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UK Music Retailers Beg, Drop the DRM
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Nov 22, 2007 08:47 AM
from the free-as-in-no-chains dept.
from the free-as-in-no-chains dept.
thefickler notes that consumers aren't the only ones carrying "Death to DRM" placards. UK music retailers are telling the recording industry enough is enough — that the industry's obsession with copy protection is hurting, not helping, profit. Kim Bayley, director-general of the UK Entertainment Retailers Association, said that the anti-piracy technologies are not protecting industry revenue but instead "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest." The ERA hopes the industry will drop DRM in time for the holiday season. Good luck with that.
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Good luck indeed (Score:3, Informative)
Not in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Not in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they're mostly talking about DRM for downloads. This is more of a problem. People expect their music to be portable, and don't want any complexity or compatibility problems transferring music to their mp3 players.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Few people really care about DRM on DVDs. All DVD players will play the things. It's easily circumvented. It's more or less invisible to most people. DVD recorders are still quite rare amongst non-techies.
True.. although quite a few have heard about the extra helpings of DRM on HD disks. They haven't caught on yet, and I suspect that the DRM requirements and licensing deals have some bearing on the price.
I think they're mostly talking about DRM for downloads. This is more of a problem. People expect their music to be portable, and don't want any complexity or compatibility problems transferring music to their mp3 players.
Very true. Even the iTunes users seem to be coming to the realization that a light DRM is still DRM. EMI was the first one to blink, and now the others stand a good chance of looking for a face saving route to DRM free sales.
Surprisingly enough, its not just us techies that notice this and dislike it. Ordi
Re:Not in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've bought a few discs that I've had trouble playing. A couple of them I just took straight back to the shop for a refund, but the others I was able to get working after some irritating fiddling around. Playback from the discs either failed or had impossibly juddering sound. My copy program (K9copy) wouldn't rip either disc properly from one DVD drive but succeeded with my older drive so I was able to watch my DVD's directly from an iso file. All of the DVDs were from Optimum Releasing, so they lost out o
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Few people really care about DRM on DVDs.
It depends what you count under the "DRM" umbrella. Does unskippable content at the start of a DVD count? Because I know plenty of people who now outright avoid buying any DVDs from brands who have taken this too far. Seriously, why do I need to sit through 30 seconds of US-based copyright warning that doesn't even apply to me here, and a load of disclaimers about interview content when there are no interviews on the DVD?
I even know people who have taken DVDs back to the shop in extreme cases and demand
Re:Not in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd heartily support a ban on all Xmas activity until December, if it wasn't such a nanny state thing to do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We weren't going to tell you, but I feel I have to let you in on the secret. We allow you to thing that you're having a "Thanksgiving" early just so you don't see our true reasons.
You're actually just our food tasters checking for poison. Never can be too safe.
Re:Good luck indeed (Score:5, Funny)
The clue was in the repeated use of the letters "UK" in the summary.
Parent
Re:Good luck indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
OK? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OK? (Score:5, Funny)
Something like that is just crying out for an acronym.
FEABTDDA (pronounced FeabTaDa perhaps?)
Tim.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The time to prepare the next trap is ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
After a while everybody knows about your trap and starts crying foul.
That's the time you have to prepare your next unfair system.
I fear the time when record labels say "We hear our customers and are removing the DRM system." followed by "Piracy is rampant! The only solution is...".
Don't know about the UK... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but in the states, this is very apparent. Not only do we have big outlets like the Virgin Megastore [google.com] closing down in big cities, but long-standing "mom-and-pop", independent record stores are not making it. I see this with a lot of my old favorite record stores in the midwest, but also some of my favorite stores from when I lived on the left coast, like Aron's Records [blogging.la], an veritable institution I never thought would close down.
Now, it may be easy to blame "downloading," but ask anyone who supported these record stores for years and there's two main reasons: 1) Lack of compelling content these days; and 2) general lack of trust for the record industry. When the old hippie burnout down the street is afraid to buy a CD because it might "have a virus on it," you know the MAFIAA have shot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately, they continue to find ways to make money, while the artists and record-shop owners are the ones being put out of business.
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the music industry is a volume box shifting business, it has to rely on high volume low margin. It cannot expect the buyers to pay a premium price for singers and musicians who will be forgotten after they've had their Warhol (that's 15 minutes of fame).
It's like the car industry. The margins on a BMW are high because it costs a lot to persuade you to buy it. The margins on a European supermini are minimal because it costs almost nothing to get people to buy one, but people won't pay a high price for it. The music industry is alone in wanting to sell you a Trabant with the marketing budget of a BMW. This business model is based on the idea that the public is, in effect, too stupid to tell a Trabant from a BMW. It can't be guaranteed that this will remain the case.
Parent
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:5, Insightful)
But $1 / song is simply too expensive for most people that I know. When a CD collection was *the* collection that someone chose to have then sure. But those were simpler times. We didn't have mass storage devices and DVDs (some people collected VHS tapes but most people chose to have a large CD collection or a large VHS collection
* I'm not sure what that would be, heck it could be as simple as an instruction leaflet inside the jewel case, which wouldn't be useful for most people who already know what they're doing but it would be kind of like a stamp of approval from the record companies saying "We're with the times. We know you want this on your digital players so we're trying to help you with that". It could also maybe be in the form of a separate Joliet disk that has all the songs pre-ripped to mp3 with complete ID3 tags etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it more reasonable to suppose all those music stores are closing because they can't compete with the kind of pricing practices implemented by places like Walmart ? (Do they sell CD/DVDs ?)
I mean, if you can enter a store that has all the music you want (for most people that is the 20 newest releases), for a small price, why would you go to mom-and-pop store ?
Don't we see that happening is almost all other kinds of business ? At least were I live, all mom-and-p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For the benefit of readers who are not old enough to remember the Cold War the Trabant [wikipedia.org] aka "die Traubi" was a low quality automobile with a fiber glass body and a two cylinder two stroke engine produced by the former East Germany (GDR) [wikipedia.org] before the Berlin Wall [wikipedia.org] came down. It had a reputation for being noisy, dirty, and low performance, the car took 21 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h (62.5 mph) and the top speed was 1
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They're remarkably reliable if you service them correctly, and incredibly easy to fix if they do break.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The CD may be superior quality (same argument was made for the vinyl record before 8-tracks/tapes/CDs surpassed it) but the goal and how it is provided (entertainment, music, whatever) is
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:5, Insightful)
and they'll say "WHAT? SPEAK UP, WHIPPERSNAPPER. DOWN-LORDIE EMM PEE WHAT? Y'ALL FROM THE FUTURE?"
Buying hard copies at retail is a geezer's activity. Once you can store your entire collection on a fingernail-sized iPod clone, and get new tracks within seconds using weekend-daddy's credit card, why on earth would you want to go out and buy a huge bit of plastic to store a copy of the two tracks you want plus eight that you don't in a medium that you'll never listen to?
Physical distribution of CDs is dead in the water. It's an inefficient, unnecessary and expensive holdover from the ancient past. You might as well give away a free buggy whip with each 'album' (another dying concept) to try and boost sales.
Lest you retort with the stale old "There will always be a market for uncompressed music", fie on that. CDs are effectively compressed [georgegraham.com]. Audiophiles already need to get their fix elsewhere, and their sad devotion to their ancient religion demonstrably isn't enough to keep disks-and-mortar stores open.
CDs are dead as a retail proposition. It's time to put down the buggy whip, and move on.
Parent
Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because (Score:4, Funny)
To be honest... (Score:2)
Still, it's nice to see the music industries oversimplified logic and ignorance of reality working against it for once of course so I'll keep my mouth shut and pretend they're right and it's all DRMs fault because in a strange twist of fate it can only be a good thing having the distributors a
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Last month I authorized my 5th computer to work with iTunes, so me and mine can keep playing music I've bought. Now I can't listen to it at the office. That doesn't really make any sense to me, because I could if I'd bought a CD instead, I'd just have to carry around a binder of music the size of a desk.
The convenience of digital music is that it can be moved around and taken with you easily. DRM stops that and we'll just keep running into it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For example:
"Remember how you could copy tapes/CDs without restriction? Wouldn't it be nice to copy your downloaded music the same way? Well, you can, except for the fact that the record companies are using DRM to stop you, and are still charging as if you
national holiday required (Score:2)
I think a small holiday would be in order no matter how long it takes to defeat DRM.
Alternatives to buying CDs (Score:5, Interesting)
A thief came by and stole:
1. A cup of change (for the meter)
2. A fresh pack of Kamel Red Lights
3. My entire wallet of CDs -- a ratio of 90% store-bought CDs and 10% assorted collections of mixes from parties, birthdays, longs nights of ecstasy, and the kind of presents girls with too much time on their hands make for you.
I went to ye olde Wal-Mart, bought a satellite radio, and I haven't bought a single CD since. I can record off the radio legally, the songs save on my radio for ~90 days (XM just imposed some time limits on the songs), and I can also put MP3s on the unit with a USB cord (the little trapezoid type). I haven't downloaded any music in ages, as I can get all the popular crap on the radio and I feel justified in re-acquiring the CDs that I had previously purchased on the Internet. Whether due to my own incompetence or not, I'm not going to spend another $1000 dollars replenishing my lifetime collection of CDs.
I can only imagine how some of the older folks feel. Who the hell wants to replace their collection of records, tapes, 8-tracks, et cetera everytime a new medium is embraced by a bloated industry in order to SELL more copies. It's not about the music!
Viva la revolution!
P.S. XM is 12.99 a month, so it's not like I found the free solution, but it has the wonderful ratio of entertainment hours per monthly fee as those crack-like MMORPG games (UO, WoW, EQ...)
Parent article (Score:3, Informative)
here's a working link to the actual article (not blog) from the nominally subscription-only financial times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ed6dd08-970a-11dc-b2da-0000779fd2ac.html
- js.
The press misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
"believing instead that the near-ubiquitous practice of file-sharing can be abolished with more draconian copy protection mechanisms"
No no no. The people running record companies are not stupid. They're smarter than most people. They know they can't stop file sharing; it's impossible. But like all businesses, they invest money to protect revenue. DRM is not an attempt to stop copying, it's an attempt to shore up revenue.
To put it more simply, the record companies must believe they are better off revenue-wise putting on copy protection. If they spend $Z to get DRM on every CD, they'll stop X% piracy leading to $Y more revenue. If Y is greater than Z, then it makes sense to put on DRM. If Y is less than Z, then the DRM won't be put on.
It's really that simple.
!copyprotection (Score:5, Interesting)
We should call it what it is, which is Playback Prevention. That's what the technology does, it prevents playback. Both the consumers and the producers can agree that's what it does, although we will disagree about whether or not that's a good thing for technology to do.
Tag this story !copyprotection !drm playbackprevention.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For me I have to side with the parent poster, playback prevention communicates the message so quickly and easily that when inevitably members of our family ask us why their music won't play we can just say "ah, you bought the stuff with playback prevention...". It's a little political but thats just the way these things go...
MP3 Compatible??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now we have several more battles to fight; F/OSS software over propietary, breaking Microsoft's monopoly, net neutrality, copyright law reform, etc...
Let's get
Re:Good. Better. Best. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also worth remembering that more ISPs are throttling our bandwidth based upon the type of traffic. We may win a battle and still get creamed in the war.
It's important that we codify Net Neutrality right away. We have to press the issue now because although the Democrats are talking a good game at the moment (at least some of them), as soon as they take back the White House and increase their margins in Congress, they're gonna suddenly remember who paid for all their expensive election campaigns. Then, we're gonna see 'em go right back to giving Big Telco a backrub while the Internet becomes little more than a delivery system for our wealth to the corporations.
Honestly, if you're reading this, you've got a pretty fair understanding of how this thing works. You also know how to communicate and probably have a little money in your pocket, (even though you've been played by the best and have a hefty balance on that MasterCard from all those things you "need"). Chances are you're also younger than the US median. That all means you're prime candidates for exercising a little political power. Remember, politics is just social engineering, so your mad skillz are probably quite useful. Figure out who's really on your side and go to work, bitches. And don't sell yourselves cheap.
And bless you all you iconoclasts and free-thinkers this Thanksgiving Day. And tomorrow, instead of spending 20 bucks in gas to save 18 bucks on some geegaw (running up your MasterCard even further and increasing your Serfdom), spend some time learning how be become an insurgent in what may be our last battle for independence from total corporate control of our lives. And be good to one another - the best investment you can make is the one you make in family and friends.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also worth remembering that more ISPs are throttling our bandwidth based upon the type of traffic. We may win a battle and still get creamed in the war.
I doubt that. If the ISP industry moves to general bandwidth throttling and not allowing their customers to use what they're paying for, they will keep profits up for a little while, and then ultimately lose for exactly the same reasons Big Media's DRM-based strategy is doomed.
There are trivial technical ways to circumvent bandwidth shaping, just as there are trivial ways to circumvent DRM. If most ISPs impose restrictions then those who continue to provide what customers actually want at a realistic pr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except we have other options for getting music. How many options do you really have for getting connected to the Internet?
At the current rate of consolidation, we're soon going to have maybe 2 or 3 choices of ISP. Then, it's just a matter of us
Re: (Score:2)
Re:As a record store owner... (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought this should be obvious: people like music, so they buy music. But they don't like CDs, so they don't by them. Most people I know have a CD player somewhere, but it is collecting a layer of dust. They listen to music on the iPod, the mobile phone and the computer.
The problem with stores is that they are not very good in selling virtual goods. I think that web stores do a much better job for this.
> So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose?
The record industry already went the way of the Dodo, and the CD industry will follow soon. As usual, content survives, media don't.
As to the rest of your post: time to chill out, dude!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a pretty good observation. In my case, I do buy the CDs, after hearing stuff on digitalgunfire.com and rantradio.com that I didn't know about and want. Usually, it's an artist on Metropolis Records [www.metropolis-records] like And One, Funker Vogt, etc. that has never received a single minute of airplay in our top 50 population market. Even having switched to XM Radio since I can't stand the pathetically poor programming on our local stations, XM's variety doesn't cover this genre as muc
Re:As a record store owner... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason for anyone under 40 to buy a CD now is so they can rip it and put it onto their portable music device... Since record companies are trying hard to stop this, it means that less people will buy CDs. Anyone who does rip a CD is made to feel like a music pirate anyway - so they may as well go the whole hog and download it off the Internet - if you're a pirate for buying a CD and ripping it, why not be a pirate by downloading it, and save yourself a fortune at the same time.
Most people do NOT want to pirate music, but if that's the easiest way to get hold of the music to use as they want, that's what they'll use. If it cost £0.50 to buy a music track and was easy to do, and they could use it as they wanted (eg on all their music players) that's what most people would do - especially if they knew that £0.40 went to the artist/composer, rather than £0.01 to them, and the rest to the record label.
The problem with any 'how much piracy is around' surveys today is that they are looking at the situation today, when it's really hard to get a useful downloaded music track legitimately, and it's even harder to find a decent CD. So, people almost HAVE to pirate music to get what they want. Fix that, and there'd be less piracy.
Parent
Re:As a record store owner... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:There's no DRM on CD's... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD#Copy_protection [wikipedia.org]
Parent