Fighting Music Piracy with Glue

Scott Granneman writes: "The New York Times (Free Blah-di-blah) is reporting that Epic Records, in an effort to prevent reviewers from creating mp3s or even playing the preview CD in anything they don't control, is not disseminating the new Pearl Jam and Tori Amos CDs inside Sony Walkman players that are glued shut. Oh yeah ... the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any authorized output. A low-tech answer to a high-tech issue."

Ed.

[dr_strang]

Let me edit this to make it actually make some sense :

"The New York Times (Free Blah-di-blah) is reporting that Epic Records, in an effort to prevent reviewers from creating mp3s or even playing the preview CD in anything they don't control, is now disseminating the new Pearl Jam and Tori Amos CDs inside Sony Walkman players that are glued shut. Oh yeah ... the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any unauthorized output. A low-tech answer to a high-tech issue."

a tad too carried away...

[koldcuts]

this had me scared for a moment before i read and realize this is being done to albums that are being reviewed, not purchased by consumers. and what's to stop a critic from throwing the cd player on the floor in a violent manner to miraculously break it and reveal the precious intellectual property within?

not new...

[apidya]

why is this remarkable? record companies have been doing this for years?

if i recall correctly, emi distributed walkmans with copies of Radiohead's OK Computer album glued into them, back in 1997. and i belive this was by no means the first time the idea had been used.

the cost of several hundred (or even thousand) cheap cd walkmans is hardly going to eat into a multinational record companies bottom line.

Re:nothing new

[malus]

i guess i forgot to mention, too, that the Reviewers have to send the walkman back, undamagaed, unmolested, if they want to get interviews, etc.

Re:Wire cutters and some speaker wire...

[mjpaci]

Nothing. However, then they would know that there was an attempt at access. To them, clipping the wires is the same as breaking the case to get to the CD. Think about it. If Sony gets the Walkman back with any kind of damage, then they have a good idea where to look when the CD shows up online before it is released.

--Mike

tinny sound

[nath_o_brien]

How can a music reviewer be expected to give a favourable review solely by listening to the said CDs on a Walkman?

All the Walkmans I've owned have given the music a really tinny sound - even the supposedly decent quality ones.

Even if they hooked up the output to a proper speakers, they still probably wouldn't get the quality you would get from a good stereo set up - which these guys would be used to.

Not the first time this has been done.

[Andy Smith]

This has been done before. In 1998, preview copies of Radiohead's album "OK Computer" were sent out in sealed cassette players. And in 2000, preview copies of "Kid A" were sent out in an encrypted format on Sony VAIO digital players.

More info: http://www.followmearound.com/press/083.html [followmearound.com]

Re:Other ideas to ensure they're not distributed

[DominiqueChanet]

Pay Tori to personally visit each reviewer with a guitar and play her songs.
mmmh... maybe you haven't thought about this, but Tori plays the piano, _not_ the guitar! It would be quite funny seeing her carrying around a whole piano though...

This is the stupidest thing I ever heard...

[Anonymous Coward]

When are these people going to learn? As long as it can be heard by the human ear, it can be recorded. It's that simple. I KNOW IT'S NOT A DIGITAL COPY!! (The analog to digital conversion will cause loss of quality to a degree. The degree of loss depends on the equipment and skill of the person doing the conversion.) But honestly, do you really think someone who is downloading an MP3 quality file off the Internet using P2P software is going to care? I'd bet my bottom dollar 95% of the population wouldn't know the difference even if you told them.

NYT: Epic Records Takes Steps to Seal ...

[Anonymous Coward]

September 16, 2002
Epic Records Takes Steps to Seal Its Newest Music
By CHRIS NELSON

The Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Music, is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music's being traded online with an even stickier solution.

Writers receiving review copies of two soon-to-be-released albums -- Tori Amos's "Scarlet's Walk" and Pearl Jam's "Riot Act" -- are finding the CD's already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut. Headphones are also glued into the players, to prevent connecting the Walkman to a recording device.

By locking up the discs, Epic hopes to keep writers from converting the music to MP3's that can then be traded over the Net. But even a "glueman" player is unlikely to deter a diehard critic.

"I'm a pretty big Pearl Jam fan," said Bart Blasengame, a staff writer at Details magazine who was sent one of the contraptions with "Riot Act" inside. "I brought this discman home with me, and I found a way you could go in the back of the CD and, like, pop it open. So I got the actual disc out."

Mr. Blasengame said he had no intention of making MP3's . "At the same time, if I want to give it a proper review, I'm going to listen to it how I want to listen to it -- and in my stereo is where it sounds best," he said.

For several years, prerelease music has turned up online before it reaches stores, distributed without permission by journalists, radio employees, record company employees or other sources. This July, for example, a six-song sampler from Ms. Amos's upcoming album was shipped to writers the old-fashioned way. The songs soon appeared on file-sharing services like WinMX.

The Recording Industry Association of America blames Internet music-sharing for declines in CD sales, though proponents of MP3 trading dispute the group's arguments.

A Sony spokeswoman confirmed that the glued players were being used to combat piracy, but would not talk about their effectiveness or responses from writers.

This is not the first time prerelease music has received the glue treatment. Gil Kaufman, a freelance journalist in Cincinnati, said he owns a prerelease copy of Radiohead's 1997 album "OK Computer" that is glued into an Aiwa player -- an Aiwa analog cassette deck. That makes MP3 conversions a bit more difficult.

Re:Wire cutting

[dietz]

Then when reviewer returns the walkman with cut wires, Epic Records can ream them for being naughty pirates.

Uhm, generally you don't return promo copies of CDs. That's why can almost always find them (marked "NOT FOR RESALE") at your favorite used CD store. (Not the national chains, who often won't buy them, but at smaller local stores).

I doubt they'd make them return a CD player that had been glue shut, either. What good would it be to Sony if you can't even get it open? It would just be a lot of work for the reviewers and the label.