Warner Music Group Drops DRM for Amazon

SirLurksAlot sends us to Ars Technica for an article about the Warner Music Group's decision to allow DRM-free music downloads through Amazon. This reversal of Warner's former position has been underway for some time, and it boosts the number of DRM-free songs available from Amazon to 2.9 million. Quoting: "Warner's announcement says nothing about offering its content through other services such as iTunes, and represents the music industry's attempt to make life a bit more difficult for Apple after all the years in which the company held the keys to music's digital kingdom.

Can't argue with Amazon

I've downloaded several albums and I'm very happy with it. Odd mix of bit rates (some are about 224 kbit VBR, others are 256 kbit fixed rate), but no complaints with the music. I just wish their library was larger.

Only real complaint is that the album downloader (that allows you to get the album discount) only runs on Windows & MacOS. Write a Java client and get with the program, Amazon!

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Well, if this keeps up, you wont need to be wishing the catalog was larger for too much longer. The service hasn't been around for all that long and has been growing rather quickly.

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Yeah, this is great news. It's been terrible how Apple worked to let consumers keep some fair-use rights [like when they first put up the store, they were the only ones letting you burn purchased music to CDs]. And I doubt many songs would be priced at $

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

Only real complaint is that the album downloader (that allows you to get the album discount) only runs on Windows & MacOS.

I disagree, there are plenty of bittorrent clients for Linux as well.

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

I guess there are some RIAA types that frequent Slashdot nowadays.

Oh, those folks have been trolling Slashdot for years now... all the major labels have an "ideology neutralization response unit" comprised of pale thin men in bad suits, hunkering over keyboards for days on end, just waiting for dangerous /. posts.

Or hire someone that can..

Only real complaint is that the album downloader (that allows you to get the album discount) only runs on Windows & MacOS. Write a Java client and get with the program, Amazon!

Agreed [kallisti.net.nz]. It seems like the donationware/bounty-ware would be a great way for

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

buying proprietary music from iTunes is completely out of the question

In terms of licensing, encoding AAC audio content in an MPEG4 container is less proprietary than MP3. The only part that isn't an open standard is FairPlay, which is also the least restrictive DRM you'll find.

On another subject, it's also interesting that earlier this year Steve Jobs was whining how he wanted to sell DRM-free music, but "they" wouldn't let him. Well, Steve, Amazon is doing it. Why aren't you?

Apple started selling DRM-free music back in May, before Amazon released their big MP3 store.
Your username couldn't possibly be more ironic.

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

Jobs was publicly arguing against DRM in 2003

Actually, his public appeal was in Feb 2007. At this point EMI had already decided to experiment with DRM-free music, and Universal was planning to follow suit (as we saw later in '07). iTunes was being looked at in Europe for anti-competitive practices. A suspiciously well-timed note, don't you think?

FairPlay was the least foul DRM

Why so?

and Apple used its retail leverage to keep prices down

Doesn't add up. Prior to 2004 apple did not have leverage (iTunes sales we growing, but still not a large enough factor to give Apple leverage). And presently, while they actually have leverage, they are not the cheapest source of DRM-free music (compare the prices on iTunes and Amazon for proof).

There's plenty of pro-Microsoft wags trying to say that Amazon is hurting Apple, but MP3s are good for the iPod.

Actually, you're the first person to mention Microsoft on this thread. Anyway, the point is not whether Apple is being hurt, or Microsoft is helped. Competition among online music retailers is good for us; as their margins get squeezed, they'll keep steady pressure on the labels to lower their prices. Everybody wins (consumers) as long as neither Apple, MS, Amazon, anyone else, win outright.

The only thing bad for the iPod is Real/Windows Media/ATRAC DRM that can't play on the iPod.

'Can't play' is not accurate. Apple chooses not to support these formats (and they have their reasons). Should the competitive landscape change to a point where this lack of support hurts them, they will include the support (at least WM-DRM is easily licensed -- I don't know about ATRAC and Real). For now, it's in their interests to avoid interoperability with other DRM schemes. Case in point is the way Real would keep reverse engineering FairPlay support into Rhapsody, and Apple would keep updating iTunes and FairPlay to break Rhapsody's support. Make no mistake about it -- all players in this segment loathe interoperability, and Apple is just as guilty/innocent as anyone else of eroding Fair Use rights.

RealNetworks Reverse-Engineers Apple's FairPlay DRM Scheme [windowsitpro.com]

RealNetworks announced this morning that it has essentially reverse-engineered Apple Computer's FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme. RealNetworks' Harmony Technology will let customers load songs purchased from the RealNetworks RealPlayer Music Store onto Apple's successful but closed iPod portable audio player.

Apple refused to share the technical information RealNetworks needed to make this translation possible; Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused repeated requests from RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser. Apparently, RealNetworks got tired of waiting.

ps: did you enjoy the link? It's right out of your playbook ;)

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Google "Steve Jobs 2003 RollingStone" or read the links I provided

So I re-read the rolling stone interview. Not one anti-DRM stance in the entire article.

I'm sure you find it more convenient to repeat what you think you know.

I'm sure you find it more convenient to invent an anti-DRM stance on Job's behalf where one didn't exist.

Apple didn't owe Real's shitty DRM any handout.

Real didn't ask for one. They tried to license FairPlay (lic

Hmm

I have a sudden feeling that I'd like to buy something from Warner's catalog off Amazon.

Excellent

Since Amazon launched their MP3 store, I've been trying to pick things up there if possible, then fall back on iTunes as a secondary source -- specifically because of the lack of DRM. Good to know the selection's about to jump.

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Apple bad, record industry good?

Whooaaa, it's not even the new year yet!

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Apple bad, record industry good?

I think it's more like "Apple good, hands clue-phone to Warner Records."

Re:Excellent

I find iTunes' browsing interface to be very nice and the simple search to be faster and easier than every other music store I've tried. As for DRM, try QTFairUse - it very quickly strips DRM from protected tracks. It scans your iTunes library for protected tracks, backs them up, decodes them, and replaces them in your library and all playlists with the unprotected ones. 10-20 seconds per track and it's lossless. It also transfers the ID3 info to the new tracks, as well as album artwork. Of course there's already a lot of tracks in iTunes Plus (DRM-free mp3) which saves you the small trouble.

Re:Excellent

Oops... I guess i should put a link for those who haven't heard of it:

QTFairUse download & discussion [hymn-project.org]

Re:Excellent

Programs like QTFairUse are excellent, but they are no substitute for actually buying only DRM free music in the first place, and refusing to buy DRM encumbered tracks, period. Nothing sends a message to the music industry better.

In other words, being able to break DRM (today) is no reason to buy DRM encumbered music.

Call me when it's lossless

I still would rather buy the CD and encode losslessly (I made a new word!).

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I made a new word!

No you didn't.
Google says: Results 1 - 10 of about 120,000 for losslessly.

Not about DRM

This isn't about record companies deciding DRM is bad. It is about making sure Apple doesn't control the distribution of digital media.

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> This isn't about record companies deciding DRM is bad. It is about making sure Apple doesn't control the distribution of digital media.

So, where's the downside?

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The best part is, people will continue buying iPods regardless, and Apple's sacred cash cow will remain alive and well, except that users will complain that Amazon needs to integrate with iTunes so as to make their download experience easier.

Re:Not about DRM

When I download music from the Amazon store, it updates my iTunes library as well.

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The downloader already does that. You buy, the downloader adds the music to your iTunes library. It's very simple and easy to use, but browsing/finding music is not very much fun on Amazon, and their recommendations are way off base compared to what I'm us

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This is like in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex jumped in to fight the Raptors. Who wins? The people.

Re:Not about DRM

And it's about egos as well as controls. The music industry is used to having control over distrobution, what songs are promoted through radio play, how things get marketed, etc.. Before, the equipment to mass replicate CD's (Replication not duplication, there's a difference) was out of the reach of most. But with the internet, everything changed.

It took a technology company, with Jobs' inroads in the entertainment industry, to create a system that worked for online digital distribution. The record companies let Apple take the gamble with the hardware/software/infrastructure costs with very little risk to them. And it was successful.

Now that the record companies see that internet distribution can work, they are now back into the game of trying to regain control. Apple has been pretty tough on flat rate pricing. The record companies want to dictate price. So now we're back to egos clashing.

Not that letting Apple have a monopoly is good thing, but frankly I never minded the DRM. There is a huge "All DRM is evil" crowd here. Now there were some ways folks proposed DRM was evil, but I'm not against the concept per sue.(Rootkits come to mind), but Apple's system seem to me to be a fair balance.

I can put it on an iPod, if I owned one, a couple PC's at my house or use one as a server and stream to other machines and the .99 per track was fair. $1.29 for no DRM, if it was worth the extra money I'd pay it. To me it' not. As far as losses/lossy goes, I can't tell a difference. I'm no audiophile either, but I have enough hearing damage from loud music as it is...

Prediction

As DRM dies the fools will start using digital watermarking to sue people who leak to p2p networks. This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue. Eventually this fact will sink in among judges, but before that happens thousands of people will have been burnt, new draconian legislation will have been passed, and music sales will have fallen even more.

Following this the process of suing based on watermarks will wane, but the distributors will instead disconnect people from their websites if they find their watermarks on p2p. The result will be that those burnt ( weather guilty or not ) will migrate to filesharing.

In essence, despite the obvious fiasco that is DRM the same garbage will continue due to greed and stupidity. Really, DRM in one clothing or another has been arround for some time, it as never been successful, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. It will continue this way for quite some time still.

Re:Prediction

> As DRM dies the fools will start using digital watermarking to sue people who leak to p2p networks. This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue. Eventually this fact will sink in among judges, but before that happens thousands of people will have been burnt, new draconian legislation will have been passed, and music sales will have fallen even more.

Maybe I'm being naive here, but if I can get DRM-free, reasonably encoded music at a reasonable price, why would I want to continue sharing music on p2p networks? I mean, wasn't that the entire point?

(Disclaimer: The above was an hypothetical "I". I personally don't get music off p2p networks, mostly because the selection and price of used CDs has been sufficient for my needs.)

Re:Prediction

Maybe I'm being naive here, but if I can get DRM-free, reasonably encoded music at a reasonable price, why would I want to continue sharing music on p2p networks? I mean, wasn't that the entire point?

You missed the point, say you never ever touch a p2p network ever again, what stops the RIAA from posting the latest Britney Spears song, marking it ith YOUR watermark, and then sue you for $100.000.

Simply put, if watermakrs were to become accepted as evidence in the court of law it would allow the people who make the watermarks to frame ANYBODY WHO BUYS FROM THEM. I.e, the moment they have your credit card number you're unable to criticise them or they could frame you by uploading a bunch of music to piratebay, marking it with your details.

It only takes ONE false positive to destroy the entire watermarking scheme. One mistake, one virus, trojan or worm uploding an inncoent victim's music to the web. It takes one person to buy a song , upload it to the net, and then deny it, hand the police a clean harddrive... game over. If it happens to even one person customers will be scared of it.

The scheme is doomed to fail. Perhaps mroe so than DRM. With DRM you were risking to not be able to play your music when the vendor makes a mistake, with watermarked media you risk having your life ruined from legal fees. If they even thought about enforcing it they would kill their entire market. Yet somehow they think that "this time it will be different".

I'm a little surprised Google isn't doing much in this area yet. My guess is they are waiting for the predators to kill one another so they can feast on the remains.

Gross Fraud

Some jerk might try to pull this, but I'm pretty sure that the actual labels themselves won't do this directly. Why? Because it's a qualitative difference from what they are doing now.

Right now they are suing people with all kinds of dubious legal theories, but they're still arguably within classical law interpretation.

Outright framing individuals crosses a line into pure fraud, and if correctly proven by a defense team, will smash that label a giant penalty.

"Your honor, I'd like to call Bruce Schneier for the defense expert." :)

Friend of a Friend of a Friend...

What I'd like to be able to do is easily share a track with a few friends (not really P2P, just mail or what have you) for music I really like so they can check it out. But if music is watermarked that means if any of those friends share in turn, and someone else eventually (lets say by accident) shares the same file via P2P - you may just be liable. It still kind of introduces a chilling effect on the world of music sharing as it should be.

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I hope you like low/middle wage factory jobs, because without IP America will have to return to a manufacturing economy.

Manufacturing? No chance. China has that sewn up. Do away with the music, movies and microcode, and America's left with only the high-

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As DRM dies the fools will start using digital watermarking to sue people who leak to p2p networks.

Of course, people could simply avoid "leaking" the music to p2p networks. That would solve the problem rather easily, wouldn't it?

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Of course, people could simply avoid "leaking" the music to p2p networks. That would solve the problem rather easily, wouldn't it?

Yes, because the record industry never makes mistakes, it never sues peopel even when they have no evidence, and they have nev

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Not to nitpick terminology, but watermarking is a form of DRM. I understand that by "DRM" you mean "encrypted content" but the terms are not synonymous -- locking content with encryption is only one form of DRM.

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Watermarking is not about locking content. The idea is to embed customer details in music they sell you so they can sue you if you upload it to the net. Problem is if they do this even once people will be scared of false positives. With DRM going wrong you

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This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue.

Hmmm, that's a really good point, but there's certainly a crypto w

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I fail to see why the police, who are reasonably competent at catching criminals with only a vague physical description, should not be able to track down a car based on a similar description.

It may have something to do with the fact that cars are mass-prod

That's great, but what about the law?

It seems to be that the music industry is pulling a "new coke" method of marketing: come out with a new product that sucks (DRM-laden "music"), and then all reap the rewards when they revert back to the original (real and liberated music). This will make everyone feel like they're "sticking it to the man" by purchasing this new flavor, when in fact the industry is in fact reverting back to the old tried-and-true method.

This begs the question: what exactly can I /do/ with this music that is being sold to me without expressed limitation. Do I now have my fair-use rights back because I don't have to violate the DMCA by breaking copy protection? Or is breaking copy protection now back within my right because the industry is trashing DRM in general?

Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.

-d

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The difference is that the music industry genuinly wanted DRM to succeed. They honestly believed in the "when there's no way around it, they will buy it" theory.

That the customer (I will never agree to being reduced to a consumer) has an option didn't hit

The media companies dug themselves into a hole

> It's certainly not the outbreak of common sense this will undoubtedly being tagged as. It's simply that
> they saw their sales hurt more by pushing DRM rather than dealing with the "loss" of "only" selling us
> music once.

No, I don't think that is the reason at all. In the end they would probably have won on the take it or leave it tactics with DRM. Most people were lining up, buying iPods and giving each other iTunes gift certificates like good little consumers. No, what did it was fear and greed. Fear among the music cartels that Apple and Microsoft were about to become a duopoly and control all access to media... i.e. replace the music (and eventually movie distributors) companies as the gatekeepers. Really, once they were distributing most music it would have been a totally natural step to start signing up artists directly.... Apple already IS doing that with indy acts. So fear of being cut ALL the way out was motivating them to find a way to create enough retailers in the digital download space to avoid being marginalized.

Now consider the greed and fear at Amazon, Walmart etc. They could read the same tea leaves. Walmart with it's huge iPod display and shrinking sales in their CD dept and the uneasy reality that the Walmart online music store will NEVER be compatible with the Apple or Zune DRM scheme. I.E. every ipod or Zune sale is helping Apple and Microsoft dismantle Walmart's current huge percentage of nationwide music sales. Ditto for Amazon, selling the crap out of iPods, each one sold eating away at future content sales unless they found a way to 'kick the table over' and change the rules of the game.

Odds of convincing either His Steveness or the Borg to open up their DRM system being zero, even with the full unified might (yea, as if) of all of the media megacorps, the only way out of the hole they had dug themselves after considering the file compatibility matrix of the huge installed base of players was unencumbered mp3.

Replace...

(real and liberated music)

(real and usable music)

Try explaining why your neighbors music isn't accessible from device B. It's funny, because you can tell it's one of those technical explanations they almost would like to understand but long before the e

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Do I now have my fair-use rights back...

Did you give them up? No? Then you still have them. As long as you are willing to fight for them, they remain your rights. As soon as you abdicate this decision to the government, they become privileges.

Video too? not soon.

Quoth the article:

The entire movement to free music from DRM's shackles has had stunning success in 2007 after years in which such widespead moves to MP3 looked impossible. Could movies be next?

Unfortunately, no.

There's one reason we're seeing DRM-free music: Apple.
Every internet whiner and hazmat-suited protester put together didn't make a noticeable fraction of the impact against DRM that Apple did via their refusal to buy into Microsoft's DRM or license their own to others. They turned the labels tools to control customers into a distributor's tool to control the labels, and now the labels are caught in their own trap, and desperately thrashing and gnawing at their limbs to get away (by selling DRM-free to everyone but Apple).

But, since Apple haven't had the industry-crushing success they had with music in the video market thus far, and no one else looks likely to repeat Apple's feat, we may be stuck with DRM in the video market for a while.

Perhaps, perhaps not...

But, since Apple haven't had the industry-crushing success they had with music in the video market thus far,

I can't find a good link, but have you seen the new NPD figures for online video sales?

Apple is crushing all takers. The share of TV shows was arou

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The difference is that almost nobody is buying video online. Instead, people are flocking to buy DVDs. In contrast, CD sales have been dropping and people are quite comfortable buying music online. One of the reasons for this is that DVDs are much more rea

Erm.. did they say 'globe' ?

The first/last time I tried to purchase an online album from Amazon (just last week) I was informed that the service is only available within the US. So altho Warner may have recognized the "anti-DRM winds sweeping the globe" it seems that the DRM-free zone has distinct limitations.

So that is the "settlement"?

Could it be that this is the result of Amazon's decision to simply stop selling music altogether?

(For those that didn't notice: About a week before Christmas, you couldn't buy any music from certain distributors at Amazon for a few days in some EU countries. They wanted Amazon to take the (as the music industry calls it) "legal" distribution ways instead of buying their CDs in areas where the record industry sells them for a penny per dozen to have any sales at all. Amazon complied and pulled the cheap records. And every other record from those studios. One week before spendmas. They also announced that "the talks are not over yet", so... is this what came out of those talks?).

Are they still adding the music?

They only have a few Warner artists on the site now.

This has nothing to do with DRM

It has everything to do with the fact that Apple won't budge on their $0.99 cent tracks and that makes the labels mad. Apple already sells DRM-free tracks for EMI through iTunes Plus. All the labels could if they wanted to, but they won't. In the years since they killed off the original Napster they've done nothing but sit on their hands. Then Apple came along and filled the void consumers were begging for: legitimate online music sales. They don't care who it is or what the method of distribution is, what they care about is that they control it. They can't control Apple, PlaysForSure is a bust that even Microsoft has abandoned, so they turn to the next biggest thing: Amazon. We'll see how that plays out.

My boycott is over

I just bought my first piece of music in 6 years. My recording industry boycott is now over. Nicely done, guys.