The Sony/MP3 Saga Continues

Renegade Lisp writes "Sony's rolling out their new line of flash-based music players to the market these days. More stylish than ever, they surely look like a serious attempt to regain territory lost to the iPod, and perhaps even to create the Walkman of the 21st century. And it looks like Sony has finally given in to consumer pressure: these new "MP3 players" can finally play MP3 natively, not just Sony's proprietary ATRAC format. But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever. Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a brave hacker. But is this really the way to create the "Network Walkman" of the 21st century? Sony, please wake up!"

CD based MP3 player's don't obfuscate

[Anonymous Coward]

Their CD based MP3 players require no such obfuscation scheme.

Shoot in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

They try so hard, sooo hard becoming what they once were. But oh why, do they have to shoot themselves in the foot by "obfuscate" their player

Re:Egh

[TheRealMindChild]

Sony is notorious for coming up with useful, and often superior technology, while at the same time ignoring the actual markets demands that they are targeting.

See betamax and minidiscs

DRM

[Cow007]

Just furthers the case that DRM is bad for everybody. Bad for companies, bad for consumers, bad for artists. Don't get me wrong there is a good motivation behind not wanting free copying of copyrighted media but requiring somebody to encrypt something to listen to it when they have it locally unencrypted on there computer serves no end but to make people less interested in the product. The best way to prevent large scale piracy is to offer a value added product. Pay the money and get good quality music on a CD, rip it yourself and get to keep the pretty pictures. Its all about making something that people WANT to purchase and make it worth the money to do so.

Truly beautiful pieces of tech

[spyrral]

Not sure how much anyone here cares about the styling of their music player, but I think Sony has leapfrogged Apple in terms of design. The pictures on Sony's site don't do them justice. For one thing, the OLED display is embedded under the surface of the player, so you don't see the display unless it's on (and glowing through the metallic surface). It actually looks futuristic, instead of the chinsy pseudo-futuristic look sony has been selling us for years now.

Re:And furthermore

[gmajor]

Good point. Maybe Sony is deluded into thinking that its brand image makes it more desirable than Apple?

(Among an older crowd this may certainly be true. All things being equal, if my father were to choose between an Apple mp3 player and Sony mp3 player, I am confident he would choose Sony)

Re:You People don't get it

[MagicMike]

You ignore the cases where the manufacturer / service provider ceases to exist (or ceases doing business with you, a la BitMover) and you lose access to the content (either slowly as hardware dies and software succumbs to entropy, or quickly if something like Steam goes away)

Open content formats are the only way to be sure you can access your content, period. Anything else requires trust, and I don't trust corporations because our interests are always in conflict.

Doesn't seem odd to me to want to be sure you can access your content, so it seems reasonable to demand open formats.

"Illegal Activity" is a red herring, and something of the Godwin's Law of copyright arguments.

Re:They're part of the RIAA, are you surprised?

[stlhawkeye]

Troublesome, isn't it? I want so much to embrace Sony, a big warm fuzzy company that makes neat stuff that works. Happy Fun Sony! Good Sony!

I bet their internal board meetings are a riot. On one side you've got their hardware guys who don't want to spend their R&D money and waste time/resources on redesigning and rebuilding playback devices that have worked just fine for years to respect the mandated DRM that the RIAA is trying to get into the law books.

Then you've got the label people pushing Sony's attorneys and reps at the RIAA to get this legislation done!

You've got Sony's legal department sending letters to people using Sony's laptops to rip MP3s of songs owned by a Sony label from their Sony DiscMan. And people becoming felons by violating the DMCA when they bypass the copy protection included on Sony CDs. They're violating the copy protection by using hardware produced by ... Sony. It's like a weird hybrid of a Kevin Smith movie and the Twilight Zone.

Just get a Rio

[DarkMantle]

I personally have a Rio MP3 player. Called the Rio Karma. [digitalnetworksna.com] It's small, functional and does something most MP3 players don't. Supports the Open Source OGG format. When comparison shopping OGG was a requirement, since I didn't want to re-rip most of my music collection. iPod, Sony, RCA, and Creative MP3 players don't support OGG/Vorbis, Rio and iRiver do, and Rio has more features on the player, such as the DJ which can play your favorite (most played) songs from any Genre you want. Or have it select songs for you from all genres. It even *Attempts* to go from heavy music, to slightly "lighter" music and then build back up so you're not going from Slayer to Goo Goo Dolls back to back.

Re:Egh

[DarkHelmet]

I seriously doubt you own 40 legit gigs

You'd be surprised how many free, legal songs there are on the net. Oh, but you'd know this if you were doing stuff other than downloading RIAA Stuff, right?

For instance, my Overclocked Remix [ocremix.org] folder is 4.88 gig. These are mostly 128kbps mp3s.

My backups folder of CDs I own is 6.81 gig.

Also, it just so happens that having a larger player allows one to encode stuff in higher than 128kbps quality.

Anyhow, I'd like to type more, but morons like you have already cost me enough of my life and regret even firing off this response. :/

Poor, poor you. My heart goes out to you :P

Re:And furthermore

[X_Caffeine]

re: And I don't think I need to specify which player ... looks more stylish.

The Sony? Cause after a few months of handling that iPod shuffle is gonna look like a 12-year-old beige keyboard.

(don't get me wrong, I'm totally sold on iPod line, but the Sony gumsticks don't look bad at all and that OLED is slick)

The IPod Killer the P2P pod?

[LWATCDR]

Makes me wonder if that could be the IPod killer will be the first MP3 Player that has WiFI, Bluetooth, or UWB USB built it.
When you walk down the street it talks to any other P2P Pod and exchanges songs.
All a new band would have to do is walk around a major city or college with a few of it's tunes on their pod :)

Re:And iPods do the same thing.

[matuscak]

Not really. From the article, Sony actually re-writes the MP3 files with a bunch of header crap and strips out some of the ID frames inside the body of the MP3. What Apple has done is a file naming scheme (probably for file system performance) with an index file. The actual MP3 files are untouched.

Re:Egh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because I'm constantly running into spots where I'm going "damn, I wish I could record this." What the hell?! Are you an DEA or FBI agent? A concert bootlegger? No? Then you don't fscking need a microphone. It's just another one of those features that dipshits use to rationalize their purchase, because it sucks so much ass that you're forced to rationalize spending that much for so little. "(takes a big drag) Duuuuuuuude, I wish I had brought my laptop to plug into the soundboard. Hey! Man, I can use my MP3 player and get a poor-sounding recording with no editing/queing/level/etc. capabilities! Boy am I glad I bought this thing!"

FM Radio? A radio?!? FFS, I have an AM/FM/CD changer system in my car. I gave up on that RIAA-driven playlist / formulaic shock jock radio crap over 8 years ago. Literally the only things I listen to, and it's at most once every 6 months, is either an AM newsradio station or NPR. I listen to one of them until I get to wherever I'm going, but the next time I get in the car I switch back to my changer full of mix CDs.

I want to hear My Music. Replacing my changer with an iPod would make perfect sense for people like me. And frankly, based on the number of people I've seen listening to the radio recently, I'd say we compromise the vast majority of potential customers. The only people left listening to AM/FM are the poor souls who bought a base model w/o a CD player of any kind. That's why radio is in a freefall.

The only reason I haven't bought an MP3 player is:
1) I'm cheap. Can't really afford an iPod. Or any MP3 player for that matter.
2) I want a useful car interface. Using the MP3 controls is like trying to use a cell phone while driving - they're designed to require too much concentration and interaction. The iPod2Car adapter seems the best but I want to see it in action (with a head unit similar to mine) before spending the equivalent of an iPod on a fscking interface.

To be honest I'd really love it if someone added MP3 CD-ROM playback to a CD changer. It should be relatively inexpensive and would give you 6+ discs of 99 tracks each. (sigh) A monkey can dream...

The music/movie side is winning

[acomj]

This article [bradenton.com] talks about the demotion of the hardware guy Ken Kutaragi. People thought he might be the next CEO. Instead he was demoted (lost his seat on the board) and one of the reasons is he had the gall to say "Sony also has been hurt by its insistence on making its content proprietary"

More links to same story [google.com]

Very very sad. Explains what happened to the MD which could have been a great format...

Re: eMusic, for instance

[harmoniousness]

Absolutely. However, while Sony madly orbiting planet DRM, there are some companies that are doing stuff for the rest of us Earthlings.

I'd like to plug, for instance, eMusic [emusic.com], a subscription service for non-DRM mp3s ($10 fer 40 downloads per month). Their catalog isn't too bad, although it is heavy on the stuff that, um, doesn't sell well otherwise. But if you like Jazz, or bands like Big Star or Yo La Tengo, it's fantastic.

Most of the stuff comes from small labels, of course.

Now if I could just play it on a decent non-DRM HD based player, with a great user interface, that's also a portable data drive, Earth would be the best planet ever. Hey! That's like something Sony would've made, in the old days...

Re:CD based MP3 player's don't obfuscate

[angle_slam]

Not true in the US. It is true in Canada, though.

Re:This story is a TROLL

[Renegade Lisp]

Yes, the new models have the same DRM. Sorry for not providing an official link, but there are no official reviews for these new players yet; they've been barely out a few days. But I know for sure that it is that way: I bought an NW-E407 yesterday, verified that it has the same DRM features (you cannot just drag and drop MP3s on them, you have to go through the SonicStage software, and after that, you'll see obfuscated files under strange names on the unit).

I promptly returned the device to the dealer. And I got so angry about it that I submitted a Slashdot story. It got accepted. And rightly so!

Re:MiniDisc was a great format

[lowrydr310]

The only pain with MD players is in making and carrying the MDs. Takes time and space. Usually one converts the favorites into MD's and tugs a couple in pocket - but they're BIG by todays standards. Much easier to keep to collection on puter, then quickly copy some shit on either some portable POS, or keep some stuff on an iPod.

I guess one possibility would be to make a player that uses interchangable XD or SD cards, however with the ever-increasing density of flash chips and the shrinking size of the players there's no need for a removable card. The iPod shuffle isn't much bigger than a minidisc (not the minidisc player but the disc itself)

I often use my MD player to record live DJ sets of myself and friends when we play out. Does anyone make a portable flash recorder that has line inputs? I know my Creative Muvo records, but only through the microphone at terrible quality. Many friends of mine who are also DJs now just bring along a tiny laptop and record continuously to the HD.

See also: Firewire

[lullabud]

Coincidentally, Sony and Apple were two of the leaders of the Firewire/iLink push even though the 1394 market was less obvious than the digital music market, which puts both adversaries in the same boat. Nobody can rationally doubt that Apple has beaten it's 1394 partner this time around since Sony is poorly playing catchup in a market that Apple has defined. I also have to say that FP guy is going a bit overboard on his judgment of the iPod. For one, the iPod shuffle has an auto-fill option that does exactly what it says, removing any replay action. And even if you don't have an iPod shuffle with its auto-fill trick there are plenty of ways to make up for it using smart playlists which happen to be database queries based against the iTunes Music Database. (You didn't think iTunes and the iPod were simply music players did you?) There is even a site dedicated to techniques for effective smart-playlist usage [smartplaylists.com] (though that's no surprise since there are sites for anything) which directly correlates to heightened iPod enjoyability since you have the ability to sync certain playlists to your iPod automatically. The iPod is a very good front-end to a music databasing system which is robust, easy to use, and works well for the majority of people who want to listen to their music and who do not have esoteric or clandestine old-school technology fetishes or a passionate desire for a dumb (as in feature-poor), manual-update drag-and-drop music player. Even though Sony and Apple pioneered 1394 together it looks as though Sony is only partially (not at all?) clued in as to what makes a whole Digital Music Player solution. It's not just the player.

In all honesty, I feel exactly the opposite.

[mdarksbane]

What music player do you use instead on windows? WinAmp? I can't stand the interface. I practically jumped for joy when Apple released iTunes for PC, not because I had been annoyed by my third-party ipod-syncing tools, but because it mean I could finally stop rummaging through the dumpster that is the windows MP3 player market.

I tried about five different players, and none of them came close to iTunes simplicity and ease of use. I don't care if it takes up some memory - I usually have plenty free anyway. I care about the fact that winamp, the best other player I found, looks and acts like crap no matter how you skin it because no one making skins understands anything about user interface.

iTunes isn't even my favorite player on the mac, or wasn't - the soundjam it used to be before apple bought it honestly was. I still miss some of its random little features. But honestly, I'd like to hear what you would replace iTunes with that is so great.

Re:Just get a Rio

[stlthVector]

Are your sure you've done your homework? That's a bold statment. The iRiver players are extreamly feature rich. I have a 40GB precolor model. It's the most feature rich I've ever heard of.It has:
- optical and analog in and out
- built in or external mic
- records direct to mp3 or wav
- supports use of a monitor while recording
- records up to 175MB or 5 hours per file
- using winamp playlists
- views text files while music is playing
- can delete files on the device
- can format the hard drive
- can mark sections of a song to loop
- will let you define the amount of time you skip at a time in a song
- of course the fm tuner

I'm sure I'm missing some but most people don't know about alot of these features. A few were added in the latest software update.

I'm glad you like your Rio. For me, the iRiver is the only option.

I agree the ipod is useless for geeks - no extra features and actually less than the bare minimum if you ask me. You don't want me to get started on the Shuffle - that's one of the most stupid products I've ever seen.