UK Music Retailers Beg, Drop the DRM 219
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.
Not in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
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...".
Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:1, Insightful)
Digital music sales *would* increase if the music was DRM-free, becasue I would start buying my music that way, and an increase of one is still an increase.
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.
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.
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Nothing to see here... (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 were buying a copyable CD. Doesn't that suck?"
Eventually, enough people will be annoyed, and start asking for and buying DRM free music. The fact that 2 major record companies are offering DRM free music (for the moment) is a good sign.
The key is to win this battle now before a generation grows up with restricted music. That is the main problem trying to get people outraged with proprietary software. People are used to the idea of buying software and having it locked down. For all intents and purposes, it's always been that way.
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.
Re:Good luck indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As a record store owner... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
There's no DRM on CD's... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about you guys but when I go to a record store, be it a small independent store or a chain like HMV, Virgin, Sanity etc, and buy an album I can do whatever I want with it. I can copy it, I can rip it into .mp3, FLAC, .aac etc etc for any music player I might have. I buy quite alot of music varied from old school jazz to new rock, indie, hip-hop, metal and I'm yet to encounter any forms of Digital Rights Management ie. I've never been restricted from doing what I like to music on a legitimately purchased CD.
So the ERA arguing that DRM is costing them in sales is just passing the buck. Maybe people aren't buying more new music because they don't like it?
Re:Don't know about the UK... (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 better reached for most people with files distributed online than with CDs. Just think, with many CD sales today, all that will happen is that many people will bring them home, rip them, and put them on their favorite mp3 player. It's not even an argument about anything for most consumers but cutting out the work. I mean the above process and actually driving to the store and back, as well.
Many people want to minimize the price argument, but it has a significant impact. It always has and always will. Whether you download just to see if you like the music or download to save money, we can't pretend it doesn't happen. It would be a similiar situation if they had devices that can copy anything perfectly (not just digital content) - would people go out and pay money for steak if they can have a perfect copy made at home for essentially free?
This isn't to argue against the online model, but discussing the inevitable. Artifical mark-ups cannot be sustained indefinitely. We are only seeing the beginning of a digital revolution on marketplaces and I suspect no one will really know where it ultimately ends up - and no, iTunes is not it. That is a temporary gateway at best, suppliers and customers, in a way they are familiar and comfortable with. It can't and won't last with a free theatre down the street.
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.
Re:There's no DRM on CD's... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD#Copy_protection [wikipedia.org]
Re:As a record store owner... (Score:1, Insightful)
Optical Media == Buggy Whip
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.
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:2, Insightful)
Radiohead have shown everybody the way with In Rainbows.
Die, Die, Die My Darling ....... Death to the record industry, Long live the music industry.
Re:Don't know about the UK... (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-pop ISPs eventually closed their doors too. I think I'll blame the music stores to destroying the ISP business model. Why would you want Internet if you can just go to a store and buy your music ?
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.
Re:As a record store owner... (Score:2, Insightful)
> 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.
I heartily agree with this statement. I recently downloaded an album (a decent -preset fast standard VBR MP3 rip, located with mininova) and I like it a lot. I would love to be able to buy this album online in the same or similar format - as always, the artist deserves remuneration for their work. However, the only format available for purchase online is AAC on iTunes. I don't have iTunes installed and I don't want to install it, I don't want DRM and I don't want to have to transcode lossy to lossy (my Sony MP3 player is great, but it doesn't play AAC).
So I'm stuck - I don't really need the CD (which would cost me about $22) but buying the album on iTunes (for $9.99) gets me an undesirable media type. Thus the only reason I would buy the album online would be to get some cash to the artist, essentially in appreciation. If I did this by buying the iTunes version, though, I'd still be using unlicenced media (the MP3s). On top of all that it is still not lawful to transcode a CD to another format here in Australia, so I simply cannot win.
Clearly the music distribution industry needs to do better to provide a simple and effective way to get music licenced (read: paid for), optionally converted from WAV/CDDA into the format I want (if not FLAC), and into my possession.
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. Better. Best. (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 price will have a competitive advantage, just as is the case with DRM. It will start slow may get bad before it gets better, but eventually large numbers of people will understand how they're being screwed, just as with DRM.
The only major difference is that providing high bandwidth really does have a significant marginal cost for the ISPs, so people who think paying 20 quid a month for "up to 8MB" broadband and effectively unlimited bandwidth is realistic are in for a nasty shock. It won't be economic to support that service at that price when everyone starts wanting to use it for real, and no amount of consumer whining will make commercial ISPs offer a service long-term when that service is loss-making. I expect that we'll see some stratification in the offerings from the ISP industry, with providers offering packages for light, moderate and heavy use, but with prices to match.
We might also see a return to metered charging, though obviously at much lower rates than in the old modem days. That in turn would lead to pressure for ISPs to do more about the spam problem and malware so people's allowance wasn't wasted, which would be no bad thing either.
Anyway, the bottom line is that for this sort of issue, the market is mightier than the courts. Consumers will always win this sort of battle for as long as necessary, because ultimately they control the purse strings (and no amount of ISP lobbying is going to get governments who want to be re-elected to impose obviously punitive taxation policies on their electorate for very long).
Re:Don't know about the UK... (Score:1, Insightful)
go find an album worth listening to, procure it in vinyl form, and listen to it without distraction in its entirety. there are still those of us who enjoy music, rather than asstunnels who feel they just need a soundtrack for their life. you cannot listen to and enjoy music while one ear is tuned to the local news on TV and your eyes are busy reading some dreg on the internet.
music is dying because the art of music is dying. it's being killed by idiots who prefer to fill a 100+ gig ipod with shit they got for free, yet never *truly* listen to.
Re:!copyprotection (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...
Re:Good. Better. Best. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 using the MS/Apple model of a binary choice of getting fucked or screwed. The whole point of corporate consolidation is to limit the consumers' choices. Then, they can do whatever the hell they want. You're dreaming. There is no such thing as "the market". All that's there is corporate power setting the rules. The only power we can exercise is to not play the game.