Yahoo! Sells, Advocates DRM-Free Music 244
prostoalex writes "Jessica Simpson's 'A Public Affair' will be sold on Yahoo! Music in MP3 format with no DRM attached. According to Yahoo! Music blog, this is a big deal for the major online music store: 'As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day -- the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!'"
I can only imagine the interview (Score:4, Interesting)
although, there aren't many musicians opinions i would respect. but good to see at least some "major" artist is pulling against it.
It's a scam, a straw-man (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what I am getting at here. 8-)
iTunes take note.. (Score:5, Interesting)
www.beastproject.org
Re:Ah great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:props to yahoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I avoid DRM'd music anymore because I got sick of the issues associated with it (I'm thinking of iTunes specifically, emusic is so much simpler), but whoever owns the music gets to make that DRM decision. I can be dissapointed, but I can't really blame them either. Very few people are willing to give as much as those in the GPL world do -- those who let most direct compensation go in exchange for indirect compensation.
Re:please explain (Score:5, Interesting)
You could therefore set up a system where the more people share a file the better quality file can be downloaded - and still guarantee removal of all watermarks specific to any one purchaser.
It's theoretically possible at least but whether a workable system could be set up in practice I don't know.
Less sophisticated watermarking systems (like least significant bit) are trivial to defeat and I assume no competent company is using them.
Re:please explain (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, unless there is some padding involved, the file hash will be different. So would that cause every variation to show up on a p2p network. ie, your search for "Bad Artist - Bad Song" produces 900 results. I'm assumming most P2P apps use a simple md5 sum or some such hash generated to match exact files.
Now come up with an alternate hash system that uses a sample at specific intervals and simply compares those values and tosses out minor variances then it seems we have a winner. That could also be used in conjunction with a file name and file size comparison. ie, very very similar.
Seems like such a setup might suffer from generational loss. Artifacts are bound to slip in at some point in the mass sharing frenzy of an ant farm. At some point, an individual file will have too much generational loss to be shared among the masses.
On the flip side, if you did chunk by chunk comparisons you run the risk of generating too much data. In turn it could cause issues scaling high enough to meet the masses demand for pirated music.
Then again, I'm only theorizing. I could be completely off here, but if someone happens to be an expert I would be interested to hear their thoughts.
On a side note, I remember a comment from the iTunes drm buster. Effectively, he could detect the watermark, but decided to keep it in even when converting to mp3. He simply wanted to bust the encryption and not invite mass piracy.
Cool, but eMusic has more for less (Score:3, Interesting)
It is nice to hear an Internet superpower talk about selling "plain old MP3s," but eMusic [emusic.com] has been doing this for years (well before the iPod even existed). They don't have acts like Jessica Simpson, or even Radiohead, but they do have a huge collection of quality, interesting music. Loads of Indie Rock, Underground Hiphop, old and new jazz, lots of classic stuff and new albums come in everyday. It's cheap and no watermarks, either.
I'm a serious music collector and plain MP3s simplify my collection--DRM is a major headache when you just want to HAVE music and store it anyway you like.
Re:please explain (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no expert and this stuff is cutting edge but I'll try my best to address some of your comments.
Assumming the only variance is the watermark and the tracks are sample for sample nearly the same... it would make it rather not-difficult to remove the water mark
It's not as simple as this comment seems to imply, spread frequency watermarks use transforms (obviously DFT was one of the first to be used) so you can't simply average two files and expect to remove the watermarks.
the file hash will be different. So would that cause every variation to show up on a p2p network . . . assumming most P2P apps use a simple md5 sum or some such
Identifying copies of the same file with different watermarks would definitely be a problem - you'd probably have to rely on uploaders entering accurate metadata of some kind - not ideal.
such a setup might suffer from generational loss
I don't see how this would be relevant you're not making imperfect copies of previous imperfect copies of previous imperfect copies . . . ad nauseum
Artifacts are bound to slip in at some point in the mass sharing frenzy of an ant farm.
It works the other way around - the more versions you have to compare the fewer artifacts will crop up, you get closer and closer to the original un-Watermarked version instead.
you run the risk of generating too much data. In turn it could cause issues scaling
I hadn't thought about this but you're right reversing a DFT is going to be computationally expensive.
Re:please explain (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:props to yahoo (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, I bought Steely Dan's "Can't buy a thrill" twice on vinyl (both warped after a while), once on cassette (thrown out the window somewhere between Toronto and Montreal after being processed into an unreadable string of spaghetti), and once on CD (stolen while my car was in police impound). Now, I think Becker and Fagen are music gods, but how many times do I have to pay them to hear "Reeling in the Years"? I've downloaded those songs via P2P, and I have to say, I feel zero guilt about doing so; I paid for them many times over.
I understand why DRM is an issue; artists need to compensated for new material. But given that the record companies have pushed us technologies that fail after use (vinyl, tape) and then demand we repurchase rights to music we've already paid for, just to get it in a more robust format, I also understand why many users are pissed off.
This is not fully thought out, but maybe record companies should adopt a short time frame monopoly; you can't copy stuff for five years after it is introduced, for example. After that, it's ok. I mean, can you remember the hot songs of 2001? I can't.
RIAA can't lose (Score:2, Interesting)
1) The track doesn't sell well: See? The pirates really ARE hurting the industry because Jessica Simpson is a mainstream artist and why wouldn't she sell well under normal conditions? We've released a track in good faith and the pirates HAVE to be supressing sales.
2) The track sells really well: Ahh, the price-point for online music is really $2 per track, not $1 (as per itunes). Apple, raise your iTunes prices and give us the lion's share.
3) The track sells about the same as on iTunes: See? DRM makes no difference at all to consumers. It doesn't hurt sales at all. Long live DRM!