DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble?

digitaldame2 writes "Many opponents of DRM have been overjoyed at recent efforts to free media from its grip. But PC Mag Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff believes the whole world has gone mad. His view is that our digital economy will collapse this way, and it could be followed by countless others. 'The music industry's moves have been terrified reactions to staunch the bleeding of millions of dollars in revenue down the drain. For maybe a year, music companies thought they had the situation under control, but then album sales tumbled. Retailers, musicians, and some music-industry execs thought DRM was the culprit, and they soon joined the chorus of consumers calling for its head. Now consumers are getting their wish, and the music industry will continue to crumble. Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy, yet everyone's cheering.'" Is the removal of restrictions from our media really that big a deal?

DRM is pointless

Pirates are still going to pirate with or without DRM, and without it at least normal users will have less of a headache getting music on their favourite MP3 Player.

I don't see what the big deal about removing DRM is, either way the music industry needs to revise their business model, and removing DRM is the first step.

Re:DRM is pointless

It's not just DRM, although that's certainly a large part. Copyright extension and rigorous enforcement cause trouble, too.

Indeed, were it not for that, I could quote the lyrics of "Trouble in River City" from Music Man to make my point, provide a link to the MP3 (or Ogg) and maybe someone would download the song and decide to go buy the CD, or even the DVD.

I'm just a dreamer...

Re:DRM is pointless

No, were it not for that, you could quote the lyrics of "Trouble in River City" from Music Man to make your point, provide a link to the audio file, and maybe someone would download the song...and the rest of that artist's oeuvre. At least if it goes as far as it sounds like you want it to. That doesn't make money for anyone, although it does give us plenty of free music.

Re:DRM is pointless

Copyright in it's original form already does that: "gives us lots of free music".

The only question is the timeframe and whether or not you are going to annoy your paying customers in the meantime.

Mod parent up

Copyright in it's original form already does that: "gives us lots of free music". The only question is the timeframe and whether or not you are going to annoy your paying customers in the meantime.

Amen. And when that term is several human lifetimes, it is clearly benefiting only one entity: the corporations. The rest of you suckers don't get a look in.

Re:DRM is pointless

It doesn't matter if there is DRM or not. The music will be "freed" anyway. As has been said MANY MANY times on /. before, DRM cannot work unless both the player and the media are involved and the player is "unhackable" (I use unhackable in "'s because so far, every DRM has been cracked [except BD+] but if you take the xbox360, it is VERY close to being hackproof. Aside from the DVD firmware hack and the two vulnerable BIOSes, it has proved to be hack proof. I can see the next generation of games consoles having the dvd firmware signed too.)

The reason that DRM is breakable today is because computers are not owned by the content distributors (yet). If said content can be played on a computer, then it can be "freed" by that same computer. If you can play it, somewhere you have an uncompressed, unencrypted stream, that should be able to be exploited.

Computers, however are being "owned" more and more by "Big Content". Vista's DRM integration, Protected pathways is a prime example of this. How long before noone owns a comptuer anymore and all the computers are leased from a few companies that basically turn your computer into an overpriced [HD]DVD player that plays games and runs Word, in contrast to the current "open" nature of current computers.

Re:DRM is pointless

This idiot fails to realize that labels have been selling DRM free music for the last 20 years. It's called a CD. Funny how the "digital economy" hasn't collapsed yet.

Re:DRM is pointless

And, DRM free music doesn't mean that it's being given away for free. It just means that once bought, people can listen to THEIR music freely. Removing DRM from music essentially makes it more valuable (which is why iTunes decided to charge more for it than music with DRM) and will improve profits of music without DRM.

The question waiting to be answered is whether or not DRM free music will encourage/facilitate more "illegal" file sharing. My guess is that the affect will be minimal and the appreciation towards the music industry for not tying up purchased music will only increase online sales.

I for one will never buy music with DRM.

Re:DRM is pointless

I also like this guy's quote: "There were reports that many people did pay for Radiohead's album, but I'll be surprised if that's repeated very often. Also, not every band is Radiohead or Coldplay--groups that can make money elsewhere (like concert halls)."

Excuse me? I think possibly one of the main PROBLEMS with lowered music quality is the fact that so many groups/bands today cannot tour...cannot play their own instruments with any acuity, and require too much electronic 'help'. Geez, people are paying money for acts that do tour...to watch them dance and lip-sync?!?!

Why can't groups learn to cultivate talent, take it on the road...I'll give Led Zeppelin as an example. They had most of their material for the 1st album ready to go FROM rehearsals, and playing the songs on the road. They recorded their album on their own dollar (Jimmy Page and Peter Grants) because they hadn't even signed with Atlantic records yet.

And what did they do? They toured....and toured...and toured. They did something like 3-4 tours of the US AND about the same of Europe in their first year out....hell, Led Zeppelin II was pretty much written and recorded while on the road that first year.

Those guys could play....and they did. They were well known to give 3 hour concerts. Back in their day, they tried to make sure that ticket prices were reasonable. They made sure to try to give the audience what it deserved. From this live presentation....they sold albums, which helped fuel energy for more live shows.

And look at Zeppelin...they refused to sell singles....although a few came out by the record companies against their will. They made FEW TV appearances...yet, they sold records, and set attendance records.

I'd have to say....being talented and able to perform live DID have a lot to do with their fame and fortune. I'd like to think it could be replicated for upcoming bands.

I know there are differences now that make it tougher....music genre's are so splintered now....rather than just 'rock', there are upteen different variations. Radio is consolidated more....etc. But, I have to think if a group was really GOOD, and good live...with music distribution, they could take it on the road and get famous. Where is the next Zeppelin?

Re:DRM is pointless

The writer of this article has his head up his ass. The only thing troubled are the big music companies. This guy claims that people will just stop making music because it will no longer be profitable... Is that why Bach and Beethoven wrote music? What will stop is the creation of music for profit, like the Britney Spears and American Idol singers. Music is way overpriced anyway. $10 or $15 for a CD is not reasonable (particularly in poorer countries, where legit CDs are the same price as in the west). The market will choose what the correct price of music is. Not the record companies. If that means the end of the Britney Spears, then I think we're better off. I predict that when the big record companies finally collapse, we will see more diversity in music at a lower price. I don't care if this means the end of rich music execs and millionaire pop stars.

Re:DRM is pointless

Well Beethoven was able to write music only because people like Rudolf Johannes Joseph Rainier Cardinal von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduke and Prince Imperial of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungry and Bohemia paid him large amounts of money to do so.

Bach, by contrast was paid to write by (among others) Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar.

Re:DRM is pointless

Well she shaved her hair, was committed, and many people hate her music, so all she has to do now is gain weight. :)

Re:DRM is pointless

... either way the music industry needs to revise their business model, and removing DRM is the first step.

Remember, there are TWO industries at work here. There is the music industry, made up of writers, musicians, singers, producers, etc.

Then there is the recording industry. The recording industry is responsible for pressing CDs and putting them on store shelves.

The recording industry might need a new business model, or it might need to join the buggy whip makers and telegraph operators and just fade into yesteryear. The music industry people never really made much money from CD sales, since the record industry kept the screws so tight with everybody. Performers make their money from concerts (when they don't get screwed by promoters) and merchandise sales, anyway.

I stole more music before the internet

Back in the day my friends and I made more mixed tapes for each other than we bought. If one friend bought a new tape, within the next few days, all of their friends also had one. This was true until CD's came out, but then again, once burners were introduced it happened again. I've never really downloaded music illegally, almost all of my music was purchased from iTunes or is from my very old CD collection pre-internet. I simply don't buy physical media anymore. But lately my choice to not buy anything at all has been more about the quality of music than anything else. Musicians these days just suck.

Remember when horses were the only way to travel?

Once, there were horses, and they were the only way to get around town. All the horse-maintainers, the shodders and such, were in business and there was a grand economy.

Then, some new technology came to the scene: the automobile. "Oh noes", the shodders cried, "our economy is going to be ruined.."

The moral of this story is: technology. It will force change. Either keep up with it, or remove yourself from the market. Music doesn't have to be paid for - not any more, and no longer will we have to worship the few and provide them economic sustenance, so that they are only able to do it, when the many can do it, themselves.

In short, grow up music-industry people. Your world is changing. All worlds change. Let the people decide what life will be, and quite crying just because you didn't see the writing on the wall.

Yes, this applies to all media/content related markets. The writing is on the wall. The only way to protect your media is to put it in hardware - books are a good example - that makes it pleasant for people to buy it from you. The world needs us all to go digital and stop raping the earth, just so the few can profit from the ignorance of the many. Let the horses back to the fields ..

Oh well

Honestly, if the sale of recorded music is no longer profitable, that's just the way it is and the presence or lack of DRM wouldn't have prevented that. It's just a natural consequence of peer-to-peer file sharing being available. Now, it's more likely that the sale of recorded music isn't as lucrative as it used to be, but even in a free market it's best to let naturally-declining markets decline rather than prop them up artificially (i.e. US Steel, GM)--the long term gains always outweigh the short term turbulence.

I completely agree; a DRM-free MP3 file ruined me

I had an MP3 once on my computer. My computer started to crash/reboot continuously and my dog started to howl. The dog howling caused me sleepness nights. My sleepy-ness caused me to have a car accident with a bus full of nuns. The surviving nuns sued me and the dead nuns are waiting for me in heaven with baseball bats. Because of the lawsuit, I lost my home, my computer, AND my dog... I'm living in the streets and I only go into public libraries to use the washrooms and post on slashdot. I am scared of MP3s. (but not frightened to death because then the nuns & bats will get me)

A better article

A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/state-of-digital-music-2007.ars [arstechnica.com]

Incorrect

Without DRM, digital music can eaily be played on almost any media player. You now have opened up media rather then just iPods, to generic MP3 players, Windows systems, Linux systems, OS X systems, FreeBSD systems, and more. That is something that hasn't happened yet is a standard non-patented format for storing music, OGG would be likely but with it not being native on most MP3 players and Windows (and OS X too?) and MP3 is patent restricted and therefore rarely playable (legally) on Linux, FreeBSD and other systems. MP3 players also suffer with the patent fee, they could be cheaper without it. All DRM does is make people not want to download "legal" media, the main pro of "piracy" was that you can download it in just about any format you wanted, for free and it would easily work with just about every device that you had while the "legal" ones would not. Digital music will never catch up to CDs if "piracy" is always the better option. I am not advocating suing anyone but seriously, when you iTunes downloads work with you iPod/iTunes and nothing else, the MP3 download from a tracker site is a better deal as it will work on that $25 MP3 player you got, your computer (any OS) along with your iPod and phone, ETC. It isn't just DRM that was killing digital music it was the lack of a standard format. In the CD age (before the Sony rootkits and the like) your CD would work in any computer with a CD drive, any CD player be it the $25 off brand one or your $2000 stereo system. When we get that, digital music will begin selling otherwise, who wants expensive media that works with 1 brand of products and nothing else.

DRM is that big of a deal, but the other way

I do kind of feel bad for the *AA member companies. It would suck to realize that your industry was subject to a disruptive technology that was already well past the tipping point. Having said that, it's their problem and not mine. I've been buying DRM-free music for decades and have absolutely zero interest in giving up control of my possessions.

Did you hear that? Possessions. Not licensed content, not rentals or leases, but things I own. When I buy music, I own that copy no matter how much they wrongly insist otherwise. I will not pay extra to buy restrictions to prevent me from using my possessions they way I want to use them, even if that was is undesirable for its makers. As long as I'm staying within the constraints of the law and not giving copies of it to others, it's none of their business (even if they wish it was).

So sorry, *AA. You had the opportunity to do things differently, but you chose to fight me instead of making me your friend. Your actions have been so scummy that I truly don't care what happens to you now. Justice? Morals? Ethics? As you have long cast those aside, I just can't be bothered to care when people fail to use them with you. Goodbye and good luck. You won't be missed.

please explain

No one has explained to me yet why we need a megalithic music industry and why it is bad that it is collapsing.

Hippie?

"I love how intelligent people think subscription-based music services are the way to go. All you can eat for $15 a month. Talk about devaluing your product. People can download enough songs to fill 100 albums and pay under $20. How does anyone make money this way?"

Yeah. I can't figure out who ANYONE could make MONEY charging people RECURRING fees for CONTENT.

I mean, who would pay good money a month for a stack of dead trees?

Whoops, did I switch "magazine" and "music" again?

How old is your daughter again? Oh yeah, failed to mention that. Let me guess, three tops. Hippie? Dude, you're stuck in the 80's, aren't you? Well, at least you didn't use the C word.

DON'T FEED THE TROLL!

Okay, enough making fun of the naysayer, on with the facts:

1. "Consumers" (I really HATE that word) are willing to consume that which is good. The "digital content" folks are in trouble because their content sucks. Rather than admit their faults, they prefer to point fingers. In one sense, the bonehead is correct, DRM-free won't stop the bleeding, but that's because the bandaid is in the wrong place. Radiohead is a good example, people are willing to pay money to support content they like. Duh!

2. DRM-free has value to Consumers because DRM restricts that which they previously enjoyed.

3. Audio quality isn't the issue, if higher quality is desired the demand will be there. Otherwise, non issue.

Just look at history...

Britney Spears is worth something like $100M. There's a number of vastly wealthy musicians, and equally wealthy record execs. However, this is not historically normal. Yes, over the past few hundred years, some musicians got quite wealthy, and some music publishers made serious bank, but the scale created by the record industry is truly unprecedented.

Prior to the commercialisation of the recording industry (which began in the 1910s/20s but only really took off after WW2) the only way the common person understood music was in the context of someone, usually THEMSELF, playing it. On an instrument. That wasn't plugged into an amplifier.

And at the time, there were musicians, and some did very well (Salieri wasn't poor, nor was Handel) but even they had a tiny tiny fraction of the kind of wealth exhibited by the ruling classes at the time. Musicians were still, basically, hired hands. They might be rich hired hands, but not like what we know today. The important point is the context: you knew music as a performance, not as a recording.

Due to the exigencies of technology, music became a commodity, and in classic capitalist fashion, the material costs were reduced to a minimum - finally, they evapourated as data into the interweb thingie. So, now they're trying to put a meter on something that the interwebs have always had a complex and contradictory relationship: data itself. The record companies are not in the business of selling music. They sell CDs. If the CDs had recordings of dogs barking, or were flat out silent, it wouldn't matter to the record companies, as they (in theory) sell what people want.

What people want is music. What people want is something for nothing. What people want is to wish upon a star and get everything they ever dreamed of, and if they can't do that, then they want the music that takes them there....

The music biz started with printing sheet music in the 19th century. It will die trying to sell data. It was an interesting ride. But now the amusement park is closed. Time to go home and make your own music.

Give up on the star system. Make your own, and support the art made by your friends, your family and your neighbours. Give up on this hallucination of Commodity Culture. Learn to play an instrument, and learn to play it well. work with other musicians, and through your own competence and intelligence you will create the hope this world so desperately needs.

and, in the process, go piss on the grave of the music business.

RS

Re:Wow, way wrong

No kidding. Maybe, just maybe, the model of having companies make money from the distribution of music is not going to last. But then what happens? Musicians go back to the pre-phonograph days of making a living by performing live. Seems to me people listen to music, dig their bands and then go see them when they come to town, buying the accompanying tour merchandise and stuff. Sure, that leaves the music labels out in the cold. But is it any different of a change in the larger economy than when we switched from horse-drawn vehicles to gasoline-powered ones?

Re:Is the removal...

Exactly.

Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy

They also aren't the same thing, as anyone even remotely familiar with the subject is well aware.

What isn't rational in a market economy is deliberately making the black market version of your product better than the above board original, by artificially crippling the latter. Such a policy is pretty much directly targeted at the very people who actively support your business, while doing little to impair those who do not.