A lot of this discussion is around the RIAA and its relationship to digital music. But there is a huge amount of non-RIAA music available on Amazon MP3, often for less than 99 cents a track or $9.99 an album. While independant label sales are still dwarfed by RIAA sales, sources like music blogs and commercial placements are spreading the word. All the music I buy these days are from independant labels; its not even a concious choice, its just the music I like. I would go so far as to advocate a boycott on all music from RIAA sources; one can use this site to see if an album is from an RIAA-affiliated label: http://www.riaaradar.com/
“…while the majority of Apple’s iTunes Store catalog is still stuck in the old testament world of DRM customer punishment…”
Owie! Paraphrasing Terry Jones from my son’s graduation ceremony last week: always try to offend the most people possible.
About the only thing you could do to make that line even better would be to throw in an insult at the Linux crowd.
I live in Belgium, so no Amazon MP3 for me.
Why is it not available ? Well I guess Apple could make a justice case here that the music labels are giving an unfair advantage (no DRM/higher bitrates) to Amazon compared to Apple.
Why are the rules different ?
The music company should have a fixed price independent on what music retailer is selling it. The retailer can calculate some profit margin to pay for the distribution costs and make some money. But in the end, the RULES should be the same.
Even if the rules would be the same, the prices can still be different. People would chose based on ease of use and speed of download.
If Apple decides on the price that they want to pay to the music labels, I can understand that the music industry is not happy with it. It should be the other way around. But that happens when the music industry was trying 100 types of different DRM sites that offered horible end user experience - not taking into account that in the end its the buyers who decides if they charge the right price or not. If they insist on DRM then the price should be extremely low since we are severely limited in how we can use it.
I used to have my favourite music shops to buy vinyl or CD’s, my choice was based on proximity, price and availability of Scandinavian Heavy Metal. Now I’m left with no choice at all since I’m living in the wrong country (although, for other things but music it is quite OK to live here).
Cheers!
If your dumb enough to buy music from iTunes then I doubt you care or will even notice the DRM.
Re: Ben Karel
Some of us are old enough to remember the joy of having a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 when everyone was fumbling with portable CD players. I know, capacity sucked you say. But then, life is about trade-offs.
Sinan
I find itunes mostly great, but the main problem I have had is that I can’t easily share itunes library between different computers. That becomes a problem because I’m not going to buy 2 copies of each song (one for me and one for my wife).
You can authorize up to 5 computers for each iTunes account. You do need to copy the songs to each computer yourself (you can’t download them from Apple without buying them again), but that’s not very hard if they’re all on the same network (or both have an internet connection).
“So, what’s the better techie/nerd site?”
Ars Technica?
or better yet…
Google reader? Since basically all Slashdot does is aggregate news and add in god-awful comments.
You’re not ‘buying’ an mp3 from Amazon, you’re getting a non-transferable license for ‘digital content’ which means that the doctrine of first sale doesn’t hold ( see here for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine).
Relevant part of the Amazon agreement is below:
2.1 License. Upon your payment of our fees for Digital Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Digital Content for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to and in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. You may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use.
2.2 Restrictions. You represent, warrant and agree that you will use the Service only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use and not for any redistribution of the Digital Content or other use restricted in this Section 2.2. You agree not to infringe the rights of the Digital Content’s copyright owners and to comply with all applicable laws in your use of the Digital Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you agree that you will not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer or use the Digital Content. You are not granted any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Digital Content. You acknowledge that the Digital Content embodies the intellectual property of a third party and is protected by law.
Jeff:
AFAICT, we agree on the most important things:
"It’s delightful that for the moment, we have a choice of where to buy DRM-free music. It’s wonderful that today, we can legally purchase the right to listen to a lot of major label music on DRM-free MP3s…
Buy what you like, where you like."
Although you don’t address the issue, don’t you agree that it is in our best interests for iTMS to be able to offer all of its catalog in DRM-free format and to offer said catalog at the same price as Amazon or anyone else?
Why does everyone think the iPod was the first major MP3 player? I had a Creative Labs Zen Jukebox 20 GB player at least three years before the iPod came out.
The iPod was not the first! What was so revolutionary about the iPod?!?
I personally still prefer buying the old-school cds and ripping mp3s to my computer. I still have some cd players around that don’t play mp3 (like my car), and I like listening to music in my car 
The space/content value of cds is really low these days, but I don’t often have DRM issues with those.
I’m also in the eMusic + Amazon mp3 camp. I like eMusic because it’s inexpensive and lets me explore a wide variety of new music. And while eMusic is a subscription service, I don’t lose my music if I unsubscribe. I try to clear the stuff I get from Amazon with the RIAA Radar because I just can not in good conscience give my money to the blood thirsty RIAA. With eMusic, I generally don’t worry about it, as their focus is on independent labels.
If I can’t find what I want on either of those sites, I might go to my local record shop and pick it up. Otherwise I just won’t buy it. I did get a couple of free iTunes songs with some concert tickets I bought the other day, so in that case I’ll use the iTMS, but otherwise not.
With respect to the price fixing argument:
“But clearly, they can’t. There are certain market realities at work here. There’s absolutely no historical evidence that a type of media, once it is officially sold DRM free, can somehow revert back to the DRM model.”
I really don’t think the labels need to go back to DRM to fix the prices. Look at what they did with CDs in the 1990s (http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/aug/aug08a_00.html). That was well before Sony was putting rootkits on their CDs. The battle between the labels and Apple’s iTMS is more between content and access to consumers. When the labels have options on how they can sell (or resell) their content to consumers, they pretty much name their price. The extensions of terms of copyright and other laws that the labels buy from our government let them ignore their customers completely. If they own the the copyright, they control the supply. You can’t easily substitute a copy of The Beatles White Album with a Backstreet Boys record. You could buy a used copy of it (on CD), but that’s about your only option other than paying what the labels demand. Digital music provides an even better opportunity for price fixing.
- You can not buy used digital music.
- Big retailers who can afford to sell music at a loss ($10 CD at Best Buy) will not be bringing you into a store where they can sell you other things at a higher price to make up for it.
Once the labels solve the “access to consumers” problem, they will charge whatever they want. Consumers will have the choice to:
- Pay the label’s demand.
- Steal it.
- Go without.
Then the labels just need to figure out how to get us all to rebuy our music collections every couple of decades (or more frequently - subscriptions!!).
By the way, folks in the UK may chuckle at your use of the word ‘boner’…don’t forget internationalisation issues affect slang too!
This is no longer blog about programming, but an advertising campaign for Amazon. The battery charger, GPS, programming books, music…what is coming next? Buy buy buy, each post like a new episode of a shopping channel…
It’s actually much simpler than this:
the record labels realized that the DRM
they asked for from Apple wasn’t protecting
them or the artists at all, but in fact,
protecting the Apple iPod lock-in model.
The labels had no choice but to permanently
destroy DRM to regain distribution control
of their own music.
Sure, the customers benefit in the short term. But don’t count on it for long. The record labels have lost control of their own content and know it. They badly need competition for ITMS to gain leverage in negotiations with Apple. Badly enough that they are willing to take a hit in the short term to reestablish that control.
Certainly iPod lock-in was part of the motivation for going DRM-free with Amazon. But only so far as establishing the largest possible customer base for the competing store. After all, lower prices alone wasn’t going to get another store up to ITMS size anytime soon.
I fully expect that once the Amazon store has taken root, the record labels will back in the drivers seat. At that point Amazon will be dependent on the revenue, Jobs will be in a weaker negotiating position, and the terms of the deals from the labels will change.
And then the customers will suffer, again.
Simon, I think you have jumped the gun here. Jeff’s article is right on target. Last time I checked, I was a consumer. I have stayed away from mp3s for some time now due to DRM. iPod has turned the tide against the DMA and RIAA. DMA and RIAA sought to punish those of us sharing what we PAID for in the first place. Now that iPod does this kind of business, it cuts into theirs. They don’t want money now near as much as they want control. If THEY have control, they can have the money…without sharing with Steve Jobs. Without competition, only on entity is control. Someone recently retired (and became a philanthropist) who operated an entire market for years doing the same thing…staying in control. Jeff didn’t jump the shark.
I think this is the part of your blog that Reginald should be printing and pinning to his cubicle wall:
“But let me tell you, I’ve been emotionally involved with companies before, and it rarely ends well. I find that corporations never reciprocate your love in quite the same way.”
@Joe Beam…
There is no reason to call someone dumb for buying music from iTunes. iTunes works well with the iPod (not a coincidence). Apple has a great marketing department and some awesome designers that sold a product to a wide market. I seriously doubt they care much about what a handful of software programmers think.
I, for one, like the simplicity of just clicking to buy a song, syncing it to my iPod and enjoying the music. I’d say I’ve probably spent a few grand on music in the past 4 years. But, I am also a working bassist that plays session gigs, so I try to support the industry by purchasing music. I realize most of the royalties go to the label for a long time, but dollar votes for the artist keep me working.
Besides, I deal with craptastic processes at work, I just want something that works, and for my needs, iPod and iTunes is the solution.
just my $0.02
Gunther:
Hey thanks, I can always use a little help detaching myself from the situation. For example, here’s something I wrote when I was all worked up into a frothing, ranting lather:
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html
Jeff- why is it that every one of your postings come across as some kind of commercialized pitched for the product of the week? Do you get paid to punt this junk? Furthermore, what does any of this have to do with software development?