Comments on: Ministry of Truth

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:54:36 +0000

Zak: Certainly. eMusic used to provide entire bands’ and indie record labels’ catalogs on a subscription basis via un-DRMed MP3s. The labels’ theory seemed to be that Blonde Redhead and Amon Tobin could use the exposure and file trading wasn’t going to see file trading cut into their giant multiplatinum album sales because their g.m.a.s. didn’t exist. A lot of people used eMusic as a quasi-radio station, and it led to a lot of people discovering new bands; then eMusic changed the pricing model and most people I know dropped the service.

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:47:15 +0000

…And even back then they were irritated about home taping, and put forth the usual fanciful calculations about how much money it supposedly lost them.

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:40:30 +0000

…On the other side of the coin, while record companies were happy to release unprotected CDs back when it was difficult or impossible for most people to copy them, now the big guys are not happy about it at all, and are trying various harebrained schemes to copy-protect CDs, which seem to be meeting with some customer resistance. (Actually, precisely speaking, such discs are not CDs: Philips has said that it will try to enforce its trademark on the “Compact Disc” name and logo, and keep them off of these things.)

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:30:01 +0000

It’s not quite true that everything is the same on iTunes. Some tracks can only be bought as part of an album (which is how they get around the 1-hour-track-for-a-dollar problem), and some albums do cost more than others. But everything is much closer to being the same than with the other early attempts at per-track sales; the licensing restrictions on what you can do after getting the tracks are uniform (and not terribly onerous). On the other hand, they are not necessarily constant in time. Apple tweaked the rules with the last iTunes revision: if I recall correctly, they slightly decreased the number of CD burns you could get from a playlist that included purchased songs, and slightly increased the number of computers you could authorize for streaming. As for other comments above… record companies have in fact experimented with selling non-DRMed music online: emusic.com is or was a Vivendi Universal project, right? And bands have sometimes sold them directly; to use my personal favorite example, They Might Be Giants just opened an online MP3 store a few days ago that uses the Apple pricing model, but sells non-DRMed music (there’s a long spiel there about how they’re trusting the fans not to abuse it). TMBG is a band with a long-time, respectful cult following, so this model might work better for them than for others.

By: Alex R

Alex R — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:25:35 +0000

A couple extra comments: When CDs were introduced in the early 80s, of course, the Internet was called ARPANET, had only a few thousand users, and “file sharing” meant handing a manila folder to someone else in your office. Obviously, no need for DRM was seen at this point. Second, remember that once upon a time, “copy protection” was nearly universal on commercial PC software. Software was sold on floppy disks, and vendors would do stuff like hide data in non-standard locations on the disk so that standard disk copy routines could not copy them. But consumers rebelled—they couldn’t make backup copies without buying special copy software designed to get around the vendor’s tricks, they had to have the original floppy disk when running the software, and so on. Copy protection pissed off computer users enough that after a while, software vendors stopped using it. Only more recently have vendors started to try to implement registration schemes—and when Intuit, maker of the popular US income tax preparation software TurboTax, tried it, they eventually had to back down. Now maybe the recording and movie industries think that their consumers are less sophisticated than software purchasers, but the software industry provides a cautionary tale for anyone planning to add DRM.

By: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick Nielsen Hayden — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 05:56:38 +0000

“Sloppy work” No, not sloppy at all, actually.

By: Chuchundra

Chuchundra — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 04:13:51 +0000

I can go the store right now (well, not right now, it’s 11PM) and buy non-DRMed RIAA product. What’s the difference between that and downloading it? If I want to share the music I bought in CD form, the process takes less than ten minutes. Pop in the CD, run CDEX, click a button and come back a few minutes later. Voila, ready for sharing. The music industry is run by idiots.

By: Zak Catem

Zak Catem — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 03:35:04 +0000

alex: Good points, but you have to remember that newspapers and magazines make the bulk of their money from advertising, so it isn’t really the same thing. The point about CDs is important, as it draws us to the question of why record companies were happy to release their music on unprotected CDs, but not on unprotected MP3s. Obviously there’s a difference in how these media are perceived in the industry.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 03:30:25 +0000

Yep you can buy albums for between $8 and $14, usually $10. I’ve never seen songs longer than 7 or 8 minutes sold as individual tracks on iTunes. For instance on the latest Wilco album you can buy all the songs except the two 10+ minute songs as individual tracks – you only get those two if you give them $10 for the album. The Necks don’t actually have anything on iTunes, but they could easily enough do this.

By: Alex R

Alex R — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 03:28:54 +0000

Can anyone point me to a plausible scenario in which publishers like the New York Times or Dow Jones might provide their intellectual property for online distribution without some sort of DRM in place to provide some built-in assurance that their legally granted rights will be protected? (Note, by the way, that the New York Times provides the same “intellectual property” on their website for free that they sell in their paper. Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal, provides their articles only to paid subscribers, but does not protect them with any kind of “DRM”. Both the New York Times and Dow Jones, will, no doubt, take legal actions to protect their rights, as needed—and they don’t need any DRM to do so. And record companies have been happily providing their wares for years on these little silvery discs called “CDs” which, at least until recently, have lacked any form of DRM. They may complain that they aren’t selling as many of these “CDs” as they think they ought to be, but I don’t see them quitting the business—unless, that is, they can con the public into buying CD-like products that have been crippled with DRM.)

By: ben wolfson

ben wolfson — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 03:03:12 +0000

The problem with “music bought on iTunes shall be one price” is that the Necks, e.g., get screwed, since all their albums are one 1-hour track (or can you just sell the whole album, and not individual tracks? I don’t use iTunes so I dunno).

By: Zak Catem

Zak Catem — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 02:53:32 +0000

Can anyone point me to a plausible scenario in which record companies might provide their intellectual property for online distribution without some sort of DRM in place to provide some built-in assurance that their legally granted rights will be protected?

By: perianwyr

perianwyr — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 02:52:58 +0000

Matt: Apple’s biggest innovation was not their pricing structure- but you’re close. Their biggest innovation was to insist with an iron, unyielding will upon this one element: Music bought on iTunes will be of one price. Furthermore, there will be no jiggery-pokery of “no burn”, “listen 3 times”, “lasts a week”, or other bizarre licensing arrangements. Everything is the same. If you get record companies into a deal with you, what they’ll do is sit around and try to wrench every perceived dime out of the music venture. This includes effectively hanging the venture by the neck so that you can re-use the air in its metaphorical lungs. Apple was smart enough to put the kibosh on that.

By: Mike Kozlowski

Mike Kozlowski — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 02:39:11 +0000

I believe the way that paragraph makes sense is if you read it as saying “makes it easier for users to transfer DRMed files, like the ones they buy on those stupid iTunes-style stores (but especially ones rented from subscription services), to their portable devices.”

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 01:40:39 +0000

Incidentally, I think that Apple’s greatest innovation here was their pricing structure, which instantly became an industry standard for online a la carte music sales. Even some bands selling MP3s directly to fans have imitated it. It could be argued that it’s still too high, but it seems to be about right to move some product.