Hard News: Another nail in the coffin of music DRM
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Apart from all that; totally legit.
allowing for common sense though russell.
if copy right owners were opposing format shifting so they could make some extra dosh off you by making you buy a new format copy then we'd see policing and prosecution for breech of it well before now, but we haven't have we. That's cos they're not opposed to that, they're trying to keep the laws favourable to anti piracy by keeping it as clear cut as they can against it. A new law that says you can make a copy because of this or that just makes the issue more blurred and open to exploitation. As a music producer I have absolutely no objections to people who legitimately buy music from me keeping a valid copy of it going on any format. I'm not looking for extra dosh from future format sales of the item and realistically I don't think the majority if any of the music producers in this world are looking at it from that point of view.They are concerned about eroding control of their material though and any change in law that erodes respect for fair boundaries, making the public think its ok for one friend to by an album and then copy it for all their friends. That's really the issue isn't it? not extra profits from multiple sales of the same item in different formats.
I'm certain we won't ever see anyone prosecuted for dubbing their vinyl to CD, copying their cd to ipod, doing a 45 rpm 10 inch lathe cut of a 78 cylinder. It's just not the issue at hand, and it never has been. I like free as much as the next person but I'm not blind enough to ignore the real motives behind DRM, and copyright law.
sometimes it is as simple as the obvious. music is getting stolen free for all and it is jeopardizing any possible stability in the production and distribution of music. -
The development of the compact disc was driven by the philosophy of replacement. It's been a cornerstone of the industry for decades.
and there I was as a consumer thinking it gave me a better delivery system than a 12 inch vinyl recording prone to scratching and not very portable at all. guess that's the strange thing about interpreting motives. I thought I was getting convenience which I very much did want, and all along they were just trying to make me buy the same record twice :)
until I see a leaked document that outlines the plan from the major players I think I'll keep believing however naively that a compact disc was just a more convenient to use delivery system. and it was and is, which is why we use it and look for even more convenient systems with fully digital delivery systems. that's just common sense isn't it? -
russell can you give me some more technical info on your vodafone issues as per an earlier question to you. I've no experience of the faults in their system so can't offer technical critique till someone does outline a real world example.
Cheers -
the fucking thing had copyright protection on it and wouldn't play on that or my car.
are you sure its copy protection thats stopping it being playedin your car stereo. as an engineer I deal with these issues for my work. I burn cds on some burners and they won't play in car stereos, others will.
there is no reason through copy protection that a cd should not play in a completely legitimate player if the thing is working correctly.CDs don't play in my car player because a car cd player is a fucking stupid idea. I've got terrible suspension that picks up every bump in the road and there's a spinning silver disc with a lazer pointed at it trying to read minute information off its surface. complete madness.
I can't tell without more exploration why your disc didn't play but I'd hesitate to blame it on copy protection just yet, and if it was copy protection then it was obviously a flawed and failed attempt at it which should never have hit the streets. That doesn't make the concept of trying to stem copy protection inherently evil or bad.
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russell can you give me some more technical info on your vodafone issues as per an earlier question to you. I've no experience of the faults in their system so can't offer technical critique till someone does outline a real world example.
CheersAll their tunes come with Windows Media DRM, which imposes various rules on their use, requires online authorisation for them to be moved to another device, and most of all doesn't work on a Mac.
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Selling people the things they thought they already owned is a cornerstone of the industry
what do you mean by cornerstone.
are you implying music labels in general get into the business of making and releasing music because they want to sell people a product they already own? you're an ex label owner, was that on your label plan when you started it or at any stage in your career did you think, better develop this theme of ripping off the consumer more so I can make some high quality dosh. not wanting to speak for you but I'm guessing no, not ever and I think its reasonable to assume that's not really a driving force in any music makers philosophy. saying its a cornerstone of the industry is just misleading and scare mongering no matter what some wanna be authority scribe on the industry wries in his book. Its just not what happens out there.disc do get re released on cd, I've even done it myself. I have no objection to original owners copying there legally purchased cassettes onto disc, or the can get a remastered disc with extended artwork and extra tracks off me. no skin off my nose. I'm not ever thinking "yay, got to wads of cash for the same song" and I don't expect anyone else is either. remastered re releases have value, or else we'd do it ourselves.
what does minorly bug me is reissues that come out 3-4 times each time with something interestingly different on it, but again, I don't necessarily think some evil genius was sitting there with all the content and planned 4 releases to make someone buy it multiple times. its more likely technology and time produced different versions, with unknown new material coming to light. Having done a great swag of that stuff recently I can tell you first hand this is exactly how it happens. people bring to the surface material long since lost and forgotten just as I've put the finishing touches on a comprehensive collection. no evil intent or conspiracy involved, and guess what I often send out updated versions free of charge to those who were early purchasers.I feel ripped off again as I'd quite like to play it in the car..legally...but I can't.
i pod, itrip, solved. why would you want to turn a 3 meg file into a 30 meg file on cd, and think of the damage you are doing to the environment by wasting another shiny disc on connecting you computer to your car. the shame.
People hate the music industry but love the music.
That's weird you should voice that opinion from your perspective cos I've always seen you as an example of a decent bloke who most definitely is the industry, you were hanging with all those major label people, reading books and admiring the whole game of it all, yet you're not evil in the slightest, you're an intelligent person with a massive streak of integrity, who is the thing you point the evil finger at (how bizzare, major label connections and friends etc)
I think people hate the industry because of mis information or misguided frustration. maybe the industry is made up of a lot of people just like you, and some complete fuckwit accountant types granted too, I've met a few of them, too. un educated tasteless pricks they might be but they're not devising a system to sell me 2 copies of the same product, they're trying to find other products they think my neighbours 16 year old kid will part dosh for. That's the easy money out there if that's what they're in it for.
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are you sure its copy protection thats stopping it being playedin your car stereo. as an engineer I deal with these issues for my work. I burn cds on some burners and they won't play in car stereos, others will.
there is no reason through copy protection that a cd should not play in a completely legitimate player if the thing is working correctly.
Happy to help here ...
The so-called Cactus Data Shield technology was used on music CDs by EMI and BMG. It was intended to prevent any form of copying, including ripping to MP3. But:
Unfortunately, some copy-protected audio CDs have the nasty side effect of not playing at all on some car CD players, DVD players, Apple Macintosh computers, or videogame consoles capable of playing music disks, like Microsoft's Xbox or Sony's PlayStation 2.
EMI were bullshitting that they'd completely phase out real CDs (the Cactus discs weren't red book compliant) and only release in CDS format. Before long, of course, they remembered that they actually needed customers to pay them money ...
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All their tunes come with Windows Media DRM, which imposes various rules on their use, requires online authorisation for them to be moved to another device, and most of all doesn't work on a Mac.
thanks for that clarification Russell.
so essentially you are trying to run your 91 octane car on diesel.
your pissed cos your marginal platform (the same one I use) isn't supported by this retailer.
is the material you're wanting to purchase available at other outlets, ie itunes? cos if it is then I can't see its a problem. just buy it there, and let vodafone ignore a section of the market for now.
I can't see that its a drm problem so much as a platform problem. you're hatin' the wrong target. in away mac should step up to the plate with a player that plays windows media drm. its not the drm that's at fault. -
Before long, of course, they remembered that they actually needed customers to pay them money ...
or,before long they actually realised that their technical experts had fucked up and that they needed to fix the problem by either getting copy protection that works and doesn't fuck the whole thing up. I'm not reading that as an evil marketing strategy by EMI, its just a fuck up, a mistake. why would anyone reasonably think its cool to sell a product that doesn't play on legitimate devices.
simon has a legitimate reason under the consumer guarantees act to return his purchase for a fully functioning one, or seek a refund. there are perfectly good laws already in effect to back him up on that one. no conspiracy or hatin' necessary.
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Bit of real technical stuff for you here.
A "conventional" CD player, as envisaged when the format was launched, runs the laser past the music in real time, extracts a stream of bits and plays that as sound. Bumps and scratches either interrupt the stream (bad) or move the head back so that it skips (worse).
A computer spins the disk as fast as it can and reads the data into memory, then plays it. Most car CD players do the same thing in order to deal with the bumpiness problem.
CD copy protection schemes faffed with the format in a way that worked on a conventional player, but failed on a digital device. This wasn't that effective, because people wrote better copy software, or just downloaded an unprotected copy instead of buying the CD.
Plus, robbery, copy protected CDs have a warning on them to the effect that they won't play on a computer. So anyone buying them has been warned (they are more or less extinct nowadays).
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Most car CD players do the same thing in order to deal with the bumpiness problem.
I wish. My piece of shit cd player which isn't that old or shitty, doesn't appear to have any such clever trickery going on, it jumps on any and all bumps (and unfortunately in chch thats most roads on this gloriously flat city) but only on some bad cdr burns. pressed cds tend to work better. I actually like having that piece of shit player cos it tells me when a new cdr device is crap.
what you're describing is buffering audio and mny players do do this, walkman disc players do from 10 to 30 seconds and if regular play is interrupted for longer than that you get a drop out. its still an average solution to a stupid idea. its still a spinning disc being read by a laser. about as dumb as those oldsound burger turntables that you could allegedly walk down the street with.
as you say though cd copy protection is mostly abandoned, cos it was a reasonably idea implemented appallingly. a PR catastrophy.
They could however have installed something similar to the serial copy management system that used to be on consumer model DAT players. you get one copy and that copy had COPY written into it, and machines won't copy the copy. that would be a clever system to aspire to, but who am I to give the experts ideas.
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simon has a legitimate reason under the consumer guarantees act to return his purchase for a fully functioning one, or seek a refund. there are perfectly good laws already in effect to back him up on that one. no conspiracy or hatin' necessary.
Just checking to find out where I should return the CD I bought in HMV in Singapore after I tried to play it in Indonesia?
The problem with all your arguments Rob are that long ago most consumers would have said fuck this and moved on. You don't make people respect the copyright and the producer by making them feel ripped off. And they do. DRM and all it implies is a part of that. It's helping to kill the sales of music by adding to a perception, rightly or wrongly, that there is a nasty con going on.
That's weird you should voice that opinion from your perspective cos I've always seen you as an example of a decent bloke who most definitely is the industry, you were hanging with all those major label people, reading books and admiring the whole game of it all, yet you're not evil in the slightest
thanks for that Rob. However, there is a fairly clear delineation between many indies and the majors, and it's a delineation that does not make any party 'evil' as such.
Like many independent labels I primarily started releasing records because of what was contained on them...the music. That was the main driving force behind the, often insane, desire to make records in any formats.
The large record companies, call them what they will do not, and have never, existed because of that driving force. They exist to sell units and maximise profits for whoever are their shareholders. The major record companies are all heirs to the companies set up by Emile Berliner, Jack Warner and Thomas Edison to ruthlessly make as much money as possible by selling as many units of their product as they could. It's simply about units.
Is that evil? No more so than Heinz selling Baked Beans. That is what they do and they have done it well. Part of that evolved in new format launches...the LP in 1948 and the 45 in the fifties and the CD in the early 80s. In each case they were often able to resell the same item to the same people several times for roughly the same purpose, but research in the 1970s indicated that there was a huge audience, post war, baby boomers and the like who were likley to want to upgrade their youthful memories to a new format. It was a massive market waiting to happen and huge sums were spent by a variety of companies before Philips and Sony worked out the compact disc. And much political wrangling too as the potential profits were enormous. EMI was the last on board as they had a tie in with Toshiba who were looking at an alternative. The plan was to kill the vinyl market overnight and then use the new players as a lever to resell all that pre-CD stuff to the same folks that had already bought it. And it largely worked.
Do I think that was evil...not at all. It was just the big companies maximising their return to shareholders. But it was a conscious business decision as is digial right now. It just ain't working out quite as well. Album sales down another 11% this year on last I see....the perception of DRM plays a role in that decline.
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The plan was to kill the vinyl market overnight and then use the new players as a lever to resell all that pre-CD stuff to the same folks that had already bought it. And it largely worked.
and it would have worked too if it hadn't been for those pesky kids, and timmy the dog of course.
That's all very dramatic and exciting but it's at the very least an overstatement of the importance of this 'plan' in the big scheme of things. surely there's some leaked secret memo to prove the existence of this conspiracy to trick the public into buying that which they already owned?
But really, sure they've got some shitty old elvis recordings they can remaster and sell off at budget prices but that's hardly a business plan for the future or likely to be any labels prime strategy.
remember that the market for the dark side of reissues is largely people who have slowed their buying habits cos they're old and past their impulsive prime.
new buyers, well they don't own old formats anyway so there's no double dipping with them so the "double selling evil crime" of the majors really isn't that clever or spectacular if it ever was a conscious plan instead of some rock critics manipulation of past events to paint a good story. Some official record company documents outlining said plan will of course prove it once and for all.
Is that evil? No more so than Heinz selling Baked Beans.
Thats how I see it, but with one difference, there are probably more people involved in music that love it than there are heinz people tat love beans, and definitely more music motivated indies than beans motivated canned goods enthusiasts.
I'm hungry, might have can of the god stuff -
That's all very dramatic and exciting but it's at the very least an overstatement of the importance of this 'plan' in the big scheme of things. surely there's some leaked secret memo to prove the existence of this conspiracy to trick the public into buying that which they already owned?
Why would Sony and Philips put so much money into replacing what was still a viable format selling in the millions? After all Philips owned one of the world's biggest record companies.
There is a fantastic book the name of which escapes me, which is definitive on this, and indeed on the machinations of the record industry over the last century, which goes into it in some detail. But it wasn't a top secret 'memo' sort of thing..it was much discussed at the time and goes far far beyond a few Elvis albums and reissues..you work out what percentage of Dark Side of The Moon, Abbey Rd, Led Zep etc's total sales were made on CD in the late 80s / early 90s, as people upgraded their albums..it's very high and it was a clear planned marketing strategy. As was the planned move to digital. The irony is that most people can't tell the difference between a vinyl copy and a CD copy soundwise but we were all told about the audio quality such. It was hugely successful over almost two decades, beyond the label's wildest dreams, even before CD players arrived in cars in any numbers, but that gave it another boost.
There was some discussion amongst the majors about moving the format to a DVD version but it was quickly realised that the public would likely not fall for it as a CD and a DVD look the same.
I'm suprised you are questioning any of this, it's not really obscure information
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I'm suprised you are questioning any of this, it's not really obscure information
I'm disputing it cos it implies that some shady group of suits got together and decided to make the medium of CDs cos they were bored with making new album on vinyl, instead of the much simpler explanation that it was designed because it was a better delivery medium. its an exact copy of a digital master on a smaller disputably more resilient shiny disc. I love vinyl, its size, artwork, and sound but CD was a step forward. Digital files will also be a step foraward once they get the bit rate up, and copy protecting them isn't motivated by record companies wanting to make sure every last one of us buys their full collection to date again, its motivated by trying to stop the wholesale theft of music and thus the demise of a viable support structure to the production of music.
its common sense, regardless of what picture some academic wishes to paint over the top of the events of history.
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and why that's relevant is because people use stories like "the philosophy of replacement" to justify theft to themselves, and by theft I mean copying discs they don't already own, not transferring stuff they do own t a new medium.
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its common sense, regardless of what picture some academic wishes to paint over the top of the events of history.
Hardly an academic wish, Rob...go and track down just about any issue of Music Week, Billboard or Cashbox from the era (I subscribed to the last of those) the replacement philosophy was widely discussed in all of those. It was a business decision and openly advanced as a primary benefit of a move to a new format.
Whether copy protection will ever be implemented successfully we will have to wait and see, but I suggest that regardless of that, the hamfisted way it's been implemented, and the record industries other responses to file sharing to date will be regarded as key factors in the collapse of the recording industry in the 2000s.
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do you not give any weight to the possibility that a CD is just a better delivery medium regardless of the side benefits it may have had for 'replacement'.
sometimes a rock is just a rock.
there may well have been fringe benefits to putting forward a new format but the crux of the issue is that CD was an advance for the consumer, not merely and advance for some scheming money men.
MP3 is an advance for the consumer, but its an advance left un checked that may well destroy the industry it is attached to.
and you're right, all these factors will be regarded in hindsight as key factors, but the reality may well be that even though they are painted in a sinister light they weren't sinister in intent, but the fact that some people chose to portray them as sinister maybe be the clinching factor in the whole thing. History isn't necessarily the truth, its how the loudest speaker chooses to portray it.have you seen american gangster yet?
a compelling 'true' story until you read up on it and find that the main protagonist made most of it up. but it's a hollywood movie now and will most likely be seen as the truth purely because most people will take it at face value, as the story that the loudest speaker chose to write it regardless of what actually happened. -
Of course it's a better delivery medium but the simple fact is that one of the main driving forces behind the CD was the fact that vast amounts of money was to be made getting folks to replace items they already owned.
Taking your last argument even further, there would have had to have been a weird grand conspiracy amongst all the music industry media, all major label heads and a whole lot more, to talk about this for years prior to, and after the CD release. I was in a CD briefing held by the labels before NZ CD launch and this was touted then as one of it's key benefits..and retailers were told to pitch it that way. It was no great secret and was a cornerstone of the CD's evolution.
It's an inarguable fact and to be honest, I've never heard it questioned before. It's not ominous or secret, it was an established open philosophy.
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its an exact copy of a digital master
Maybe when CD came out.
Today I believe the state of the art for digital studio stuff is 96kHz sample rate with 24 bit samples, right? CD is nowhere near that (44kHz, 16 bit samples).
Dogs can hear the difference...
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Maybe when CD came out.
yes, when the cd first started its reign.
not now though as you note.
minimum 24 bit and up to 192khz which is based on the 48khz standard. 4 x 48 = 192.
I personally think a conversion to a multiple of 44 from a multiple of 48 is more damaging than a few extra samples so I stick to 44/88/176 units and 24 bit.
The actual difference between higher sample rates and what you get on cd is nowhere near the difference between cd and mp3 and consumers don't seem to care much about that.
HD audio discs have been available for a while but realistically you need to be in a scientifically designed state of the art room with state of the art audio equipment listening intently to the music to really reap the benefits of those advances in quality and lets face it who's got the time in the modern world to do that for long.mastering technology has also increased the definition you can get out of the old 44/16 cd so newly mastered cds can sound better and more detailed than ones form the mid eighties.
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It's an inarguable fact and to be honest, I've never heard it questioned before.
ok I'm not questioning it was 'an' issue/feature/factor in format change, I'm challenging the notion that it was THE factor, or even a driving force. logic and reason says it was a by product that was favourable to the industry. This is backed up by the fact that no one got prosecuted for dubbing their vinyl onto cd when that all became possible in the mid 90's. surely if the labels were hell bent on getting 2 x the revenue out of one product they'd have plugged and policed that a little. It was a nice little side benefit from an advance in technology, not the reason for advancing technology.
Labels keeping prices artificially high after the initial costs of production had dropped back has more traction but even that story has another side to it.
its true that for mega sellers that the high cost of cds was not justified but for most of the joe average sellers it was pretty much right. does Heinz drop the price of one line of its beans because its making so many that unit costs drop, or does it price it according to what everyone else is charging?Its just another way to demonise the whole industry on the basis of a few instances, and there by justify the disgruntled punters stand point and their argument for justifying stealing.
Were you charging way to much for any of your releases apart from the one mega hit. did you get rich quick off anything apart from that one release? I'm guessing not since I haven't received my invite to say on your luxury yacht ancored off the coast of bali.
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Hardly an academic wish, Rob...go and track down just about any issue of Music Week, Billboard or Cashbox from the era (I subscribed to the last of those) the replacement philosophy was widely discussed in all of those
yeah I get that point and they can widely discuss it all they like in the media but you and I worked in that industry and it was never a guiding factor for us, and in my case for any of the people I came across in the industry. Nobody I know embraced the change to cd cos they thought they could sell back catalogue,
That's personal experience versus academic conjecture. I always go on what I know versus what someone else tells me they know about me.
I'd go as far as to speak for Trevor Reekie, and Roger Sheherd on that as well. Those guys were all thinking about the next new record they could make, never the old one they could re release.Infact it kind of had a cringe factor to it because it was hard enough to sell the first 1000 pressing of the disc and now you'd have to try and sell a minimum cd run knowing full well that many who bought on vinyl wouldn't buy it on cd. A large part of your argument is that labels like to sell back catalogue because the project cost is cheaper because they've already paid for the recording, which is one portion of the cost of production, a big one but not the only one. the other factors involved in any release and still a cost in a cd re release are artwork which has to be modified for CD, mastering for cd and production of said cd, a lot of the same costs for the original.
It's still not free money, or anywhere near it. -
No Rob, it was a key driving factor in the development of the CD. It helped justify the huge costs involved and it worked a treat. It's been the subject of so much discussion over the years, I'm surprised you feel able to argue it.
This is backed up by the fact that no one got prosecuted for dubbing their vinyl onto cd when that all became possible in the mid 90's. surely if the labels were hell bent on getting 2 x the revenue out of one product they'd have plugged and policed that a little.
Are you serious? Do you think the odd fan digitising their vinyl really comes within a squillionth of the vast profits made by re-selling punters their albums on CD. It was a complete non-issue. But as you may recall home taping, which was so very much bigger, was a huge issue, as was the resistance of record companies to the cheap availability of CD-Rs.
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I'd go as far as to speak for Trevor Reekie, and Roger Sheherd on that as well. Those guys were all thinking about the next new record they could make, never the old one they could re release.
You are confusing indies and majors again but I'd be suprised if either of those two would disgree that replacement was a key driving force behind the CD's development and acceptance by the record industry.
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