CD burning Will Never Be The Same 352
mooneyguy writes: "Reuters is reporting that EMI has just announced a partnership with Roxio (you know, the "toast" and "Easy CD Creator" folks). They have also bought a minority stake in the company. The potential impact here is scary. Roxio's Duea is quoted: 'Our goal is to enable consumers to legally download and record music to CD in a consumer-friendly manner while fairly compensating copyright owners and creators...' What changes now are forthcoming in their software to force this "fair compensation"? And how far will those changes penetrate throughout the industry? This can't be good for the consumer. Roxio has also come forth with a press release announcing this partnership. In it they announce "EMI will work to develop ways for consumers to easily record authorized music onto recordable CDs" and, even better, 'We want to continue to work with leaders in the music industry, like EMI, to not only provide for the protection of their digital content, but also to enable record companies and artists to get paid for burning.' Yikes!" Anybody else notice how stores like Walmart and Target are pushing the Music CD-Rs more and more? Hmmmm.
Looks to me like ... (Score:2)
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
Freedom != buying absolute property rights fallacy (Score:2)
Does the name Thomas Jefferson ring a bell? He believed in freedom, but certainly not in anything like the Ayn Rand speech you are giving. Among other things, he wrote that ideas could not, in nature, be a subject of property. U.S. copyright law is grounded in the philosophy of him and others like him who believed that all published works must ultimately belong to the public, that Government may grant limited-time monopolies as an incentive to produce more works, but that those monopolies are not a recognition of any form of natural property right.
Re:Quality? (Score:2)
I also want to point out that this is all from bands that allow taping, and there's a bunch of great stuff out there thats totaly legal. From the E-tree's home page...
"You can find nearly every band that allows taping in the jambands community on etree.org, including Phish, The Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, The Slip, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Umphrey's McGee, The Big Wu, Amfibian and The New Deal."
and there's more bands there and of course there are other similar places too.
I have a ton of mp3's and frankly I really don't care about them all that much because of the sound degredation. sure it was fun too collect them, but in retrospect, I wouldn't do it again. Not only because I feel kind of guilty about what I now see as stolen, but because the quality is just not there. Even the files I have made myself (I've used several, my fave being Lame with the Razor front-end) just don't sound as good on my system, I can easily hear the difference. But I probley still won't part with the ones I have....
"live music is better, bumper stickers should be issued" Neil Young
Re:Easy! (Score:3)
"Sony is in the RIAA. They're evil. Boycott them."
"Sony is in the MPAA. They're evil. Boycott them."
"Oh, look, Sony has the PS2! I've got to go buy one right now!"
Next Logical Step (Score:5)
Yes, BUT!!! (Score:2)
Easy CD Creator adamantly refuses to burn to audio-only CD-Rs anyway, and has since at least the later Adaptec versions. It's a horrid piece of shit.
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
Re:It's hard to squeeze toothpaste back into the t (Score:2)
My primary concern is always, "I make my own music. Do I have the technical and legal capability to record and copy it to industry-standard media that I can distribute?"
Well, I already _have_ a CD burner, and even if all future CD writers refused to write a byte without me paying money for authorization to burn a _specific_ _RIAA_ song, I would still have my CD burner, and there are others out there if mine broke.
Plus, Red Book is a very well-established format, and there's so much of it out there that it's impossible to deprecate at this point. It's only just gotten to the point where quality rivals top-end analog systems: modern dithering is a thing of wonder. So not only can I be confident that I will be able to find a (not necessarily new!) CD burner, but I will also have the capacity to burn disks that are consumer-ready. CD audio's going to be supported for a _long_ time. Digital means you can support a lot of different formats- someday we'll have 27 terabyte disks that also play all DVD formats and _also_ play good old Audio CDs. It's just too easy and useful to add the support, to skip it. That means that all future disk-based playback decks are likely to support the format I can write.
This article is alarming, but it's a false alarm. If they do that it'll be about as commercially successful as pay-per-download Napster.
They'd have to mobilize legislation and basically destroy anyone who makes an unrestricted burner or unrestricted burning software. There are way too many other purposes for a burner to make that remotely feasible. They're NOT just for music CDs- and the standard Red Book is not a restricted format. Those music CDs are for _standalone_ burners that are intentionally crippled, the playing back needs no such special media to work.
It's meme time again: assuming that we _have_ already got the word out that 'music' CDRs are simply CDRs to work with crippleware standalone burners (pay more, for no extra functionality or fidelity AT ALL), we now have to also get the word out that the new Toast is merely a 'downgrade' taking away functionality that was previously there. And I can't wait to see exactly how they intend to implement this! Should be good for a laugh.
This is assuming they even get that far.
If _I_ was EMI, here's what I'd do. I'd figure out some way of pushing the _existing_ software out there- bundle it, price-cut it, whatever- with NO restriction, but with a timebomb built into it. Then, at some future time, the software switches to a mode where in order to burn an audio CD or audio track, it does an analysis (fingerprint) of the audio and refers to an online verification site that charges you. If you don't pay and get the verification, no burn! This also has the advantage that if YOU make music, you no longer have the capability to burn your own CDs. Better get signed with EMI if you expect to hear yourself on a CD boy! This would be not a side-effect but an intended effect of the authorisation process. For more fun, you can have the burner refuse to burn the other record companies' songs, and only make CDs from EMI, so you'd have to get five burners! :D
But then I _am_ a complete bastard when I set my mind to it :)
Re:The Real Problems with 'compensation' etc... (Score:2)
Problem 1 is GOOD. This is a GOOD THING! Please oh please, let them do this! The only real danger is that the big five _will_ hold together as a cartel and cooperate! I would much rather they fight and cause hardware vendors to release misleadingly named special crippled devices (How about the "Complete Music Collection Initiative CD Burner"? Will only burn EMI's releases, for a small payment. Anything else, no go...)
We should _beg_ them to do this. It would totally destroy the commercial potential of those devices, those burners, those initiatives. If we can get the Big Five backbiting each other and using the technological restrictions ON EACH OTHER, we'll have it made. That would backfire viciously and do them considerable damage...
GO FOR IT ROXIO! Make your burner so it will only burn EMI content at a dollar a song! Release a different model with different firmware for each of the Big Five, collect the whole set! Make consumers have to learn which multinational conglomerate really owns Prawn Song or Swan Song or whatever little vanity label that's supposed to look all indie and stuff! RIP OFF THE VEIL!
*G* *G* *G* *G* *G* (oh, how I hope they're fools enough to do this...)
Re:That all depends (Score:2)
It's going to be impossibly hard to keep _you_ from having the capability to burn your CDs, as long as you have a fairly minor ability to hunt down the proper tool for it. The concern is more for your Aunt Mary who only uses AOL and doesn't understand these things. It would be nice if she, too, had the capacity to make mix CDs without being penalized for not being as savvy as you. Think of it as consumer protection.
Re:it's a conspiracy! (Score:2)
The conclusion is there is NO demand for 'music' CDRs. ANY presence of 'music' CDRs in stores is a scam. The whole concept is a scam from the beginning, and if anyone suggests they 'sound better' they need a quick refresher on digital audio (technically, what would affect the sound would be burst errors, and 'music' CDRs offer NO advantage whatsoever on that score)
The only reason 'music' CDRs are in the stores at all, much less being (at some times) the ONLY brand name CDRs you can buy (I've seen this in Radio Shack at times) is because _somebody_ is pushing them on the channel, and you're seeing them because some people are smart enough or price-sensitive enough to buy the 'data' kind and use that. Surprise surprise, it works perfectly (expect computer CD burners to begin refusing to burn audio onto 'data' CDs... but the trick is, how's the burner gonna know the difference? It's the software that would know).
When most people would rather buy 'data' for cheaper, and don't want to buy 'music', the stores end up with lots of 'music' CDRs sitting around, which is what you see. You may even end up buying them if you're desperate for media and there's no 'data' left. But really, it would be better if you left the 'music' CDRs to rot on the shelf, and walked out of the place.
After asking the management if they have any 'data' CDRs, maybe asking them to carry more of the 'data' kind and noting that they do double duty as audio CDs. But don't expect to have your request listened to... these guys are all pretty armtwisted. Don't make the error of thinking we have a free market here :) it's all too easy to control. Next time you're in the store, _count_ how many 'data' and how many 'music' there are. See if you're offered the choice of 'music' CDR, or going to find another store hoping they too are not 'out of stock'. Which is a nice euphemism for "We're not allowed to carry too many of those because people buy them instead of the music CDRs".
Out of curiosity, does anyone working in retail have any idea of the ordering requirements? For instance, I am wondering if at any time the music CDRs are BUNDLED- as in, the store HAS to buy equal amounts of each to do business with the supplier. That would cause the result we see. What's it look like from the viewpoint of store inventory and purchasing? Anybody have hard data here? Maybe there's price breaks if you buy a certain amount of 'music' CDRs?
Re:CD-Rs in DVD players (Score:2)
Re:Have they EVER succeeded? (Score:2)
When you combine these things, it becomes very easy to download a music file and burn an audio CD of it. It's also easy to take a microphone and record your baby's first words and burn an audio CD of it. The permissible uses are just too wide-ranging- it'd be impossibly hard to stamp out all the methods used to copy RIAA stuff, so they have to focus on the specific businesses that are out there obviously doing things with RIAA stuff without asking.
Re:Music CD-Rs? (Score:2)
The only difference in 'music' CDRs is the price, and the fact that there's a small additional area with data to enable crippleware standalone CD writers to be authorised. If you have a player that doesn't work with audio CDs from CDRs, it won't work with 'music' CDRs either. There's no performance gain.
Re:rip, mix, burn! (Score:2)
Or would you prefer the consumer NOT to be told to take advantage of the freedom and flexibility of digital media? 'sitdown-shutup-consume'? That's fine, but I think 'rip-mix-burn' has more sales appeal, frankly >:)
Re:What's the difference...? (Score:2)
You _cannot_ have a new generation of CD players refuse to play 'data' CDs, because that would make them also refuse to play all legacy CDs. The extra information is for consumer standalone _burners_. Players don't care about that part.
You can cripple burners, but an uncrippled burner will produce discs that will play on all players, excepting those that can't read the dye layer. The difference is the price and the ability to work with crippleware standalone burners- and possibly with a new generation of PC software/burner combinations.
I don't think you can block CD writing in the burner itself- I think you have to control the software, too. Even with a crippleware burner that's ready to check for the 'music' header area, the software will still have to check for that and give thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Hence, EMI/Roxio. And much good may it do them... ;)
Re:And what legitimite gripe do you have? (Score:2)
This implicit assumption that the only audio recording anyone wants to do is to record big-name pop music is arrogant, rude, and obviously designed to destroy the small-time up-and-coming labels. This reminds me of the way corps are portrayed in Cyberpunk-genre sci-fi. I used to think that stuff was fiction.
The industry tends to prevent fair use. (Score:5)
I have zero confidence in the industry's ability (or more important, their willingness) to produce a solution that repsects this fair use type of copying. Those a**holes would love to make fair use a thing of the past. If they can't do it by changing the law, they'll do it by ruining all the available tools.
Normally, that wouldn't matter. I'd just say, "Screw them, I'll use my own burning software". The specs are public, there's a plethora of CD burner software. But the badly worded DMCA will make those tools become illegal because they "circumvent" a protection scheme, even if that protection scheme wasn't invented until after the fact, and even if that protection scheme is so badly implemented that ignoring it is acutally the default if your software wasn't written to notice it.
CD-Rs in DVD players (Score:2)
Re:Sell, sell, sell! (Score:2)
Companies that make alliances with Microsoft get screwed. Companies that get bought by Microsoft do just fine.
As an example. Microsoft is planning on bundling their own CD burning software with Windows XP. Can you imagine what this will do to the value of Roxio's CD burning software? Somehow I can't imagine that the alliance with Microsoft worked out well for Roxio.
I repeat. Companies that make alliances with Microsoft get screwed.
Re:This is good, unless you're into stealing... (Score:3)
In a state of perfect freedom, *everyone* can disseminate works, provided that they have them. In a state of total oppression, only the creator can disseminate works - others have the ability to, as granted by God, and the natural right to, which we call Freedom of Speech, but the exercise of their rights and abilities are denied them by an interfering authority.
Your freedom is oppression, and your oppression is freedom.
That said, there may be, and in fact _are_ socially desirable consequences of enacting a carefully devised and moderate system wherein rights are circumscribed, but it is impossible to call this freedom. It's just practical - don't flaunt it as anything but.
The real point of copyright is not to enshrine natural moral rights artists posess, since there simply are none. It is to encourage artists to create as many useful works as possible, in order that they may be freely used without regard to the artist. A temporary and limited monopoly on certain instances of dissemination is granted to the artist, but it is a means to an end, and never ever an end in itself.
And even then, the real system is not like you describe. Artists do not have absolute rights to dictate how their works are disseminated. No artist can rightfully deny a fair use of their work. (such as its inclusion within a transformative work) No artist can rightfully prevent their work from entering the public domain, whereupon the limits that people willingly suffer are lifted.
And certainly this isn't a matter of stealing - it's a matter of copyright infringement, which could also be considered illegally exercising natural rights to which only the copyright holder and his designees have permission to exercise. (roughly)
Ideas are not property. Even works are not property, though the medium they are within may - _may_ - be. A book is property; the words are not. A statue is property; the shape is not. Yet reproduce either into another medium which you impeccably own, and you have transgressed. Words are not things, and we actually do not treat them as such. What is illegal is not the thing, but the act of copying them - the exercise of rights that you're not permitted to exercise. Thus, infringement.
As for the Roxio system itself, I can see a significant flaw. It imposes burdens for copyright holders to make use of it to exercise their own legal rights. This treads dangerously close to copyright infringement. (as copyrights must be exclusively assigned to the creator, unless he transfers or expands them) In my capacity in my job, I've made copies of CDs for musicians with ordinary equipment. Prohibiting this is just not a good thing.
Besides which, the courts have found that it is entirely outside the scope of copyright to preclude the copying of works from one medium to another, aka "space shifting." Statutory exceptions exist for many other classes of works. (for instance, any software you legally own or lease may be backed up all you please) There is no need to require that the original source be used, or that you prove to the satisfaction of an inanimate hunk of junk that you may legally do so; posession and performing the copy oneself is all.
Ultimately, no computer program in the world will _ever_ be a substitute for a court. We have perfectly good mechanisms in place for determining if copies are legally or illegally made and disseminated, and that entire framework exists within the domain that we collectively through our government allow it to. Copyrights for music could vanish tomorrow if we really wanted them to - there'd be nothing wrong with it, they aren't manditory.
Software cannot make the kinds of decisions human beings are capable of, it's not a substitute. We should not try to allow it to attempt to be one as it'll inevitably be sorely lacking.
Me, I'm an artist, and that's how I earn my daily bread. Nevertheless, I know the place that I and my bretheren occupy. It is *not* one that deserves dear privleges.
Re:Like anything else... (Score:2)
I just helped a 13 year old kid set up apache and a dynamic dns client on his computer, I'm pretty sure all he wants to do is share mp3s with his buddies.
Actually I'm hoping he'll develop an interest in more than that, but who knows?
In the meantime, he's happily telling his buddies about his new website or whatever.
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Artistry does not require millions of dollars. (Score:3)
I'm sorry. I have friends who are music majors and are, IMHO, millions of times better than the likes of Brittany Spears.
Even if you think Spears is the greatest musician ever, I still doubt that she puts the same amount of work into truely mastering music that my friends have.
I'm going to argue that it is better for regional stars to arise because people like them, not because some fat cat record company propped them up.
I know some fantastic jazz musicians who play for a subsistance lifestyle that enables them to spend all their time doing what they love.
Perhaps art is dead elsewhere, but where I come from we like our local bands. Many of our local bands are every bit as good as anyone else, and they are funner to listen to because they are people.
-Peter
Does this mean... (Score:3)
Isn't that a Windows app ?? (Score:2)
Co'm on folks, you don't realy think I will belive you are using Windows are you ?
Look, download CDRecord [fokus.gmd.de] and compile it.
Put whatever you want to burn into a directory DDD and do "mkisofs -l -r -J -o Image.iso -V "My Stuff" /location/of/DDD
Then do "cdrecord --scanbus" to find the ID of your SCSI writer (there is a little bit different command for IDE drives)
Now write the image with "cdrecord dev=0:6:6 speed=12 -v Image.iso"
And CD burning will never be the same again ;-)2 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc
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echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
There's better software now anyway.. (Score:5)
Beginner: NTI's software (http://www.nticdmaker.com/index.cfm)
Advanced: Nero
http://www.ahead.de/en/index2.htm
For Linux:
Gnometoaster
(http://gnometoaster.rulez.org)
kisocd
(http://kisocd.sourceforge.net)
Or cdrecord directly for Win32, Linux, Mac, BeOS, Solaris and more.
Hey, for those of you not following, Andy (the developer for Gnometoaster) has released a 1.0Beta1 of the excellent Gnometoaster burning app.
One of the nifty new features is the ability to DnD
Ben
Re:CDs already have a "no copy" bit. All ignore it (Score:2)
So a "rogue" burner that ignores the set bit could arguably be "jumping over" the technical obstacle used by every valid burner, thus violating the new DMCA law.
In that way it just takes one judge to make those open source burners illegal.
As an anoymous coward said:
>Ever heard of SCMS? It's a flip-bit copy/no-copy system implemented on DAT and MiniDisc. It is the direct result of the Audio Home Recording Act, and certainly illegal to bypass under the DMCA.
>
>I think the intent is that a system is "effective" if it's widely used (such as with Macrovision, also DMCA protected), not that it's good. Obviously the widely used part is a problem with standard red book CDs.
So this could be an attempt to make respect for the bit widely used.
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Except for the fact that Nero could be illegal.. (Score:4)
Or am I missing something?
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cdrecord rocks. (Score:2)
There's still a small part of me that tries to remain optimistic, and believes that when Roxio begins messing around with EZ CD Creator then someone else will come out with a burner that's not crippled. I don't know -- I haven't been at Win shareware sites in years -- but there just might be some shareware burners that can also be used.
I really don't see any reason to panic. Life goes on.
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So this is... (Score:2)
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Re:The market (Score:2)
http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vh
Re:don't fret... (Score:3)
Anyway, I didn't have to look for it, It came bundled with my YAMAHA CD-RW drive. I also got Easy CD Creator bundled with a cheap SCSI controller I bought for an old system. Considering that I don't use Windows, have no use for Windows CD authoring software and would never bother finding and downloading one, it was quite easy getting hold of it, wasn't it?
Oh well, I'll just go on using mkisofs/cdrecord.
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
The "knee-jerk reaction" is to paying to copy your files, not to paying for music. That's a pretty justified reflex./p.
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Re:SloppyRant (Score:2)
I'm not really talking about copies. I guess I'm talking about redistribution. Are you saying that making a complete analog copy of a copyrighted work (whether it's dubbing a tape or Xeroxing a book) and then giving that copy to your friend, has been the law since the 1700s?
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Re:Except for the fact that Nero could be illegal. (Score:3)
No, because it is not reasonable or normal for CDR copying software to look inside the files that it copies. They have worked blindly for many many years. Thus, the bit cannot conceivable be said to "effectively control access".
It's bascially way too late (by more than a decade) to establish a brand new convention for writing CDs.
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Maybe this is good (Score:2)
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Roxio have quite a problem (Score:2)
Re:Fair Use (Score:2)
Yes, they certainly did! I have a Captain Sensible LP from 1982 with a 'tape and crossbones' design on the back that states "Home taping is killing music."
And this was before dual cassette decks started getting popular.
As for the rest of your statement: I've had more tapes get stuck in players rendering them useless than I have scratched CD's beyond fixing. I'm just really careful with them, and rarely have a problem. I also try not to lend them out
Pope
Re:How Would the Burning Software Know? (Score:2)
Distribute their music themselves on websites that they can build and get hosted for free.
Keep dreaming. Do you really think think this will happen [prmsystems.com]?
Re:Like anything else... (Score:2)
With Napster now pretty much out of the picture, there has been a huge jump in the amount of traffic on the efnet channels that release albums on a regular basis. #mp3hqdcc saw many hundreds of additional users in the past 3 months. Looks like the college kids are wising up and going straight to the source.
Cheers,
levine
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, great. But I've already paid once. I regularly rip batches of CDs to mp3, then burn a bunch of albums back onto a CD in mp3 format. Why? So I can take one CD with me to listen to on my CD/mp3 player instead of ten. Or so that I can listen to a hundred different songs off of a hundred different CDs that I already bought and paid for. Simple. This is not theoretical - I'm actually doing this, and if I had to pay extra to space-shift music that I've already paid for once, I'd be super pissed, and more likely to pirate/steal music and not use their crappy fascist hardware.
Bottom line is, the majority people are using this technology well withing the legal limits of fair use, and shouldn't have to pay more tribute to the record labels. If you want to do something extra to support the artists, fine - but let it be voluntary, not a mandatory corporate tax.
Easy CD Creator? WARNING! (Score:5)
Re:Music CD-Rs? (Score:2)
If I'm wrong, please correct me, but that's the way I understand it to be.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Re:I got your legitimate situation right here! (Score:2)
Yeah... I've got "EZ CD Creator" 3.something, which came with my CD burner, and it's not what I would have bought if it weren't bundled with the burner, but it works OK... except MicroSlough's latest version of Windows Media Player is incompatible with it being installed. I figured, like every decent company out there, I could get a bug fix (yeah, it's MicroSlough's bug, but...) from their web site...
Nope. Pay full price for 4.0.
No. Not just no, but Hell no! Not now, not ever. Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute. I can easily live without Windows Media Player 8. If I ever decide otherwise, I'll buy Nero Burning ROM, or something else from one of (any of) Roxio's competitors. It's not the money, it's the principle of the thing.
(Even if the Roxio software were better, which, by all acounts, it most emphatically is not.)
Re:I don't care about the software... (Score:2)
Yes there are. On the Mac, there is no audio connection between the CDRom (or DVD Rom) drive and the sound output. The audio data is ripped off the CD, and sent to the computer's sound system in real time. This was done, partially, so that users could listen to their CDs over their USB speakers.
An interesting side effect of this is that if you do it right, you can play two tracks off the CD at the same time, with no skipping. Why you'd want to do this is another matter entirely.
Re:What's the difference...? (Score:2)
That all depends (Score:2)
Re:Retailers (Score:2)
Rader
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
They want it so bad, they're rolling over in their graves. (Record execs are the undead, after all)
Rader
Re:And what legitimite gripe do you have? (Score:5)
Let's say I want to create a mix CD from live concert MP3s. Since this is /., let's say we're talking about the Minibosses [minibosses.com], who distribute their unsigned MP3s freely. Will I be able to do it with Roxio's awesome software, without the cracks that will inevitably be released within a week of release?
Stealing is stealing, but this isn't stealing. It's copyright infringement. Theft is the act of taking something away from someone with the intent of depriving that person of possessing what you've taken. Copying zeroes and ones while leaving the original data intact is not stealing, and U.S. law (on a good day) has different laws regarding each. All those mp3 lawsuits you keep reading about are for copyright infringement, not theft.
No I don't. But treating gnutella like a 24-hour all-request radio station does help me make smarter purchasing decisions about my music.
How does adding a corpo-funded layer of complexity to CD burning software make it easier for me to buy more music? Sounds like all it does is make it easier for EMI and their colleagues to keep CD prices nutrageously high, just to fund more copy-protection schemes like this one.
A question: How will Roxio prevent users from decoding MP3s into WAV/AIFFs, then burning them? Will it all of a sudden become morally wrong to burn arbitrary AIFFs? Somebody better tell the budding garage bands of the world that they are not welcome to use Roxio software.
< tofuhead >
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Re:This "Screw the Man" stance is getting old (Score:2)
The recording industry has cried wolf too many times, and cloaked new restrictions (e.g. technical interference with legal backup copies and fair-use excerpting, DVD region cartelization) under the color of established copyright protection too many times. It has reached a point where belief that they are sincerely attempting to protect the artists' legitimate interests is as naive as belief in Santa Claus.
/.
Re:Easy! (Score:2)
Tongue in cheek (Score:2)
"The potential impact here is scary."
Yeah, it's scary that we might be getting what we were asking for the whole time!
"And how far will those changes penetrate throughout the industry?"
Hopefully far and wide.
"This can't be good for the consumer."
But paying $17 dollars for a CD for one good song IS? I thought the whole point was to avoid the artificial scarcity and inefficiency of material distribution.
"'We want to continue to work with leaders in the music industry, like EMI, to not only provide for the protection of their digital content, but also to enable record companies and artists to get paid for burning.' Yikes!"
Not "Yikes!", "YAY!". I don't get you people. First we complained that the music industry didn't "get it", and that CDs are exorbitantly inexpensive and of much less value than digital copies. But now that somebody actually "gets it" and wants to SELL you legitimate digital copies so you don't have to illegally copy them (say, from a "friend" in
How many of you were crowing that you trade MP3s because CDs are outrageously expensive, or some other similar moral rationalization? Well HERE is your solution. You can't now cry and say "oh, wait a minute...no no, I really DID want free copyright-infringed music...this isn't fair!". If you respect the GPL, you have to respect the copyrights of artists (just another form of "author"). Now, whether the music industry will really allow a fair amount of profits to filter back to artists anyway is still an issue, and some may still find a moral haven for trading MP3s. How can the same people that tout micro-payments and street performer's protocol, complain when a mechanism allowing people to compensate artists is being created?
Or have I been trolled?
Re:Bad thing? (Score:5)
Almost all the great musicians have become great before getting 'signed' and 'famous'. They get good by playing in small, cheap shows over and over and over. Then, once they can make good music, they become famous (usually when they are signed by a record company). They don't get signed, start getting paid big $, and then get good.
In recent times, the record companies have noticed that 'sex sells' and started signing good-looking people with no or little talent. These people are paid insane amounts of money but I guarantee that their skill does not improve at all.
If there is no money in music, then a lot of the best musicians will simply cease to exist.
You are so very, very wrong. If you do some background research into past musicians, you will find that NONE of them became rich and famous before they became a great musician. They all became great musicians, then became rich and famous (some, maybe most, never became rich and only famous after they died).
a lot of the best musicians will never happen unless they are able to practice all day, every day, and you can't do that unless you do it professionally.
I see you're not a musician!
And no, 200 years ago Mozart or whoever DID NOT do it on an amateur basis. They were paid by either royalty, upper class citizens or the church.
Hmm...I think it's called 'a gig'? Believe it or not, there are a lot of musicians who are paid exactly that way today! And, Mozart was composing at the age of eight. Exactly how much cash do you think he was getting at that age?
Re:don't fret... (Score:2)
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Don't like it? You don't have to use it. (Score:2)
By the same token, we have a CD burner attached to one of the G3s at work... and a built-in drive on the G4. The software that comes with the MacOS for burning is useable for one purpose- making music CDs. It blows for everything else... and it doesn't play well with Toast, either. The solution? Simple- we keep using the burner on the G3, with Toast, which works beautifully. We haven't upgraded toast for a very, very long time... and it still does everything we need it to do and then some. Shit, the only thing it doesn't do is convert MP3s straight to CD audio on the fly.... but that's what the G4 and iTunes will do, and quite speedily, to boot.
Honestly, with a laptop and a pile of computers at work and at home, I've stopped caring about audio CDs- I still have them, but my collection has a thin film of dust on it. You can't beat the convenience of having two hundred albums on your hard drive, rather than having to shuffle a disk every five tracks....
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
True in the early part of the 20th century, when electronic distribution at zero cost was impossible, leaving for-pay distribution at moderate cost as the only way for the "Rock and Roll" derived from early Jazz/R&B musicians to make its way into the ears of Joe Consumer and sweep the nation in the 1950s.
False in the early part of the 21st century, when electronic distribution at zero cost was widely available, and the recording industry served only to prevent Joe Consumer from hearing the early Tibetan Electronica artists whose work set the stage for the solar-system-shaking grooves that rocked the colonies of Luna and Mars in the 2180s.
And this stops me how? (Score:3)
Download all patches for Windows-based CD-burning software today.
Install Linux tomorrow.
Re:Keep yer old systems folks! (Score:3)
Suppose they pulled the plug on useful hardware today. Every manufacturer on the planet goes to copy control, no exceptions, and nobody ever cracks it. (This is of course, impossible. But let's go with the doomsday scenario for a bit.)
Given the number of ATs and XTs at my local surplus store, and the time it's taken to have them gradually replaced with 386s and 486s, I'd say we have at least a 10-15 year supply of useful hardware ahead of us.
And given the age of some of the older pieces of hardware in my collection, I'd say we have at least another 10 years, probably more, before that supply of useful hardware starts to fail.
If Copy Control Doomsday happened tomorrow, we'd have about 25 years before we had to worry. Spare parts purchased now, run for 6 months (to shake out any cases of "infant mortality") and stored in anti-static bags, will be just as good 25 years from now as they are today.
For less than $1000, you can buy enough hard drive storage and multiple sets of spare parts to store 100G of MP3s and have at least one system capable of playing them back for the rest of your natural life.
Re:And what legitimite gripe do you have? (Score:5)
My old CD burning software didn't care about copy control.
My old CD burning software did things my new CD burning software doesn't do.
My old CD burning software was more functional - I could do more things with it than I can the new version.
What's wrong about it is that there are people trying to pass off downgrades as upgrades.
If your local Porsche dealer said "By the way, the new model Porsche has a rev-limiter hooked up to a GPS system that prevents you from going faster than 55 mph! It's so much better than last year's model!", you'd slap him silly, and you'd be right to slap him silly whether you ever intended to drive over the speed limit or not.
Re:Possible scenario and making it EASY to buy (Score:2)
Sorry Frank, the Taste Police got there before you. In fact, all of Las Vegas is scheduled for removal later this year.
If you must have it and you want an easy way, try amazon or cdnow.
Overkillware (Score:3)
So in essence this company thinks that either by offering a program to burn mp3's to cd will halt what they call illegal thievery? I doubt it in fact why would someone who allegedly steals cd's go out and buy this software when they could continue with their normal bypassing ways.
Is it me or does this reak with this notion;
By creating these so called programs I personally think they sort of force people to go out and rip more since your sort of telling someone USE THIS TO DO THIS. People should have choices, and while I do see the pro's and con's of Napster I also see somebody somewhere along the lines of Roxio, the Artists complaining, RIAA, $INSERT_TARGET_HERE don't have a really good clue yet.
Maybe these people should go and read Bruce Schneier's "The Futility of Digital Copy Prevention [cryptome.org]" article word for word, and come to a better conclusion instead of thinking some lawsuit, or some program is going to be the answer to people ripping mp3's and doing whatever the heck they want with them.
Re:er... (Score:2)
There's no reason to be negative on new technology that allows new inroads into consumer products. The things that are bad for consumers are exhibited in fighting against new tech. Of course they want to have some security on the process, which may amount to limited copy protection, but if the service lets you burn CDs that work in audio players, they're not doing any major black ops here.
We can't go jumping down everyone's throat just because their new products include "copy protection".
Re:I don't think so (Score:2)
If this is actually the case, you have a defective minidisc player. The copyright bit should not be set when an analog (I'm assuming that your own music is recorded via microphone or guitar pickup or the like) recording is made and you should be able to make as many generations of digital recordings as you like. Even if it is the case that the no copy bit gets set on your analog recordings you are still free to make as many copies as you like, though you are not able to make copies of those copies.
If you're complaining that your MD player doesn't have a digital out port, you should have forked over a few extra few dollars to get one that does. Yeah, it's stupid that Sony charges an extra $100 to add in a $0.49 laser diode, but that's just the way marketing works. If in doubt, consult any introduction of microeconomics book and check the index for "price discrimination".
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Shameless Promotion: barchord.com (Score:2)
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
Yeah, and...? (Score:2)
My only complaint is that all my non-techie friends are suddenly going to be asking me to burn CDs for them, seeing as they can't anymore without a credit card number. As if I needed more to do.
Re:I don't think so (Score:4)
Exactly! And that is why you will simply not be able to do many legal things in the future, if the industry goes the RIAA/MPAA/SDMI/... way. Look: You are legally permitted to make VCR copies as many as you want. But - without extra effort - you cannot. Why? Because of Macrovision. You can legally buy a DVD, and legally buy a DVD Player, and the player will refuse to play your DVD, because it thinks that you might be in the wrong country. My MD player refuses to copy my own recordings digitally, because by allowing digital copies there is the slight possiblity of maybe me committing a sinister crime (i.e. distributing copyrighted music)!
You would be perfectly legal if you could copy your CDs in the future, only you cannot. That is what "they" want, and if the industry complies, in 5 years CDs will be obsolete. What can be done with stupid laws (DMCA) will be done that way, and where they cannot castrate your basic human rights (freedom of speech for example) the industry will simply take away the technical means for exercising them, and sue every company who doesn't comply.
Look at this article [cryptome.org] for details about what's wrong with copy protection.
Remember: CDs are just about the only digital Hi-Fi media left that do not have some form of copy protection! They must be destroyed, because every CD owner is a potential criminal!
Re:Bad thing? (Score:2)
There sure is: 'roid rage.
I got your legitimate situation right here! (Score:3)
There's no way I'm going to buy these CDs again (even if they are still in print) because I already own them. Therefore, I downloaded MP3s of the songs off LimeWire and add them to my iTunes music library. As far as I'm concerned, downloading MP3s of songs I own is the same as inserting the disc and ripping them myself. In fact, converting your CDs into MP3s has a hundred advantages over discs, including being generally immune to the paint-leaking-though-the-plastic syndrome that seems to affect lesser discs.
Now, I'm not going to explain to Roxio the above situation, and I don't want to have the hassle of dealing with some goofy digital signature "feature". I like to listen to music, not fsck around with digital signatures or whatever so that "the artist can be compensated" -- we all know that Roxio means it's the RIAA and the music labels that will be compensated.
I expect that Roxio will add some annoying feature because that's the way they run their business. I've had to buy three copies of Toast ($99 ea): once for Mac OS 8 capability, once for Mac OS 8.5 capability, once for Mac OS 9 capability. Toast had no new features I wanted, but I had to buy to use the software with the new OS. This is crazy because Adaptec (now Roxio) never offer an upgrade price. "Oh, you upgraded your OS? Where's our $100?"
I am now more than happy to use the free Disc Burner software that Apple provides. iTunes is better than the SoundJam/Toast hack, and it's much easier to burn indexed CDs with Disc Burner than Toast anyway.
If nothing else, Apple's free disc burning software will make Roxio think twice about charging for a simple compatibility upgrade. It doesn't matter anyway; they lost me as a customer a long time ago.
I don't think so (Score:4)
IANAL, etc, but right now copying all of the bits in a file is not illegal. If someone changes the meaning of bit 1147 at some point, do they suddenly and retroactively take ownership of bit 1147 on all of my own files? What about the 250 CDs of mine that I legally ripped to mp3 for my personal use over the past couple of weeks? Can that retroactively be made a crime?
What I *do* with my copied files might be illegal (if I share them, which I don't), but I don't think you can easily distinguish between the physical act of making a backup copy of something, and making a backup copy you intend to distribute, etc. Squishy territory to be sure, but I think we're still safe as far as the actual backing up of program and data files goes. I would think that as long as copy programs can be used for legal purposes, their use can't be criminalized.
TomatoMan
Re:Easy! (Score:2)
Music CD-Rs? (Score:2)
Goodbye, Slashdot (Score:2)
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Just use older versions (Score:2)
I do wonder how effective this will be though. How do they plan to stop bootlegs from being made? Take out mp3 support? Make it so you have to pay royalties whenever you burn your own compilations for personal use? This to me sounds like corporate suicide, as much so as the new XP copy restraint system. People don't like being nickled and dimed to death, and making people pay a lot of money for the "right" (notice how any "right" these days can be taken away as easily as a privelege?) to make compilations from the cds they legally buy sure as hell is a doomed idea. Part of me is wondering if Roxio isn't trying to give out good PR to keep the DMCA from being expanded to provide massive oversight and regulation of the burning industry. Just a thought.
Re:Artistry does not require millions of dollars. (Score:2)
You can sell alot of albums and not be popular -- Bob Marley sells a million albums a year even though hes dead ... Steely Dan is huge with album sales, ever seen themon MTV though?
You can have integrity and not be popular or sell many albums -- pat metheny, jan hammer, robert miles etc :).
Those lucky few exist in all 3 dimensions -- Sting, Dave Matthews Band etc :)
As an independant artist myself, I'm fully aware I exist in only one dimenstion integrity
Note to slashdot jerks: if your going to argue with me, please do so substanativley.
Re:Artistry does not require millions of dollars. (Score:2)
he might be a prick though I've never met him :)
Roxio's problem (Score:3)
Roxio can do whatever they want. They are not obligated to anyone for anything and that includes CD writing software. Why do you think they owe you their software?
Anyway, there will always be a need for data CDs and there is no way to diffrentiate between kinds of data. As longs as those mp3 CD players keep coming out, this partnership is meaningless.
Re:SloppyRant (Score:4)
"Intellectual property" is not a concept supported in law until quite recently, really -- think of it. The idea is that somehow this type of property is not a physical thing, something that the theft of which would deprive the owner of its use. IP is the incredible idea that patterns of bits are a piece of inventory that can be somehow taken from some metaphysical warehouse. Digital copying removes the scarcity factor from the market -- we must adjust to this somehow.
Why is that? Is it because the record companies and associated studios have near-monopoly on publication, marketing, and distribution, so they set incredible prices for which the bands must sell their souls? How is home recording doing this to them? Is it not in fact the record companies, not the listeners, that impoverish the bands?
Maybe they didn't sell out because not enough people thought them a good enough draw to buy a ticket. No one promised musicians that they could make a living at it. Hell, the market is oversaturated with them -- there just aren't enough customers to make all of them wealthy, or even give them enough money to give up their day jobs. And let's not forget that the bulk of the money spent on concerts and albums go into the companies' pockets -- it takes a long, long time for a band to pay back its "bill" to the company. Intentionally.
What industry bribed congress to let us make copies?
Sales are not down, an impressive thing considering that the economy has downturned. Napster did nothing perceptible to music sales. Not that this is an argument. Buggy whip manufacturers took a lasting hit from the auto industry.
Congress made Fair Use copying legal because in classic theory, when I bought the record, tape, CD, whatever, I owned the item. I could copy it, sell it to someone (right of First Sale), set it on fire, write on its pristine surface. No one considered the owner of the media to be merely licensing "intellectual property". The owner owned the tape, the book, the CD. This was settled by the Supremes over a decade ago.
What seems to be happening today is that the federal judiciary was seeded over two decades with pro-business judges who seem to think that law should enable businesses to make profits in a time-honored fashion even if that fashion is obsolete. IP is a concept that is being molded by the collective rulings of some really misguided jurists -- we are losing First Sale rights, Fair Use rights, and the concept that we actually own the CD or whatever we paid for at the store. This is not good, people.
Easy CD Creator is irrelavant to the Windows user (Score:2)
Decompressing lossy audio while burning it (Score:2)
One of the nifty new features is the ability to DnD .ogg files into the track window and have them burn out to normal CD Audio files. Is this the first burning app to offer this feature?
Roxio's Easy CD Creator claims to do this with MPEG layer 3 audio files (and could probably do ogg vorbis with a plugin), but it has never worked properly for me (dies on the slightest corruption that Winamp skips right over), so I just use AOL's Winamp to turn the OGGs and MP3s into wav files and then fix and mix them with some audio editing software.
Hardware wears out. (Score:2)
My old CD burning software
My old CD burning
Re:This is good for consumers AND musicians (Score:2)
The media companies got fat because the barrier to entry in the recorded music market was high -- you needed hundereds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to record professional-quality music, and millions of dollars to master, duplicate, and distribute the media.
Now, you can set up a home studio with a PC for less than $10k that equals or surpasses professional studios of 10 years ago. For the cost of a web hosting account, you can advertise and sell your product directly to the consumers. The only premium the record companies can still offer is mindshare / exposure, but a band can hire their own publicist to do that for a whole lot less.
I don't care about the software... (Score:4)
Here's the thing, though, that's scary. When will they start going after the HARDWARE makers? If I was an bastard record company exec, I would go after the CD-ROM drive manufacturers and fight against the digital audio extraction (DAE) feature. Because without that, you can't rip songs directly from a CD. Sure, you could do an analog rip, but that's a pain in the ass (and usually sounds like ass).
Are there any uses for DAE, besides ripping music? It's seems to me that's pretty much it's sole purpose... used to be, in the days of 8x (and lesser) cd-rom drives, a lot of drives didn't even support DAE and they worked fine for everything but ripping.
So, to me, based on the $#$%#$ evil laws that we have in America it would be hard to defend the inclusion of the DAE feature. Not saying that's right, but basically, from a functional standpoint... DSS:DVD = DAE:CD. You know what I mean? Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong in a legal sense. I hope I am.
One good thing: the hardware manufacturers WILL fight efforts by the RIAA, et al, to defend their hardware's ability to rip music... because as another poster pointed out, ripping/burning/downloading music is pretty much the only new "killer app" for PC's these days.
http://www.bootyproject.org [bootyproject.org]
Sell, sell, sell! (Score:5)
When you get into bed with a giant, you gotta expect he'll roll over during the night. Roxio's management seems to be so ignorant of a fact that's left a string of empty buildings from Fisherman's Wharf to Los Gatos that they've gotten into bed with two giants.
This is called the Dance of the Doomed.
The only sensible advice to shareholders of ROXI is contained in the subject line.
If you don't own any shares in Roxio -- and why you'd have held any after their announcement of the alliance with MSFT escapes me -- and if you don't use their Easy CD Creator/Direct CD -- another "in God's name, why?" kind of practice --this is a NOP. Roxio won't be here to worry about this time next year.
And if there's anybody on /. who didn't already know that Windows and Office XP were going to be very nasty propositions -- helLOOOOOOO!
Re:Possible scenario and making it EASY to buy (Score:3)
Not exactly. The stereos that have been coming out lately that can burn CDs will refuse to use non-audio CDs. But CD players (including these stereos IINM) do still play music off of non-audio CDRs. Heck, I have a regular, non-audio CDR in my CD player right now, and it works just fine.
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I am getting damn sick of constantly losing karma for no reason.
Re:The market (Score:3)
Sony apparently refused to let pornos be released on BETA, so VHS took over.
You're confusing BetaMax with VCC 2000. As far as i know BetaMax 'lost' for the same reason MCA failed; licensing fees.
Re:Easy! (Score:3)
I'm still using the Adaptec Easy CD Creator 3.5c that came with my Plextor burner, and for a very good reason; 4.0 not only managed to totally fuck up my cd's but insisted i install IE 5.5, which i refused to do. Why do i need IE 5.5 to burn CD's??? Also, Feurio [feurio.com] is much better for burning music cd's...
Music CD-Rs (Score:4)
Easy way around that; use another CD writing program.
With the problems that Easy CD has been having [theregister.co.uk], that's probably a good idea anyway.
The reference to the 'Music CD-Rs' is another of the music industry's daft ideas. From the CD-R FAQ: http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-17 [cdrfaq.org]
So potentially expect to see Easy CD whinge if you try and burn audio onto an ordinary data CD. I doubt they'd be silly enough to block it, but pop up a warning and your average user gets worried enough to think maybe they ought to buy those 'Music CD-Rs' after all.
The industry's got you already (Score:3)
This strengthens your argument, since they have already succeeded in restricting your exercise of fair use without you even knowing it.
Bad thing? (Score:3)
This is the right principle, the only question is the execution. If you think this is bad, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.
I want to be able to pay the artists money for their songs. Up until now, there simply is no way to give money if you want to download an electronic version. If they allow me to pay a reasonable price to download a song, then I will gladly pay it.
The only question is whether they are going to put restrictions on what I can do with my purchased song for my personal use. If there is any copy restriction, then that obviously is not acceptable.
But this knee-jerk reaction to any kind of paying for music is just stupid. If there is no money in music, then a lot of the best musicians will simply cease to exist. Yes, we will always have amateur musicians, but a lot of the best musicians will never happen unless they are able to practice all day, every day, and you can't do that unless you do it professionally. There is a reason why professional athletes, for example, will kick almost any amateur's ass.
And no, 200 years ago Mozart or whoever DID NOT do it on an amateur basis. They were paid by either royalty, upper class citizens or the church. In fact, most artists were compensated in that way. Art and money have always gone hand in hand. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive (and impractical).
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Easy! (Score:4)
Retailers (Score:4)
This really is the new killer app. Think of Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" ads. Of course the industry is running scared ... serves 'em right.
I don't steal music, but I do download it. (Score:3)
FOR EXAMPLE:
I own about 1,000 CDs. I own a tablet PC which I carry around with me nearly everywhere I go and which doubles as my memopad-sized MP3 walkman. Now I could spend hours encoding songs from CD to MP3 each morning so that I can carry around the music that I want, but that's not really time-effective. What do I do? I download the songs that someone else has already encoded. And what's more, sometimes in the middle of the day I find myself wanting that one particular song that I don't have loaded into the PC at the moment. What do I do? Pop on to one of the OpenNap servers and grab the song. If some of you had your way, I'd have to run home, find the CD, encode the track on my desktop PC, IR it to my tablet and run back to work -- or forego listening to it. Buy why should I have to forego listening to it if I've already BOUGHT the damn thing?
I've bought every CD that ever contained a song I liked. I can show you the matching CD from every song I've ever downloaded. I'm not stealing, and I resent the implication that just because I use the MP3 format or visit Napster/OpenNap sites I'm some sort of criminal.
And just to prove that I'm ON TOPIC, I've even burned a few MP3 CDs that I downloaded. How is this legal? Well, I've been through some albums (Black Crowes SHMC, Fiona Apple Tidal, etc.) 4+ times, buying the damn CD each time, because they've been scratched so much they start to skip. Now for the ones I really like, where quality is really important, I will always buy the CD again (paying royalties EACH time, even though I'm only one listener), but for some of them which aren't worth THAT much to me, I'll just grab the non-working tracks off the net and re-burn the entire CD with the skipping tracks replaced. Voila. FIXED CD. That I already paid for.
And aside from these black-and-white issues, I don't see ANY problem with grabbing an MP3 from a CD I own and sending it to a friend in e-mail with "Hey man, check this track out!" in the message body. I lend my CDs out. Sometimes friends copy them to tape, I'm sure. That doesn't give me any guilt pangs and neither do MP3s.
Re:Easy! (Score:5)
So does this mean all the folks who claimed they were going to go out to buy a copy should now burn/sledgehammer their CD?
For me, this is an awesome idea. If I can download and burn individual songs (at a realistic "per song" price) then I don't have to pay for the entire album. I like the idea of singles (since often the rest of an album is not very appealing); however, with singles you have this useless CD with like 3 copies of the SAME song on it plus a slightly bloated price. If I can pay to DL it and create my own CD of "this month's favorites" then I don't have this annoying stack of CD's sitting in my closet.
This could be REALLY good or REALLY bad (Score:3)
I can stream
Artist, studio get paid. Roxio keeps selling software subscriptions. Consumer gets a cheap, easy alternative to buying at the store. Everyone wins.
REALLY bad .wav file to a CD, even the ones I already own. Now, I pay for the "privilege" of making my own Best of Iron Maiden, Vol. 1 - 4 because I don't feel like lugging 20 discs around in my car all the time. I pay for the "privilege" of having a burned copy of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son at work, so I can keep the original at home.
I have to pay the studio *anytime* I burn a
Consumer pay more money to legally use media she has already purchased. She seeks out less restrictive alternatives. Roxio loses money she may have spent on software. Artist, studio loses money she might have spent for an album that is worth $8 to her but certainly not $16. She considers boycotting studio and Roxio who tried to fuck her through ill-conceived business plan to bleed legitimate consumers of more money. Everybody loses.
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Like anything else... (Score:5)
If an mp3 search engine gets axed (or a file-trading service has its hands tied) it doesn't slow the people who use IRC or FTP. Sure it's less convenient for most, but it doesn't stop the practice.
If Adaptec handicaps their product, it will only make other burning software more appealing. If you're reading slashdot, you're probably capable of finding an alternative.
Re:Easy! (Score:5)
So does this mean all the folks who claimed they were going to go out to buy a copy should now burn/sledgehammer their CD?
I had the same thought when I read this article... "Roxio good! No, wait, Roxio evil! No, Roxio good! No, evil! Good! Evil! Ow! My head hurts..."
For me, this is an awesome idea. If I can download and burn individual songs (at a realistic "per song" price) then I don't have to pay for the entire album. I like the idea of singles (since often the rest of an album is not very appealing); however, with singles you have this useless CD with like 3 copies of the SAME song on it plus a slightly bloated price. If I can pay to DL it and create my own CD of "this month's favorites" then I don't have this annoying stack of CD's sitting in my closet.
I agree...that would be nice, if the record companies were really interested in selling their hit single tracks for BYO CDs for a fair price. Unfortunatly, I doubt that that is going to happen under the current system. Why not? Think about this...today, a record company can rake in about $18 per purchase for a hit single, or maybe two. All the Top 40 groups usually have CDs with one or two good songs and a bunch of crap. Most people who buy those CDs are buying them for those one or two songs. If all of those songs were available individually for sale for a "fair" price (which I would define as $1.50 US or less per track, since the "average" CD has about 12 tracks and costs about $18), now what's going to happen? Well, the record company will probably sell just as many, if not more, copies of Boy Band's Big Hit as they would with a premade album...but now they're only taking in a buck or two per sale. Even if there are two or three "hit" tracks in an album, that's still only about $1-$2 for each track, so even the people who buy all three are only spending $3-$6. Very few people are going to waste their time and money on the other nine or ten crap songs that would normally be in an album.
Now, if the band has gone the traditional method of making an entire album with two good songs and ten crappy songs, the record company has paid them to make music that isn't going to sell under this new distribution method. And if the band or record company decides to forego the "crap" since it's no longer neccesary to fill an album with the new single-track purchase system, well, this band might turn out, say, half a dozen good songs in their lifetime, just like they would if they were using the traditional method, but now the record company is only making $1-$2 per sale on each hit instead of the $9-$18 per sale that they would get per hit by selling albums with one or two of those hit songs on them. This sucks for the record companies, because it's much easier (and cheaper) to squeeze a one-week "Top 20" hit song or two out of a random boy-band or girl group than it is to find and cultivate a group with real talent who can produce a lot of good music. And no matter how the hits fall, the record company's profit per hit has still been cut by a huge percentage.
I've always figured that this is another reason the record companies don't like Napster, et. al. Now, any potential buyer can go online and download the full tracks from an album, and then find out that only one or two are good. And since they probably don't feel like paying $18 to get the one song they really want, they'll just download it from Napster and live with the lower quality of MP3.
This is why the record companies are going to make their pay online music services so limited. Since they might be losing those profits on each hit song, they're going to make up for it by forcing users to "rent" the music by only letting them play the songs they download if they keep paying their monthly fees. This continuous income stream makes up for the profit lost because they are selling fewer $18 CDs with one good song.
DennyK
Re:Bad thing? (Score:3)
One when you download it, once to write it to cd, again to put it on your personal mp3 player.
I have a question though :
right now napster is viewed as committing contributary copyright infringement by assisting others to copy without paying.
If we're paying to write the song to cd then I'm not infringing by definition so does the napster issue go away ?
don't fret... (Score:5)
Really, when you get down to it, this could be a big mistake. Nothing could drive more people to a different product than creating some sort of burn-payment scheme. Nero and others like it should be happy.