Slashdot Log In
BMG Stops Producing CDs
Posted by
michael
on Wed Nov 06, 2002 08:15 AM
from the retrograde-advances-in-music-technology dept.
from the retrograde-advances-in-music-technology dept.
An Anonymous Cow writes "The register has a new story about claims by Bertelsmann that they'll stop manufacturing uncrippled audio CDs. More can be found on Bertelsmann's own site (info by region, Europe only). Trouble playing it in your car stereo? According to BMG the error is your player's, and not their CD's. Quote: 'As far as we were advised, our copy protection is according to the Red Book Standard as well as all labelling on the cd.' In English: they don't even find it necessary to indicate on the CD cover that it's copy protected, nor do they think it advisable to listen to Philips' objections against using the CD logo on crippled discs, instead there's a label claiming that the CD is fully Red Book-compliant. It looks like this is a test case, because only all European CDs will be crippled."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Interesting Article (Score:5, Funny)
The correct term is "differently abled CD's"
: )
CD sales decreasing? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CD sales decreasing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's make this more than I joke. I just wrote to BMG and said, because of your stance I will not buy your product. I want a fully versatile CD and you are committed not to deliver.
And I will back this up with actions. Eventually I suspect I will have to transition to all independent producers. When I do so I will let them know why I decided to start investigating their product base. If something I want to purchase comes out on BMG I will contact the artist and tell them why they lost a sale.
The major recording labels see lost sales in unencumbered CDs. Whether this is ultimately true or not is not relevant. Unless they start seeing and hearing about lost sales because of Digital Rights Management they will continue on this course.
Universal got the same letter from me a year ago. I haven't purchased a product from them since.
Parent
Two Words... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about BMG create their own standards and call it something else?
I am sure this will lead to more sales, because everyone knows when you spit in the customers eye and take away their ability to do that which they did before, they always reward you for it.
--Joey
Re:Two Words... (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of entertainment and technology, the sarcasm of your comment is lost to the truth of your comment. How many times have we seen Microsoft TELL their customers how to modify their buying habits. 90% of the technology consumer crowd are led like lambs to the slaughter. Unifrtunately, those of us in the know tend to post our objections in rooms full of people also in the know leaving those 90% to support the thugs we protest.
Parent
HA! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even better solution ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Fine for pirates ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Send it back.
And I don't mean the CD.
Send your CD player back. The entire thing. Send it back to Sony/Philips/whoever and say that your new BMG CD won't play in it, and that you want them to fix it. Tell all your friends that the BMG CD doesn't work in Sony's CD players. To be honest, no matter what we do as individuals will affect BMG. Sony, on the other hand, have very big legal teams, and wouldn't particularly like BMG telling people that their products are broken.
Parent
Re:Even better solution ... (Score:4, Informative)
What these schemes will accomplish is allow the industry to say to Congress, "Look, we tried copy prevention on our own, it didn't work, we need new laws that require DRM chips in everything."
(incidentally, Barbara Simons mentioned in a DRM session at Siggraph that she believed the DVD CSS cipher was deliberately made easy to break, as a similar form of entrapment)
Parent
That's okay, P2P will save me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's okay, P2P will save me... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the points that I made was that I want to listen to CDs that I purchase on a computer, on an iPod, on my own compilation CDs for the car. This is all covered by fair use but the record companies have their heads buried so deep up their arses all they can think of is piracy. Yet by preventing legitimate use they dissuade me from buying their broken product and drive me to the file sharing that they're so shit scared of!
Parent
Re:That's okay, P2P will save me... (Score:5, Interesting)
1000 users with 500 different versions of the music.
1000 users with 100 different versions of the music.
The later scenario provides five times as many sources for the same version album, so you will find it will become easier and faster to get the album, due to many more sources of HASH compatible files! Go BMG!
Parent
When will you people learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you stop paying for their products, the RIAA and MPAA won't have money to pay congressmen/women for laws like the DMCA.
Re:When will you people learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
They win either way.
Parent
Re:When will you people learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
They win either way.
No, they only win if we buy their CDs. Laws by themselves don't make them money.
Last time a CD came out in the Netherlands that didn't work well on a PC (in fact it crashed Windows - insert joke here), there was a huge uproar from consumer organizations, and the CD was pulled in a few days. People will notice that these CDs suck. That means Bertelsmann will have to leave this plan rather quickly.
Parent
Re:When will you people learn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
When will you people speak up? (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you don't TELL them you've stopped buying their products, they assume it's just a sales slump, and devote more time, energy, and most of all MONEY to passing bad laws and trying to enforce copy-protection. After all, they already KNOW what causes sales slumps -- piracy and P2P applications. (Never mind the facts, they know the truth.)
So as I've said before (and nobody, apparently, was listening), it's not enough to just stop buying [slashdot.org]. You have to tell them about it, too.
Parent
Re:When will you people learn? (Score:4, Informative)
BMG has sales of $X. They start shipping CDs with copy prevention methods, poor copy prevention methods that result in their CDs being unplayable on many ordinary CD players. Their sales plummet, to $X/2. They can't argue it's piracy, because this loss of sales has happened after they've taken steps to reduce piracy.
Indeed, it may well be that they end up hurting their own argument. If sales plummet when piracy is no longer rampant, then legislators could take the view that piracy isn't a threat and actually make the laws more liberal.
I'm not sure you need to organise a boycott of BMG. Just encourage people to return CDs that do not play on their equipment. If the vendor tries to make this a problem, send the CD back by registered post and have the credit card company issue the refund - that means buying all CDs by credit card.
Parent
Piss Me Off! (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean that I cannot listen to CDs on my computer without being concidered a consumer without respect to listening pleasure?
"In the long term, massive copying deprives music-makers of their very livelihood.
I prefer listening to musicians who play music because they enjoy it, not for the money. As for the veri livelihood, I'd say that the ability to sample non-mainstream artists without having to stand in line at my local music store has made me by more CDs than ever before. I suggest that this assumption is down right wrong.
"...this decline is attributed to a large extent to unauthorised CD-R copying."
Or perhaps due to a downwards tendency of the entire economy. Sales will fluctuate, so don't blame the customers, make new and better products.
Re:Piss Me Off! (Score:5, Funny)
Or borrowing a friend's music, or video, or book? Or supporting those bastions of evil, the "public" so-called libraries? Or recording a TV show or movie in some way that would let you "deep link" to the filler in between the commercials, instead of seeing it the way the copyright holder intended?
Don't you understand that going a day without buying a music disk is depriving artists in the music industry (CEOs, accountants, auditors, etc.) of the income they're entitled to?
Don't you know this so-called "Internet" is really
Parent
Could Philips sue for Trademark infringment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't know if Philips has enough interest in doing so, though. After all, removing the mark from these "discs that kind of look like CDs" would probably make zero difference to the buying public, but would in fact remove a (probably small) revenue stream for Philips (BMG would no longer need to licence the trademark for their packaging).
Re:Could Philips sue for Trademark infringment? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, due to the left-leaning EU policies, BMG may be pretty soon recquired to put a special label on CDs, indicating that the CD is crippled. Consumer protection is much stronger in Europe than in the US.
In fact, I would say it's in the best interest to do so; otherwise the BMG logo itself would soon serve as an indicator of a crippled CD, and they would never be able to sell normal CDs again, in the case their policy backfires and they change their mind...
Parent
Re:Could Philips sue for Trademark infringment? (Score:5, Informative)
Just bought the new Bond CD. (Universal, not BMG).
Popped it into my Mac. The CD mounted, but wasn't recognized as an audio CD, so it wouldn't open into iTunes and I couldn't transfer the songs onto my iPod.
Scanned the CD case and discovered that the CD logo was nowhere to be found. I guess I should have checked for that first...
The funny thing is, all the tracks showed up as AIFF files, so I copied them all to the HD. Double clicking them opened them up in iTunes. A quick convert to MP3 format and I was all set! Yay, Jaguar!
Shhh. Don't tell the RIAA about this...
Parent
damaged error handling, incompatible discs, yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:damaged error handling, incompatible discs, yay (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like they want stem piracy and to increase cash flow by resales because of "SCRATCHED" CDs. That's what they liked about vinyl. When you just can't stand the POPS & SKIPS on "Dark Side Of The Moon" any more, you buy another copy. How did you think it stayed on the Billboard Top 100 for over 10 YEARS! Damn those seeds!!!
It also reduces the second-hand CD sales like Half.com. Some indipendent music stores were being pressured by the record companies not handle "Used CDs" (...or is it Perviously Owned?).
Any way you look at it, increased cash flow is the main motive. Buy once, buy often.
Parent
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
"All out books are completely normal and qualify for Library of Congress cataloging... we've simply removed the text as a precautionary measure to defeat the thieving scum of the world." says spokesman Yanash Smythe.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
When contacted for comment, Addison Wesley CEO Marcus Ardaile added that any reported incidents of people not being able to properly read the new books must be caused by "faulty eyes" rather than any inherent problems with the textless printing process.
Parent
They're sabotaging everything (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect they're engaged on some wacko conspiracy: "Do as much as we can to lose money and then blame it on customers. And then, once we've reached bottom, we'll ... um ... well, we haven't figured that part out yet. Our goal is to simply piss off consumers, hit bottom, and then blame folks."
What's interesting is that three years ago I was an active CD buyer. I was constantly buying stuff at Best Buy, was a member of all the CD clubs (even though that wasn't making anyone much money), and buying CDs on-line weekly.
Now, I've stopped. I won't buy another CD because I have no idea whether or not it will play in what I want to play it in, and I have absolutely no desire to try to bring it back to a place like Best Buy or send it back to a place like CDNOW or Amazon.com.
Instead, I'm enjoying my "old" CDs, installed my old Technics phonograph, and actively search out obscure stuff -- mostly CDs, some vinyl -- in local record stores. My music listening experience has gone way, way up, and I'm spending less than ever -- but finding stuff I like.
And I'll occasionally drop into Kazaa to listen to new stuff and try and determine, say, why Justine Timberlake is putting out new albums that sound like vintage Michael Jackson or why U2 and Aerosmith insist on putting out a new greatest hits album every other week or why Bob Dylan's *old* stuff is far and away better than anything he's put out since Infidels (which was, IMHO, the last good Dylan album). But that's about it.
So, yes, to the RIAA I say this: if your goal is to piss-off customers and lose them permanently -- congratulations!
Re:They're sabotaging everything (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Buy out all the radio stations
2) Raise the barriers to artists who don't "sell out"
3) Screw over the consumers
4)
5) Profit!
Parent
Ah well. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't buy CDs anymore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you?
It has happened... (Score:4, Interesting)
Watch as a new generation of young people (ages 6 through 16) hit Kazaa. Then Gnutella when Kazaa shuts down. When Peekabooty when P2P is getting hammered by **IA.
It's great news! I'm not being sarcastic. When they have to go to such lengts to protect a dead business model, all we have to do is sit back and laugh. And teach our familes how to use WinAmp or iTunes.
They FUNNY SHIT is this... I'd gladly pay PER SONG for an OGG download. But $20 for crap on an obsolete medium (CD's)? HA! Never...
Again, in short, they are dying and this is the first sign. enjoy the ride, you'll tell your grandkids about this.
Customers, what customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's ok! (Score:5, Funny)
Us consumers in the US can look to our government to stand up to this overt attack on our rights! Politicians in Washington aren't going to let these big record companies galavant about stomping on our rights!
After all, this is our culture that we're talking about. Surely the music of the time belongs to the people, right!? It's ours to share, the same as our wisdom and our stories, with each other freely. We all know that the progression of culture depends on the constant cycle of old becoming new, new artists seeking inspiration from those that went before.
I'm confident that the new government in Washington will honor these sacred things. We're all in good hands now!
Let's all have a glass of Victory Gin!
Stupidity or Strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
An analogy. You try to get a restraining order against some guy. The judge throws it out of court for lack of grounds. So you keep crank calling him, and egging his car, until he is so ticked off that you actually do need the protection.
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Bummer (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just getting more and more stupid. I'm not going to go download stuff from Kazaa just get, for one the effort it'd take to get it going in Wine combined with the general nastyness of the software and illegallity of it has put me off until now. I'm waiting for (and soon hopefully doing something about) the gift economy as a new model for music distribution, but there are quite a few technical and social hurdles to overcome first.
How long can the music industry keep this up though before what happened to Microsoft with Linux happens to the RIAA - the little people come out of the woodwork and come up with something new? Not long at this rate. Not long at all.
The use of lies to state their case... (Score:5, Interesting)
Two years ago, on a worldwide basis, one digital copy was made for every three music CDs sold. Last year, that ratio had shrunk dramatically to one-to-two. In 2001, for every CD album sold, one copy was burned.
Actually the statistic I read is that in 2001 for every CD album sold, one CD-R disc was sold. Obviously we can't assume that every single CD-R disc sold in the world was used to copy a copyrighted CD. Based on my experience in statistics and research methods regarding sampling and surveys(Psych major),I'm fairly confident that no one will ever be able to claim how many CD-R's were actually used to copy copyrighted material, so any numbers they throw at us should not be believed.
My personal theory is that the surge of independent music(which is easily accesible on the internet)is really why the major labels sales are down. Not only is independent music usually better, but it's available for free on P2P's all the time(which is why killing Kazaa/Gnucleus/etc. would seriously hurt the independent musician, and give more power back to major labels). I guess I'm preaching to choir here at slashdot though.
They'll make it stick (Score:5, Insightful)
No? Look at the aggressive line that they're taking. "These are RedBook CD's and the problem is in your player". You can bet your life that they'll pass this position on to retaillers and make it 100% clear that they won't be accepting "bad media" returns on these disks.
So try taking one of these crippled music disks back to MonstroMart and claiming that it doesn't play in your CD player. Last month they'd have taken it back (maybe), and that cost Bertelsmann money. This month, they'll trot out the "the fault is in your player" line like the loyal little appendages that they are and stonewall you, because of two things. One, they know that it's not like you've got a choice in how you obtain music in the future, because every store will be carrying crippled disks, and two, if it turns out that your daddy is a lawyer, they can always point the finger at Bertelsmann and claim that ze vere only obeying orders.
Those people predicting a drop in sales that will scare off other music behemoths need to take a clue pill. Mandy Music Buyer doesn't read The Register or Slashdot, and she won't know about these crippled disks until she buys one. She'll buy the disk, then find out that it's crippled. Sure, she'll be pissed off if she can't play it in her mom's SUV's CD player (Mandy Music Buyer is 12-18, remember), but what's she going to do? Stop buying music disks? Friends, if she's still buying them today, she's not going to switch to kazaa or gnutella tomorrow. She's going to keep buying them and whine at her mommy that the man at the music store said the SUV's CD player was broken.
And heck, let's say I'm wrong, and sales do take a noticable dip. What are BMG going to blame it on? Their own greed and stupidity? Hahahaha! I'll give you short odds on "global economy" or (more likely) that this proves that people are thieves and criminals, and that we need Fritz chips right now to preserve Truth, Justice and the American Way. It's win-win for them, and all our outraged ranting won't make it otherwise.
There Is One Way They Can Lose (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right, our outraged ranting on slashdot won't make it otherwise.
However, our outraged ranting to our families, our friends, our coworkers, and our business associates (over beer, after work, etc.) will make all the difference in the world.
I have already shocked, appalled, and outraged numerous people simply by telling them what has been going on. It is particularly effective when it is done in response to "I think my PC is broken, it no longer plays my music" (oops, you saved your music in windoze media format and didn't unclick the DRM option. You won't be able to forget to do that in the next version of windows, because there won't be an option to unclick, everything will be 'protected.'
I have educated a pretty large number of non-savvy people about what is going on with the DMCA (Sklyrov, etc.), the RIAA (Janis Ian, Prince, etc. al documenting the recording industry's rape of artists AND consumers, etc.), and the MPAA (Fritz Disney Hollings et al), and they are pissed. Not at me, for ranting about technical issues they don't care about, but at these organizations and our hopelessly corrupt, wicked government. They are pissed because it has become painfully obvious that we do live under the tyranny of evil men, with apparently no way out, and they are sick of giving money to such.
So now they buy less CDs, attend less concerts, and go to less movies than before. Not a complete boycott like myself, but they are spending less and they are much, much more aware.
Which brings me to the the point of all this: there is one way in which WE, not THEY, can and should win:
Simply stop buying their crap.
Like music? Listen to independent artists ONLY. Do not buy any CDs from any record company, buy them direct from the artist or not at all. And if they are crippled, return them and publicly blacklist the artist for what they've done.
Like movies? Go see independent films only. If you cannot get over your pathetic addiction to the mindless bread and circuses of Hollywood, at least avoid seeing movies during the first two weeks of release (when most of the revninue goes to the studios), instead wait and see the movies in third or fourt weeks (when most of the revinue goes to the local thatre). Not as good as a proper boycott, but better than following the stampede.
In the end, though, is to simply be unforgiving of such people. Don't buy their stuff now, and don't ever buy it again. Get enough of your friends to feel likewise, and they will falter, even ultimately perish.
No one likes losing their freedom, and everyone sees it happening. Until now, they've only had the vague notion that 'the government' is taking away their freedoms and 'it doesn't seem to matter who we elect.'
Now there is a specific target for that ire, for that anger, a specific, relatively small group of companies that are actively, methodically, and deliberately stripping us of our freedoms, and use government collussion or, at best, apathy go do it.
And, unlike (most) governments, companies are something we as individuals can topple.
Parent
The exact statement from BMG (Score:4, Interesting)
CDs by Independent Artists (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the best record store I've found anywhere. It's full of independent artists in every genre you could want. They have a sweet feature where you search for a band you like, say Limp Bizkit or POD, and it gives you independent artists like Stink!#Bug or Burning Edge. All the albums for sale have at least half of their tracks available to listen to before you buy.
If you aren't happy you can send your CD back for a full refund.
They even have a wide selection of jazz and classical performances.
I guess the artists get a pretty fat percentage of the profits from the CD. Much more than they would get if they were signed with a major label.
I'm not affiliated with CD Baby in anyway except as a very happy customer. Super happy. Happy happy happy. I've never been so happy about my relationship with a business.
If you are like me, you love music but don't support the rape of artists by major labels. CD Baby is the best place I've found to satisfy my cravings for great tunes. All of the CDs I've purchased from them played on my computer just fine, and ripped to ogg with no problems.
Recession (Score:5, Insightful)
"World music sales for the year 2001 fell by 5% in value and by 6,5% in units."
Blaming that music downloaders where the reason for the fell. I wonder if they remember that there was a recession in 2001, IT bubble broke and almost all industries fell into downswing. It would've been a miracle if CD sales hadn't dropped at all and 5% is LITTLE compared to the bankruptcies that other industries had to deal with.
(It's amazing that restaurants don't blame home cooks for the recession, stealing the recipes that they use, and using them free at home! can you see the analogy?)
Analog degradation less than MP3...so why? (Score:5, Interesting)
The audio degradation experienced by ripping a CD via analog means (by either plugging in a cable into the line-out of the CD player and recording with any PC recording application, or using the 'Rip to Analog" feature of Musicmatch) is far less than the degradation produced by MP3 compression.
Since six years of MP3 has shown us that for the vast majority of people, even 160kbps MP3 encoding is "good enough," how will this stop their music from being pirated?
Very few people actually rip and upload...Gartner and Forrester both agree that 95% of mp3 content on P2P and other filesharing systems comes from less than 10% of the community. All you need is one guy to rip the content to analog, then upload. BMG will see no net reduction of pirating of their content.
Irnonically, the only ones to suffer from this inane decision are those who legitimately purchased the "CD." They will be plagued with a hobbled, limited-use product, which may actually convince them that P2P is actually a more convenient choice. No one else will even notice, as they will continue to download the content.
Red Book standard compliance (Score:4, Informative)
Philips wants five thousand dollars for the Red Book [philips.com], and requires that you sign an NDA. But if you want to learn the details you can buy the actual international standard, IEC standard 60908 [www.iec.ch], for CHF 226 (about $156).
Other good sources of technical detail about the CD Audio format are:
- The Art of Digital Audio [amazon.com] by John Watkinson
- Principles of Digital Audio [amazon.com] by Ken Pohlmann
Both of these books provide fairly detailed explanations of the data format, but for the actual physical specifications you have to refer to the standard.Re:This bites (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:This bites (Score:4, Insightful)
The same goes for CDs. The specification doesn't neccessarily mean that the CD will be playable - only that it has certain features and is encoded in a certain way.
Nick...
Parent
Re:This bites (Score:5, Informative)
The red book standard is as naked as it can be. Basically it provides for:
1) A TOC. Table of contents containing information on track start and stop time. Generally a lead-in and lead out apply, taking approximately 25 Mb space on the disc. The rest is reserved for the body of audio data.
2) Digital wave info. A 44.1 Khz stereo wave recorded digitally onto the CD's surface. This is done in a non-encoded (let's not get caught in the semantical discussion on digitising vs encoding, please... ) way. There's not even any ECC or EDC information in that scheme. The CDDA red book standard is a butt-naked RAW audio data standard.
The Red-book standard technically does not allow for fancy schmancy stuff such as mixed-mode discs, multiple sessions (which is how mixed mode is made) and such.
Adherence To The Specification WILL mean that a CD will be playable in any CD-player that has been made since 1981. Period. This is a non debatable point.
Parent
Re:Title incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This is a good thing! (Score:5, Informative)
BMG U.S. Latin
Buddha
BMG Asia Pacific
J Records
Yclef Records
Logic
RCA Records
RCA Victor Group (includes Private Music, RCA Victor, Red Seal, and Windham Hill)
Robbins Entertainment
Zomba Label Group (includes Brentwood, Jive, Jive-Electro, Reunion, Silvertone, and Verity)
They also distribute ATO, Kinetic Records, Milan, Razor & Tie, Restless, Santuary Records Group, V2 and Wind-Up.
And I'm sure I've missed a few....
Kierthos
Parent