Supporting DRM-Free Music

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Regarding AAC:

"Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at many bit-rates.

"AAC’s best known use is as the default audio format of Apple’s iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and the format used for all iTunes Store audio (with extensions for proprietary digital rights management).

"AAC is also the standard audio format for Sony’s PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Wii (with the Photo Channel 1.1 update installed for Wii consoles purchased before late 2007) and the MPEG-4 video standard. HE-AAC is part of digital radio standards like DAB+ and Digital Radio Mondiale.

"It is specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard, and Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard. As such, it can be referred to as MPEG-2 Part 7 and MPEG-4 Part 3 depending on its implementation, however it is most often referred to as MPEG-4 AAC, or AAC for short…

"No licenses or payments are required to be able to stream or distribute content in AAC format. [8] This reason alone makes AAC a much more attractive format to distribute content than MP3, particularly for streaming content (such as Internet radio).

"However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs, that require encoding or decoding.[9] It is for this reason FOSS implementations such as FAAC and FAAD are distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement.

“AAC uses proprietary technology, and thus requires a patent license. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the property of a single company, having been developed in a standards-making organization.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

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Don’t forget, bloggers like Jeff now rely on important income from traffic. The world of ‘columnists’ and bloggers changed for me the day I read that Dvorak admits he purposely draws controversy by posting outrageous and flame-baiting-like comments to drive traffic.

Today, with the likes of Digg, all you need is to post a few outrageous statements and voila, car payment taken care of.

While everyone has their opinion, I wouldn’t have thought that Jeff would have taken a swipe at Slashdot. Personally, I think it is one of the best sites on the Internet. I totally agree that there are a lot of ‘out of touch’ people on Slashdot, but to assume because of one post way back (hell, I would have written Apple off years ago too), that everyone on Slashdot is out-of-touch.

I find the article comments on Slashdot (while noisy) to be some of the most informative posts out there. You get an amazing field of reference (along with the Microsoft==evil ones I weed out).

It’s not anything like Digg where 25% of the content is interesting, the rest falls into “Man Swallows Whole Watermelon” articles. But again, Digg is for the masses.

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Just because you mentioned that you were an audiophile, I thought I’d throw out http://HDTracks.com (disclosure, I’ve done some consulting for them). Their catalog is independent labels only, but lots of Jazz stuff that appeals to audiophiles. They do lossless FLAC, AIFF, and 320kbps MP3, all DRM free. Plus they are getting ready to release downloadable 96-khz/24-bit FLAC soon.

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That the big music distro companies can sue Napster into submission, can build up iTMS when it makes business sense only to tear it down by building up a competitor that makes better business sense underscores the excessive power of the distro companies (not to mention the killing of kittehs and puppehs :wink: ).

It would not surprise me at all if Apple, innovative as they are, begins to develop (or help develop) and promote a music distribution system or culture that elimiates the distro companies entirely. IMO, the music distro companies don’t promote musical artisanship in general, only musical artisans that are commercially viable. Nor do they add value, but instead add gloss to otherwise crappy music.

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Just a quick item about your initial point: techies rarely ‘call’ the markets correctly because they like to apply order and logic to a chaotic mass of irrational behavior. People don’t buy the best thing, they buy the one their friend’s want. It’s always a mistake to assume that has rhyme or reason.

Also, if someone did manage to rationally sort out what the markets want, then their process of doing that will be used by many others, up and until the point where there are so many people influencing the market, that the market would be chaotic and irrational. Or in short: anything that works, insures that eventually it won’t.

Paul.
http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com

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Then there are the super rich artists who occasionally offer things up for free outside of iTunes and Amazon:

http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup

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w/e… I’m still going to buy my vinyl and rip it myself @320 bit. You can keep your DRM or non-DRM non-media and I’ll have my original artwork.

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Jeff, I think there is clearly one example of reverting from DRM-free to DRM. That would be the selling of music online verses CDs. Because consumers don’t care that they can get a higher quality unencumbered format. When the 89/99c equivalent is twice as easy to get an carry around.

Once they have us in the position they want us it’s going to be like the current Blu-ray problem. Toshiba brought competition to keep the prices. But once they walked away from HD-DVD, how much is a blu-ray player costing now verses 9 months ago.

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I agree with the main thrust of your argument. Regarding the CmdrTaco quote, though: he was right IN THE CONTEXT of the slashdot audience. Not only that, he’s STILL right in that context. I’m part of the core /. constituency - a consummate geek. And while I can understand the design and marketing brilliance that went into the iPod; while I would probably instantly recommend the iPod to any nontechnical friends or family who asked; to this day I’m uninterested in buying one. Because I’m a member of the tiny percentage of the population that actually cares about things like built-in Ogg support (yes, I have some music in ogg format). And as a gadget wizz used to dealing with funky hardware, I’m not as concerned about having the most user-friendly UI; I’m more interested in the storage-to-price ratio. It’s the same reason I’m still using the resoundingly awful Treo despite the availability of the iPhone - I want that iPhone interface soooo bad; but there are still things I’m accustomed to my Treo doing that the iPhone simply can’t do yet.

If you interpret the quote as an absolute value judgment then it’s laughable. But interpreted in the light of the /. audience - the iPod is still lame. Just lame in a ways that average consumers are unconcerned with.

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@wayne

sorry didn’t mean to call u dumb. I’ll change my statement to this…

If your going to buy music from iTunes then I doubt you care or will even notice the DRM.

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I’ve heard that the Zune Marketplace also has DRM-free MP3s if you buy them individually.

Can anyone confirm that?

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Yes, a subset of the Zune Marketplace catalog has MP3 versions available for purchase. If MP3 is available, it does not offer the WMA version for purchase (though it may still have a WMA version for use with subscription).

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Apple iPod was (as iPhone is now) a mediocre product targeting technologically challenged people. Its success was based not on any inherent quality of the player per se, but on the integration of the whole process from ‘damn, i like this song’ to ‘here it is’ into several clicks in iTunes.
At the time of its launch geeks were ripping, compressing burning their music for a long time and I see nothing shortsighted in Malda’s comment - it is a case of a geek dismissing an overpriced, dumbed down, locked product that does nothing revolutionary. There were better options (in terms of bang per buck) on the market then, as there are now.
It might look laughable from a businessman point of view (i.e. a silly geek not recognizing what would become a cash cow) , but then, we don’t talk or care about that aspect here, do we?

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Too bad the friendly record labels haven’t yet opened Amazon mp3 store outside US. And usually when they do, the ten dollar prices automatically change to ten euro prices which sort of pisses me off.
(1 Euro = 1.53900 U.S. dollars)

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How about the Russian mp3 sites (e.g., www.mp3fiesta.com) - no DRM and about a tenth the price of iTunes.

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I can buy a track from the iTunes store and legally share it with a couple of my friends

True, as long as each of your friends is on the same local network and all running iTunes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Library_sharing

You don’t mention (although commenters do) that Apple sells DRM free music on the iTMS

I did sort of mention this in the sentence containing “the majority of Apple’s iTunes Store catalog”, but I was glossing over it because I didn’t realize Plus was a significant portion of the music catalog – 2 million out of “more than 6 million” tracks, so a little less than 1/3. My error. I updated the post.

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Can I buy songs from Amazon in MY country? No! Since when does music care about borders? Don’t be too happy, we have a long way to go still, until we just buy our songs from the artists themselves we are not done.

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You nailed it, Jeff. Apple’s DRM, despite its warm fuzzy name, is still DRM, and it’s still stung me. I recently migrated over to linux, something I’ve tried doing about a half dozen times in the past but just couldn’t make the leap as I found the various environments unusable (from a UX perspective). It drove me nuts. Then Ubuntu 7.10 came along and randomly hugged me and lightly stroked the back of my neck and then got me drunk and we made out and we’ve been lovers ever since.

However, in the process, I failed to realise (until I loaded up Rhythmbox for the first time) that the 150$ worth of apple DRM’ed music was suddenly 600MB of unusable digital files that are just taking up space. I’ve no recourse, I can’t transfer ownership of the files to somebody else (like my wife), and I can’t “return it”. I’m stuck. All because I simply wanted to change my operating system. Why should my choice of an (ironically free) operating system have to cost me 150$ in literally lost product? Brutal.

www.insound.com now offers several digital downloads, DRM free, but they don’t have the expansive catalog of Amazon. I can’t wait for the day when Amazon’s music store hits Canada.

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Jeff: I’m not sure the “typical music customer” gives a damn about DRM - notice ITMS’ popularity. Most people just aren’t as scared of DRM as the internet mavens are.

Serge said: “The problem with ITMS’ DRM is that it’s not aimed at protecting authors (and labels) but rather aimed at helping Apple sell more iPods!”

Do you have any evidence to back that up at all? How do you explain Jobs adding DRM-free music to ITMS Ithe very moment the label in question let him/i? If the “aim” was to lock users in to iPods, why would he ever, ever do that? (Answer: He would not. Ever.)

The iPod succeeds by being superior in interface and aesthetics, and competitive enough on price and features - not by some insidious lock-in… especially since there exists third-party software to convert, using iTunes, DRM’d AAC to non-DRM AAC, which Apple could probably stop for a good long time with some aggressive programming tactics, but hasn’t bothered to.

Catweazle: Since the Russian sites don’t have proper licenses to give you, that’s basically “paying someone to steal the music”; I’d rather just steal it directly, if I was going to that.

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Jeff, you really don’t understand the point Rob Malda was trying to make, AT ALL.

Let me give you an example:

  • I have a sony MP3 player.
  • I use WinAmp for playing mp3’s
  • in my home, I use either my mp3 player hooked up to my stereo or my ps3 to play mp3s.
  • I really like scandinavian metal music.

Now, let’s go back to your article. You’re basicly saying that if I say DRM and Apple’s business practises suck bigtime, I’m stupid, because I should just follow along and buy an iPod, use iTunes on my pc (why would I use such a horrible program to play a random audio file?) and buy a mac mini to play the mp3s in my home? Oh, and because Apple until recently didn’t share my taste in music, I couldn’t purchase the music I wanted to purchase in their store.

DRM sucks. As simple as that. With my MP3 player I received a free cd in downloads from Sony. However, the mp3’s are only playable by the horrific mp3 player software of sony or the mp3 player, not winamp. If I am on my ubuntu partition, I also want to listen to the music, why can’t I do that? Didn’t I receive a LEGITIMATE LICENSE to play the music?

I simply can’t believe how shortsighted the article is you posted, Jeff. Open your eyes.