RIAA About to Transform? 217
It has been reported for a while that the RIAA was suffering some cutbacks and dwindling support, but techdirt is reporting that the cuts may be even deeper than most originally suspected. Who knew suing potential customers would ruin your business? "I'm sure some will somehow 'blame piracy' for this turn of events, but it's hard to see how that's even remotely the issue. The real issue is that the RIAA has basically managed to run one of the dumbest, most self-defeating strategies over the last decade. Rather than helping major record labels adjust to the changing market, it continually, repeatedly and publicly destroyed its own reputation and the reputation of the labels — each time shrinking their potential market by blaming the very people they should have been working to turn into customers."
Nothing but a rumor, yet... (Score:5, Informative)
Chasing down the links leads to this:
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/02/is-the-.html [hypebot.com]
But one seemingly knowledgeable but unconfirmed source tells Hypebot that the cuts run much deeper than previously reported.
And not much else. One can hope, but so far this is nothing but a rumor.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:3, Informative)
I use Linux, where would I buy digital music that plays on my system and has any value?
Um, Amazon for starters? Or did you not realize that iTunes is not the only digital music store in the world?
Re:Nothing but a rumor, yet... (Score:5, Informative)
...nothing but a rumor.
Synonym for fact here at Slashdot.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:3, Informative)
Unless Amazon added lossless support recently, I'd rather just buy the CD.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Blu-CD is compatible with regular CD players [ps3sacd.com], and still plays back at 16-bit, 44.1kHz. The theoretical quality of the output audio is exactly the same. The only difference is that the physical process of making the CD will be more precise, so playing a Blu-CD back in realtime on a regular CD player will, Sony hopes, give better measured output quality.
However, if you rip a Blu-CD and a regular CD to a computer using cdparanoia or Exact Audio Copy, you'll get exactly the same files.
In short, if you rip your CDs, Blu-CD will give you no benefit. If you play your CDs on a home-theater system, however, if Sony implements the technology correctly you'll get fewer playback errors.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:3, Informative)
Ahh, but pressed from what? It's not like they have some kind of articulated pinbox with 6 billion elements.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:3, Informative)
The master CD is burned with a laser, then the distributed copies are pressed from the master.
To be honest, I don't think Sony is out to get us with this one, because these are just regular CDs, made in a better fashion. It doesn't sound like there's any DRM involved. It might be too late for Sony to make any money off of it, but I don't think it's a technology to be avoided for any reason other than possibly price.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:3, Informative)
Bzzt.
First, Amazon's download manager is available for Linux*.
Second, and more useful, IMO, http://code.google.com/p/clamz/ [google.com]
It sucks that Amazon hasn't heard of the newfangled .zip format, but saying that you can't buy albums from Amazon on Linux is a lie.
*Admittedly, it wasn't available when they launched the mp3 store, and it's a pain in the ass to get working if you're not running one of the 4 linux distro versions they make packages for, but it is available.
Re:give it a fucking break (Score:3, Informative)
Um, I use Linux, where would I buy digital music that plays on my system and has any value?
Magnatune.com [magnatune.com], their collection of Classical music is huge and excellent, and as far as I'm concerned that's the only kind of music that has any value ;) though their Rock section has some pretty nice gems, too.
Re:Worse (Score:1, Informative)
Let us not throw these "believe" words around. That implies some faith or personal conclusion that, when scrutinized, would hardly constitute as being as such.
I'd like to follow more fact based approaches to things like this. Oh, and just because it might be "illegal" doesn't make doing that act inherently evil or wrong. Let's try to be careful with our words and debates about this topic.
Re:RIAA successful? (Score:3, Informative)
Ummmm, DRM doesn't work. I thought we'd established that.
DRM only ever hurts the paying customers. After they've been stung a few times it makes the pirate offerings more attractive. Downward spiral.
The best way to make money is to, um, listen to the customers instead of dictating to them. The RIAA thinks this is crazy talk so they'll sink.