
My situation is actually the reverse of yours – I was a music pirate for many years, but then (out of a combination of guilt and fear of being sued by the RIAA) began buying/trading for all the music I love and deleting all the stuff I can live without. I’ve found ways to do this affordably – mostly buying used from half.com, and trading on lala.com the CDs I no longer listen to for ones that I want.
All my CDs are immediately ripped to flac and then stuck in a binder and forgotten about. I back up the flacs onto DVD and keep them in my fireproof safe. I have a Squezebox, playing through a Super T-Amp and a decent set of speakers, as my stereo. When I want to put some music on my MP3 player (NOT an iPod), I use MediaCoder to transcode the flacs to 192k MP3s.
I have a decent setup – similar, I think, to what most technically competent music lovers eventually arrive at (everyone else either sticks with CDs or suffers with the Apple monoculture). I wish I could just buy the flacs directly from an online source and not have to have hundreds of useless plastic discs cluttering my house, but until the recording industry catches up I’ll have to make do.
Fortunately, it seems that the music industry is ever-so-slowly coming around to the idea that a viable business model can be built around clear (non-DRM’d) content. EMI has alread started experimenting with this (although the upfront fees are way too high for it to be feasible for any retailer short of Apple or Walmart to go this route, and neither of them have any incentive to do so). There are efforts afoot (at least one of which I have a strong feeling will be successful) to break Apple’s monopoly and give labels more incentive to provide a better user experience. I’m hopeful that I’ll see in my lifetime a re-emergence of the goodwill that labels and consumers once felt for each other, as well as a new generation of passionate collectors like Jarrett.
There is no doubt that DRM is dying – it has no effect on piracy and, as you can see above, does nothing but piss off legitimate consumers. Sometimes piracy isn’t about getting it for free.
We’re also seeing a movement toward shame as DRM, which I honestly think is going to be at least as effective in ending piracy and will lead to more sales.
Certainly they have to do something with music sales down 20% from 2006.
thisiskspraydad: The cruicial thing I think that hasn’t been addressed in all the replies to your comments is this – The product never worked. Even when their instructions were followed, it never worked in it’s original native format (meaning, no conversion, ripping, etc). Since others here have used my favorite tool, an analogy, I will do the same. Imagine buying a car from GM. It doesn’t start. You call the dealer, “Well, you need to also get gas”. You ask, “where is the gas?” They say, “Any gas station”. After trying 3 or 4 Exxon and Mobile stations which all have the typical 87/89/91 octane, you call back and they say, “Well, you’ll just have to find the right 87 octane gas, just keep driving…errr..oops…walking.” No matter how much research you do, you’re unlikely to find this out in advance, since no reasonable person would imagine walking the streets with a 5 gallon VP gas jug, looking for the magical gas.
Also, if he investigated into the format, how many companies would readily make it available that their license often DOESN’T work. You noted the message, “This wont work with iTunes”, but make no mention that you got another one saying, “And…it also won’t work anywhere else, including the computer you’re downloading it onto right now.”
I’m one of the “stupid ones” (using your reference), and have an iPod Video. I tried the Gigabeat, but the DRM drove me nuts as well as the lack of accessories. I hate all of the players when put on my high-end home audio system, and that’s when I break out the CDs.
Johnny
Late response to digdig’s comment a few days ago:
Rhino is hardly a small label; it’s owned by Warners and may be the largest archival music label in the world.
Also, my own band’s music is available on iTunes and our label office is the drummer’s living room.
What this is descrbing seems to be the problems with DRM today – lack of portability/flexibility. If we were able to use our media as if it were just regular, unprotected MP3s, the amount of piracy would probably fall, since people will feel confident that they can play it anywhere – iPod, other MP3 player, CD, or even another computer in the house.
Really painful! the same happened to me.Finally, i have to buy another program to convert these protected music to plain one. Thank NoteBurner, it helps me a lot.
Why do they call iPods MP3 players? This is a serious question. I understand it’s like the term Kleenex instead of tissue or “What kind of coke do you want to drink?” But I find it a little missleading.
A few years ago, before iPods, I downloaded iTunes because they were the only company I could find that had a couple of songs I wanted. But I didn’t want to put my other MP3′s or WMA into iTunes, and I couldn’t get my iTunes songs out. They were embedded in the program somehow and they had an extention of .M4P or something like that. I did actually consided burning them onto CD and then putting them back in MP3 format, but I never took the time.
Anyway all of this just left a bad impression and I’ve never had any desire to own an iPod for this reason. I’ll just stick to my generic MP3//WMA player and still have most of the songs I want.
ConsumeristSince I’ve resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I’ll have to resort to purchasing used CD’s & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD’s.Call it piracy. Call it whatever you want. But at least I tried.
[Jefito’s Note: While the blog gnomes and I scurry behind the scenes to get things back in semi-working order around here, please allow me to present the following missive, penned by a, shall we say, “legally savvy” member of our audience who wishes to remain nameless.
I feel your pain, but, you are wrong in one thing – you are not the music industry’s dream customer. You are a MUSICIAN’S dream customer, as you like music and are prepared to pay a fair price for the music you like. The music indutry’s dream customer, these days, is someone who mindlessly buys CDs by the dozen simply because the hype/marketing department of their label says they’re good, then goes and buys the same CDs again via digital download to play on their digital player, then buys them a third time on vinyl, then buys the ‘remix’ three times, then the live version three times, then possibly buys all three versions again because they’ve migrated from one type of digital player to another type.
In short, the industry doesn’t actually give a fuck about the customer any more, or even the music – they just want you to put as much of your money in their pockets as possible. This is why they are very reluctant to give up DRM, even though it has been patently obvious for a long, long time that it does exactly ZILCH to curb piracy – with DRM, they can force you to buy the same thing several times, unless you don’t mind breaking the law.
Radiohead will be one of the bands to make history on this very subject.
From my perspective, as a musician and having gone to college for Music Industry Studies (that means all the copyright and RIAA understanding) we should:
Give the music away for free- sell the concerts and memorabilia.
i understand how you feel.. and i agree!
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The burden is on Rhino to ensure all necessary components are transmitted to the buyer of the music. Rhino should not have taken the customer’s money if they could not successfully transmit the associated license.
The customer should initiate a charge back with their credit card company or reverse the payment with their bank.
@edrebber: And then head over to Limewire to acquire music that will actually play……
I love this post, and I’m a music pirate myself. To be quiet honest, music pirates are the ones that make music pop more. Without us, there would barely be any listeners. Here’s some sick Jordan Heels you can buy your girlfriend while pirating.