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Music Media Businesses

New Online Music Service For Australia 165

Posted by timothy from the where-music-flows-clockwise dept.
arb writes "Destra Music is the first online music retailer to open its doors in Australia. Currently their catalogue offers over 100,000 tracks priced from 99c (Australian) and they hope to have half a million tracks available by mid next year. Purchasers will be able to burn the songs to CD and copy them to portable devices. The tracks are available for purchase through online partners, such as JB Hi-Fi and Sanity Online. In what is believed to be a first for online music retailers, vouchers will be available in stores so you will not need a credit card to purchase online." Sounds like competition for Bigpond Music's download service, and also dealing with DRM'd .wma files.
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New Online Music Service For Australia More

New Online Music Service For Australia

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  • Yes but what if we don't run Windows.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by miknight ( 642270 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:14AM (#7732743) Journal
    ...or want files in .wma format?

    • Re:Yes but what if we don't run Windows.... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      just go back to stealing music, like you're used to
    • ...or want files in .wma format?

      Sample the music from existing P2P services, order the CD's you like from online store and rip to high quality Ogg/MP3/etc... Just as quick, they profit, you get better sound quality and no silly DRM.

      There is the matter of intentionally corrupted discs, but so far I've not met one yet that one of my CD-ROM's could not read.
    • I wonder the same thing. Why choose .wma, a proprietary format that is controlled by Microsoft and costs money to implement, when superior things exist? It can't be too hard to DRM an ogg, or something.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • "DRM is not only taking away our freedom, it flawed by design as well."

          Not to be trollish, but the ugly fact is that when one says "DRM takes away my freedom," it means "DRM takes away my freedom to violate somebody else's rights." "Rights" being the "R" in "DRM."

          Unfortunately, today's laws say that only the rightsholders of a book, piece of software, or a piece of music have the right to say how it can be distributed. If a record company or an artist will only release their wares in a rights-manag

          • But it does take away MY freedom of fair use. If I buy a song/album...I should be able to rip it to ogg vorbis or whatever format I want, and put on my portable player for use at the gym...or on a CD to play in my car (using the compressed version to squeeze more music for the road).

            DRM prevents me from doing these things. In the long run, they would like me to have to purchase a licensed version for every use I wish...one for car, one for portable, one for home...etc.

            • "But it does take away MY freedom of fair use."

              Exactly. As I said, it's an issue of their right vs. your freedom, and when both go up against the law, their right will typically win. This is my point. I am aware that it causes inconvenience. And, there are plenty of analogs to this: for example, the right to own property can impede your freedom to go anywhere you like.

              Just because copying media for your own personal use (to use on your portable player or in your car, for instance) is legal, if the

              • "Sure, we can complain about DRM being inconvenient, but it sure beats the alternative."

                Can you define this a little better? What is the alternative that DRM is better than? For the consumer I'm assuming...

                • Sure thing. That comment was within the context of the record companies only agreeing to participate in the online music stores once they were offered the ability to release their stuff in a DRM-encoded format. If the technology purveyors hadn't developed DRM systems that were to the record companies' liking, the labels probably wouldn't have participated so eagerly, if at all.

                  So, in short, the recent explosion in legal music download services owes its existence to DRM. I don't think the record companie

      • "costs money to implement"

        Actually the DRM cost for a Microsoft house is minimal. The SDK is available free (assuming you already have a code signing key), you don't have to host the files for download on any Microsoft kit, any HTTP server will do, the only requirements will be an IIS server to serve out licenses, and a windows box somewhere to package the content. Of course it's an SDK, so you do need to code a little, but it's not that difficult.

        Now compare this to Real's offering. Last time I looked

    • Re:Yes but what if we don't run Windows.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110&anu,edu,au> on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:39AM (#7732999) Journal
      ...or want files in .wma format?


      then do what everyone else does when offered [technewsworld.com] WMA files.

      Just say no.

      The first to take on Apple was BuyMusic.com in July. It expected 1 million daily song downloads. "We're not achieving that at all," says BuyMusic CEO Scott Blum. "I've spoken with my competitors, and we're nowhere near (Apple's) numbers."

      -- james

    • DRM Ogg? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmVidia HQ ( 572086 )
      DRM is not a word most of us want to hear, but let's face it, it's coming whether you want it or not. So, besides the fact that "nothing is uncrackable", why not "embrace and extend" DRM?

      I, for one, would welcome our open sourced DRM overlords, than the MS "trusted computing" counterpart. Besides, we all know Ogg is superior to WMA, right?
    • Well....

      Was Apple thinking about non-Mac users when they first released the ITMS? Don't think so...

      Let's give it some time...
    • Well Xine plays WMA files, and so does XMMS (use the AVI plugin.)

      All that and it doesn't give a rat's ass about any "copy bit" that's turned on.

    • Hack the DRM. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Trejkaz ( 615352 )
      Why the hell not, reverse engineering is legal in Australia... ;-)

  • Napster (Score:3, Informative)

    by jcausey ( 253286 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:15AM (#7732748) Homepage
    Napster has been doing the voucher thing [napster.com] for a while now. That being said, "a while now" means a few months :)
    • don't you just love "internet time"

    • Nohopester (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SgtChaireBourne ( 457691 )
      Look, none of these WMA-only sites are going to survive. Not only are there formats with better sound quality, but ones with less cumbersome overhead and available on more platforms. iTunes [zdnet.co.uk] can play on both Macintosh and Windows so far.

      No matter the relative market shares of the two platforms, Mac + Windows > Windows Only.

      See also Metcalfe's Law [useit.com] in other contexts.

  • RIAA still does not get it. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argonaut ( 37085 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:16AM (#7732752) Homepage Journal
    Yet another nail in the RIAA coffin. When will the RIAA and other organizations realize their outmoded distribution methods and crazed sue little girls and old women tactics will not save their business? How many times must we say this and flex this opinion where it hurts them most, in the wallet?
    • > crazed sue little girls and old women tactics

      Yeah...bad. Just "crazed little girls" sounds better to me.

    • Re:RIAA still does not get it. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Green Monkey ( 152750 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:56AM (#7733037)
      Huh? This service, and others similar ones such as Napster 2.0 and iTunes, are legal services that put money in the hands of the record companies whenever you purchase a track. So I'm not sure why this would be considered a "nail in the RIAA coffin" - the companies that comprise the RIAA are making a pretty penny off Destra Music, iTunes, et al.! People buying music from online vendors certainly isn't going to put the RIAA out of business...
    • When will the RIAA and other organizations realize their outmoded distribution methods and crazed sue little girls and old women tactics will not save their business?

      When will you guys quit beating this dead horse? The RIAA isn't going ANYWHERE. If anything they've gotten much stronger in the last 5 years. Personally (and I'm sure I'm joined by many people here in this regard) I had never even heard of the RIAA before they sued Napster. I'm also sick of hearing the "time to find a new business model"

      • Obviously people WANT music or they wouldn't be downloading it for free... they're just too cheap to pay for it.

        Not at all. I am happy to pay for music I like provided it follows these basic rules:

        Must be CD quality or better.

        No DRM.

        Tracks must be 99c or less.

        The range of music should be such that I can find the music I am looking for.

        Pretty simple. I am still waiting for such a service.

    • Are you reading the right Slashdot story? What you said is completely redundant (and karma whoring, since it has garnered an easy +5 insightful in every RIAA story so far) and does not pertain to this article at all. A company is selling music legally online, providing a new way for the recording industry to make money -- i.e., a new business model. Your comment would only be relevant if this story was about the RIAA suing or using strong-arm tactics. Even if you don't RTFA, read the Slashdot blurb at least

    • As others pointed out, the legitimate music download services are operating in cooperation with, and not counter to, the record companies and artists. They are resellers of the record companies' products, just like Amazon or Tower Records. A sale is a sale.

      Moreover, the lawsuits in the USA appear to be working. Europe has surpassed the USA in unauthorized music downloads [yahoo.com], a large reason for this being that Kazaa usage in the US has dropped to half of what it once was. And, in case the point isn't alre

      • Yup, and now many of us who rushed to buy CD's as they came out of our fav. albums....are having to buy them again. Many of the first releases of things sounded HORRIBLE. A bunch of the first CD's put out used inferior high generation masters to create the CD's from. Ouch!! As things come out re-mixed, I'm replacing a number of my original buys...

        The original release of ELP's Brain Salad Surgery was pathetic...the re-release version is many times better sounding....for one example. I need to replace my oth

        • Very good points indeed. Just as it took several years for the recording industry to get the whole CD thing right (good remastering, decent pricing), online music distribution is in that "getting it right" phase. DRM and file format standards still need some tweaking, and I still think there's some room to move in pricing models.

          This is exactly why I'm not taking the "sky is falling" approach and shrieking about the imminent death of the recording industry. They survived the CD transition and they'll s

  • Don't believe the advertising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by femto ( 459605 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:18AM (#7732757) Homepage
    I just visited the site and every track I saw cost $1.99. Presumably there is at least one song on the site that costs 99c, so they can say 'from 99c'.
    • There is a Fred Astaire track that is $0.99...

    • Re:Don't believe the advertising (Score:5, Informative)

      by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:37AM (#7732992)

      For those that are curious, at today's exchange rate; .99 Australian dollar = .74 USD

      and

      1.99 Australian = 1.48 USD

      • Wow, I thought it would be a lot cheaper -- 1 AUD to equal about 0.65-0.70 USD -- but I guess the USD has been weakening for a long time now.
        • Yes, despite the "strong dollar" policy the bad shape of the economy meant using tricks like cutting the interest rate. However, the interest rate is already as low as it can go so that can't be cut further. There have already been several recessions recently, but just now deflation is the problem. The recent "growth" seems to result from the change in the value of the dollar, jobs are still getting cut, rather than an increase in trade. Maybe economic depression can be avoided maybe not. Hiding deflati
          • I've actually seen a pickup in jobs around Philadelphia. All of them, though, seem to be 3 positions crammed into one description with requiring a degree, 10 years experience with Linux in enterprise computing settings, and be willing to work for $50k. And did I mention they are also looking for tons of experience with special purpose software to boot?

            My guess: Jobs are opening up because people are retiring, quitting, or burning out. I'm also seeing the same job listed 4 and 5 times; Once by the company,

        • Was not to long ago - this year it dropped below 0.50 USD, but the economy here has been getting better and in the US it must be getting worse (or we'd go up against the Euro too). In Australia though, it always seems that importers think it's 0.50USD every day. There are times when I feel my intelligence is being insulted. And surprise, the worse offenders are the music stores with their AU$35 CDs.

  • Good idea, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bckrispi ( 725257 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:22AM (#7732772)
    I've always had issues with setting a fixed rate per track. A full movie soundtrack may have 30 tracks on one disk, many of which are brief ( 1 minute) segues. In this case, it would cost you twice what it would do purchase the full disk through retail. OTOH, you could grab some progressive rock concept album that has five 15 minute tracks for five bucks. Albiet, a great deal for the consumer, but perhaps not so for the artist.

    • Re:Good idea, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by zem_11 ( 729831 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:34AM (#7732804)
      Why not offer a whole album option? Say $10-12??

      Not a "mix it yourself" selection of songs but the same as you'd get buying a CD. That way both the many * short-tracks and few*long-tracks are covered. That way both the artists and consumer is happy... what you mean the label doesn't make much on the deal? Damn!

      In either way its a start for us Aussies ... in a few months other services will be coming on line. Til then I think I'll sit back a bit and watch the catalogues grow and hopefully the prices drop.

      BTW, I even saw a couple of free promo tracks, so its not ALL $1.99. Then again City Rules by Daniel Merriweather isn't my thing :^(
    • I thought with Apple you could get the album for around $10?
    • If online music stores really take off, I hope this isn't going to encourage artists to make shorter length songs... On the other hand this could encourage artists to pack more songs on their albums, eg instead of having 30 minutes of music, they're make it the full 72 minutes, filling the rest with tracks they wouldnt have deemed worthy but would make the fans happy. It doesnt mean these songs are bad, for example, the Smashing Pumpkins had lots of songs written which didnt make it on their albums until m
      • Another problem we may see is that artists on a pay-per-track basis may not produce the same number of tracks as they would normally. It's often the "filler" material on cd's that are the real gems.

  • The fundamental flaw... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by doublebackslash ( 702979 ) <doublebackslash@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:28AM (#7732780)
    There is a chink in their armor, the forced windows useage and new generations of file shargin under development.
    Newer file sharing protocols will be fully encrypted (making traffic mnitoring illegal at best),
    Be de-centralized to the point of being pure p2(No big intorduction server to take out, or central company to go after),
    Use dynamic ports and protocols that disguise their packets,
    Use spoofing, so that noone knows who is getting what file exept the sender and the reciver, and the reciever dosn't know where its coming from, and vice versa,
    Spoofing is in a round fassion, with multiple hops, and multiple agents seting up different hops, so the packet round trip is HARD to follow (I know, bandwith is precious, but if you distribute the send across multiple agent chains, this ain't so bad),
    And Searching won't reveal who has the file (more spoofing) keeping share-ers annonymous.

    This is the basis for something that I'm planing right now, long way off, but these are the keys to the next gen P2P network. Once in the wild, there is no way to take it down. =)

    I hope such a system sees the light of day.

    • Re:The fundamental flaw... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rock_climbing_guy ( 630276 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:26AM (#7732964) Journal
      OK, how about this:

      I'd just like to point out the fact that using encryption and spoofing addresses and ports are methods for hiding your actions and keeping secrets. Remember how Janet Reno said that they needed to crack down on encryption because it made it "difficult for us [law enforcement] to do out jobs?" Remember the Clinton administration's "Clipper" chip initiative to have the government keep copies of all our encryption keys so that they could snoop on whoever they please?

      These methods of hiding what we're doing will not bode any better with the RIAA than they did with Janet Reno's Department of Justice. Face it: the guys and gals over at the RIAA believe that they are entitled to collect money from us for music. They will hate this. I imagine that their push for draconian laws against techniques such as encryption would make their push for the DMCA look like a cakewalk by comparison. However, I hope that as they did in the past derailing the "Clippr" initiative, people will be able to see how this organization wants to restrict our freedoms. I believe that there are far more people who would be concerned if they wanted to outlaw encryption than are concerned about the DMCA.

    • This is the basis for something that I'm planing right now, long way off, but these are the keys to the next gen P2P network. Once in the wild, there is no way to take it down. =)

      To avoid risks of reinventing the wheel, try looking at GNUnet [gnu.org]

  • sample music (Score:3, Informative)

    by shione ( 666388 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:32AM (#7732794) Journal
    Their site still needs some work. I'm downloading a sample song off jbhifi's site http://jbhifi.destramusic.com/player/ and on Mozilla Phoenix its coming down as a html file. I should be able to renamed it as a wma file when its done so it shouldn't be a problem but it still something they need to fix.

    I wonder how restirctive the drm is on their wma files. AU99c is only ~US72cents so its cheaper than the US sites but as somebody already mentioned thats how much the prices starts from.

    • Maybe mozilla is the one that needs fixing. I bet IE downloads the file just fine.

      I remember once complaining about www.ff-j.com [ff-j.com] to Opera developers...the site displays fine in IE but gives an error in Opera. I got a sniffy reply that the site wasn't following some standard exactly. Well bully for Opera, the site works fine, outputs valid HTML, and hurrah for making your browser break if the web server has the nerve to be different.

      • Re:sample music (Score:4, Informative)

        by cscx ( 541332 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:47AM (#7732847) Homepage
        The web server is probably returning an incorrect MIME type in the HTTP header; IE makes a guess at the file's contents regardless of what the header says, while Mozilla variants follow the header exactly.
        • Yeah, Mozilla should have a "try again by file extension" feature (or plug-in) for those times when MIME types are wrong.
        • Apparently microsoft will be fixing the mime-type bug in the next service pack. Basically IE will start obeying the mime-type set by the server.

          They will also be including pop-up blocking.

          Also some usage of the object tag to pass params to flash will start causing a popup dialog to occur to work around some ddogy patent.

          IIRC, these are the main changes if.

          Matt.

    • Re:sample music (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shione ( 666388 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:01AM (#7732898) Journal
      ah crap

      I renamed the file to wma when it finished downloading and when I right clicked it it said:

      Protected Content
      Can't play on this computer
      Copy to CD not allowed
      Copy to portable player not allowed
      Copy to an SDMI-compliant portable player not allowed

      When I try to play it in Winamp, it loads my browser and takes me to wiredrecords.com

      then I fired up WMP and it wants me to 'update my digital rights management installation'

      I'm using the version WMP that comes when you update XP with SP1.

      oh well so much for trying this 'freebie' out. I'll stick to un-DRMed music thanks

  • Subscription or Per Track ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:35AM (#7732806)
    I would prefer a subscription service where you only pay a monthly fee for unlimitted access to content.

    Most people think you can only have a streaming service for subscription systems which is not correct. You can still download DRM enabled tracks since sites could revoke the license if you didnt pay your monthly fee.

    This would be much better than paying per download. Companies only have one value to justify, that of the music base as a whole, instead of trying to establish value at each individual trak sale.
    • This won't happen becuase a group of people could all pitch in one cent and get unlimited downloads. There's not much to stop it as long as they don't try to all log in at once.
    • Nice try, except you're forgetting one small thing:

      Anywhere you pay for bits consumed (eg ISP with a 'cap' and per-bit charges after) means that You're getting screwed twice and NO LUBE.

      Anyhow, right now I purchase a permanent license (well, as long as the physical medium lasts) when I buy a CD. Now account for that across the life of the medium. You'd need to make it something like $1/month for unlimited music downloads, at full-CD quality (eg lossless encoding), and no restrictions on what physical me
    • emusic.com was like this. (Almost) all you can eat, $10/month, straight mp3 (no DRM).

      Sadly, they got bought and the new overlords downgraded it to same price, 40 tracks per month. I expect a LOT of people jumped ship. I know I did.
  • Remember all the "me too!" posts on usenet? It's just like that.

    BTW MS is also planning one.
  • Where's the added value? At least they could offer you a "buy 5 get 1 free" deal, or maybe unreleased tracks.
    • This is pretty much the only thing stopping online music vendors from huge success. $11.99 for a CD sounds great on paper, but your credit card rate raises it to that same price of around $13. However, the vendor making a sort of 'locked rate' deal with MasterCard, Visa, etc. should easily solve this problem...

  • Australian Dollar value... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:43AM (#7732840) Journal
    1 USD = 1.35 AUD
    1 GBP = 2.35 AUD (1 GBP = 1.75 USD)
    1 EUR = 1.65 AUD (1 EUR = 1.23 USD)

    (Currency values taken from http://www.x-rates.com/ [x-rates.com].)

    So those 0.99 AUD downloads are equivalent to getting 0.73 USD downloads from the US iTunes music store. Not bad at all.

    The 0.99 xxx artificial price point is good news for Aussies, but I can't help but think Brits (and, to a lesser extent, continental Europeans) are going to get shafted when similar stores appear for us - 0.99 GBP is 1.62 USD (and 0.99 EUR = 1.22 USD).

  • Will these services be the end of lossless music? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @04:44AM (#7732843)
    Am I the only one who has issues with paying for approximations? If I'm going to burn it to a cd, there's no reason it should be lossily compressed just so I can decompress it and have a lower quality recording than if I had bought the cd. If all of these services offering lossy music catch on, the uncompressed cd you can buy in the store now may become a distant memory. You would think that the RIAA would love this just as the MPAA liked MPEG2 for dvd.

    Folks, the whole point of digitizing music is to prevent errors from creeping in!

  • thanks to everyone, now i hate music....

    and all the nonstop nonsense by people who make it sound so essential...

    if you guys have too much disposable income why not give it to some charity organizations that provide food, water and basic healthcare to the poor or the deprived in 4th world nations...

  • no (Score:1)

    by powlow ( 197142 )
    got to say that this seems silly to me and don't think i would ever buy music this way : one song at a time...music should come in man sized packets...lots of it.

    does seem they are getting a good deal but most definately Uk and europe will get shafted with .99 whatever prices...
  • Only 100,000 tracks? I have that much on my computer!
    • Lemme see, I know (for example) people with about 2600ish tracks, for a total of ~15GB. That means that 100 thousand tracks, at a reasonable quality (certainly not the highest) would fit on 600GB.

      A WD 250GB SATA drive is ~$225US (checked it on pricewatch.com) , so a terabyte would cost under $1000.

      Seems to me that they're not exactly expending anything like a serious amount of time, effort, thought or money on this.

      Tell me again why I want to pay for this?

  • I'll wait for iTMS.au (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rogerbo ( 74443 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:08AM (#7732923)
    lemme see,

    * butt ugly interface
    * three pages of dance/electronic music with a grand total of 27 albums to choose from!
    * WMA only
    * no support for MacOS or Linux
    * no indie music

    And why would I be interested again?

    Rather than just stocking the stuff you can buy in any mall why don't online music retailers specialise in stuff that is hard to find? Eg set up international music store per genre eg a psytrance store that sells globally. I can't walk into a record store and buy this stuff cause no one in Sydney stocks it so I either have to steal it off soulseek or order physical CD's from overseas retailers and wait. I would think it would be much easier to obtain international distribution rights from more obscure independant labels as well.

    • Try emusic. They have a great catalog of experimental electronic stuff, indie rock, back catalog jazz, etc. Problem is its a subscription service $15 a month for 65 tracks. It's not a bad price, but if you want more than 65 tracks you're out of luck. It's sad, before last month you could download up to 2000 tracks in a month before they cut you off. But they got sold and reorganized. It's still a worthwhile service, the mp3s are well encoded (lame aps) and DRM free.
      • That's my stock reply. I've got the 40 songs for $9.99us plan. I figure that's a quarter a pop, still better than iTMS. Plus, they have what I want, all the old punk rock stuff I currently have on cassette.

        A couple of days ago I noticed they've picked up one of my all time favorite labels, Kill Rock Stars :)

        And "real soon now" they're supposed to have a plan to let you pay as you go for overages...

  • Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dracvl ( 541254 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:51AM (#7733032) Homepage
    In what is believed to be a first for online music retailers, vouchers will be available in stores so you will not need a credit card to purchase online.

    Cool. So now I can actually go to a real store to buy music too? Why hasn't anybody thought of this before?

    • Re:Brilliant (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Green Monkey ( 152750 )
      Well, there are a lot of tracks available on online retailers that may not be available in the stores. Most of the big online music retailers have some exclusive tracks and similar material - iTunes certainly does. Plus, people often use online music shops to buy B-sides or music from less popular artists, which you aren't necessarily going to be find in stores. So buying a voucher in a store allows you to go home and buy any music that Destra offers, even if that music wasn't in the store!

  • Just paid for and downloaded a song... (Score:4, Informative)

    by rixon ( 205544 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @05:58AM (#7733045) Homepage
    For the record:
    - it was easy to find the song
    - easy to sign up
    - easy to pay
    - easy to download
    - easy to play (after media player updated itself with the DRM stuff)
    - easy to burn to audio CD

    The web site's HTML needs work, though.

    Overall I enjoyed the experience. It gave me the "hey that's cool" smile.

    Oh and yes I know I'm supposed to hate it 'cos it's DRM WMA. Know what? If I can burn it to a red book CD then I'm happy.

  • Whay pay for music when you can get it for free? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If musicians want to earn money they should play live concerts.

    Record companies are a thing of the past, get used to it!

  • Ugh! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mallie_mcg ( 161403 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @06:16AM (#7733103) Homepage Journal
    1) WMA only, which means no iTunes compatability, and no iPod which I desperately want.

    2) $2 AUD a pop, screw that, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to expensive.

    3) No mention of bit-rate used and source. (yes I read the "info" section and was unable to find it)

    4) The web page looks shit, which does not bode well for the future!

  • Yet another excuse to RAPE the customer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Crypto Gnome ( 651401 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @06:45AM (#7733162) Homepage Journal
    • (a) most/all tracks are $1.99 ie basically TWO DOLLARS
    • (b) for example, BT has ONE I repeat ONE SINGLE track listed

    So this "new service" works out to be about the same cost as a NEW CD, only
    • You PAY for the CD media yourself (assuming you burn-your own)
    • You have no original physical copy for the digital you just downloaded (can anyone say Drive Crash?)
    • In this country, most ISPs charge you for bits downloaded (though often after passing a 'cap') - so you're paying EXTRA for those CDs of music
    • Sweet Fuck All for music selection

    This is a "service" in the same sense as what stud horses do to mares when they're in season.
    • Not to mention the quality loss. I havent checked what quality they deliver at, but I cant possibly imagine that it isnt noticeable with a pair of quality headphones.

      It takes me just as long to go get the real CD as it would take me to download and burn. Ive never believed in DRM music.

      Anyway, I cant see how these suppliers dont see that the protection will fail to work pretty quickly. In the end, with a good digital interface on a soundcard, you can export a protected mp3 to whatever you want with a cabl

  • DRM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HalfFlat ( 121672 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @07:31AM (#7733271)

    I dislike DRM, but I dislike it a whole lot more when its proponents just straight out lie. Quoting the DestraMusic site [destramusic.com],

    DRM (Digital Rights Management) is the process in which digital content (audio, video or documents) is securely delivered to consumers over the Internet.

    Bullocks.

    Of course as others have said, the service itself is insulting: $2AU per track for lossily compressed (128mbps!) music that I can't play on my non-Windows computer, or use on my iPod. Thrilling.

    • When you say 128mbps, do you mean 128 millibits per second (really bloody bad), or 128 megabits per second (really bloody good)?
      • I mean 128 kilobits per second; how one is supposed to figure out what I mean when I use the wrong abbreviation is um, a different issue ...

        I'll just go and get a new brain now.

  • DRM problems - freeme not working? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rob from RPI ( 4309 ) <xrobau@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @08:23AM (#7733425) Homepage
    Yes, to start with, I'm an aussie, so this is kinda cool for me, being that it's local. Not cheaper, I point out (US$.99 is still less than AU$1.99, I couldn't find *any* songs for $0.99) but coolier.

    So, I downloaded the demo one, and it came up with all the WMA DRM crap. I bit the bullet and installed all the DRM stuff that WPM9 wants to throw in, and played it. Woo. two weeks of listening to this demo thing. Lets see how hard it is to remove the DRM.

    Hard. Very hard.

    Freeme just doesn't work - it's getting a totally bogus content key, roughly 85 bytes long, as opposed to the usual 7. This is the first time that I've *used* freeme, being that I try to avoid non-open stuff, but it seems to be borked. I've compiled from source to ensure it wasn't a compiler error (Well, it still could be, ms vc6) and read the Technical of freeme, but it doesn't seem to work.

    Could someone possibly clue me up on what's going on?
    --snippy--
    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\MyProjects\freewma\Debug>freewma -v c:\daniel.wma
    Found DRMv1 header object.
    Found DRMv1 header object.
    Found DRMv2 header object.
    Found KID (eO34+zbpuEm1e08JBtl1Ug==)
    Starting to look for license.
    License file full path: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM\drmv2.lic
    BlackBox library to use: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM\IndivBox.key
    Keystore to use: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM\v2ksndv.bla
    Created BlackBox instance - extracting key pairs

    Public key 1 x: 309b232d07c8760d393524e4ce4f21eecc6c3a10
    Public key 1 y: 08d86239f8d892cd54ffedee368387c1869d2a1d
    Private key 1: a7e9d6e62fc3921e8fd22a58fbeff849e678baef

    Checking license with PUBKEY 309b232d07c8760d393524e4ce4f21eecc6c3a10
    Matched public key! Proceeding...
    Bytelen is 20
    Bytelen is 20
    x.d[0] is 85
    Decrypted content key is too big! - I would usually die here.
    Content key: e1 11 e2 e5 82 d7 58 b2 9a f8 63 8d 90 32 ff a8 6f 35 83 fe 96 89 9
    7 9c ef 18 fc 7a f7 18 4b b5 bf 58 92 0d 12 bb 24 00 00 00 00 94 fc 12 00 0d 4c
    40 00 28 25 43 00 28 68 88 00 30 69 88 00 a0 fd 12 00 a0 fc 12 00 00 f0 fd 7f cc
    cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc
    Opened output file
    Starting to process data packets
    644 packets of length 5976
    |The 'Lameness' filter decided that a row of hashes here is bad| 100%
    --snippy--

    Note how the content key ends in a whole pile of cc's? I've got a sneaking suspicion that MS have updated something to break freeme, but, it a subtle way. The found public key and calculated public key are the same, which makes me think the private key is correct, but..?

    Hopefully someone with more crypto knowledge than I may be able to offer some assistance.

    • Re:DRM problems - freeme not working? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by blowdart ( 31458 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @09:28AM (#7733759) Homepage

      Freeme just doesn't work - it's getting a totally bogus content key, roughly 85 bytes long, as opposed to the usual 7. This is the first time that I've *used* freeme, being that I try to avoid non-open stuff, but it seems to be borked.

      You're about 2 years too late. Microsoft's reaction to freeme took about 2 weeks, and one simple update to a Windows DRM server. When you play a DRM track for the first time and get that "individualisation update", it's also an update to the bug that allowed freeme to work

  • at least they carry:

    Tie Me Kangaroo Down (Live At The Sydney Opera House) by Rolf Harris
    and
    Tie Me Kangaroo Sport by Rolf Harris

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