Epitaph Selling MP3s 83
ElJefe writes "According to SonicNet, Epitaph Records (Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX') is going to start selling songs and albums in MP3 format on Emusic. The songs are 99 cents each, or $8.99 for a whole album.
The article quotes the president of EMusic [Ed: "SDMI will die" guy] as saying "You go where the customers are, and they're going to stay with MP3." Although I'm not a huge fan of any of the bands, it's nice to see someone using MP3 instead of SDMI.
" The site also has yet another article on SDMI that says
SDMI will treat copies like physical objects, limiting copies to a number specified by the content
distributor.
Re:How can you keep track of copies? (Score:1)
The four copy thing is a little misrepresented. They're saying if you own a cd, rip, encode, and SDMI tag a song, you can only make four of them (SDMI'd )at a time. You can make more, but you have to do the process again. The assumption is that you're not going to want to dump the song that you're legally entitled to copy into more than four players at any given time, thus cutting down on people making mass dupes.
It makes sense in a way.
You can do whatever else you want to the song in other formats. And remember, SDMI doesn't cover algos or encoding schemes, it's just a copy protection device.
What was more irksome to me was the fact that a portable player is not allowed to slap the SDMI tag on, that has to be done on the computer (or whatever) side. Sure, it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint, but it utterly precludes someone from producing a single, handy device any time in the future. You gotta buy at least two things.
Heh. Which again, makes sense from a business standpoint.
Re:A much better way to reduce Music piracy (Score:1)
--nrl
Re:Back Catalogue (Score:2)
Re:A few notes (Score:2)
As for Brett Gurewitz, he was never the lead singer of Bad Religion. He was the lead guitarist and co-songwriter (he wrote about 1/2 the songs, with the other half being written by the lead singer, Greg Graffin). He's been on and off of various drugs for the last 20 years. However, I don't think he personally runs the label much anymore. He was particularly upset when The Offspring left his label before the end of their contract (he finally agreed to let them go in return for some payments in order to avoid having to sue them). Rumor has it he's going to be rejoining Bad Religion for their 20th-anniversary album in 2000.
Re:How I would design SDMI (Score:1)
Instead of 'analog sampling the speaker output' I just crack it opne, and reroute the speaker wires to the audio in of my stereo, or, send it right back into my computer for re-digitizing... hmmm?
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
Brett was the guitarist..and helped write about half their great songs. Greg wrote the other songs. Brett departed sometime around Stranger Than Fiction (but I dont' really remember when).
Re:99 cents an album and they'd take over the worl (Score:1)
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
The Offspring screwed Epitaph and Mr Brett by demanding to be let out of their contract so they could sign for mega-bucks with a major label. Rather than hold them to their contract as he very legally could have, Mr Brett gave the Offspring brats the release they requested.
This was documented in Alternative Press [altpress.com] back around the time it took place.
Jack
Ugh. (Score:1)
You wouldn't think that in the middle of a gung-ho article about the success of mp3, they would know better than to include that most-proprietary of formats that is RealAudio?
Who's with me here? I for one can't stand RealNetworks stuff! I'm sure it's a wonderful format, but it requires their ugly, unstable player, which keeps expiring, forcing me to download it over and over again, while they keep trying to sell me their "Plus" version, and which, when it installs, changes my Netscape prefs, making itself the default player for all the media types (to be fair, QuickTime does this too -- Grr!), and doing everything it can to stop me from saving anything locally. No application is entitled to modify config files belonging to another application without my permission. Aside from being incredibly rude, things that do this are my prime suspects when my prefs file gets corrupted. And why won't they let me save files locally? Who owns this machine anyway?
For all I know, the expiring-version thing might have been just for beta, but I doubt the rest has changed. I wouldn't know, though, because I refuse to touch the stuff anymore. Unfortunately, that means that whenever some wise guy puts something up only in "Real" formats, it's inaccessible for me. I guess now I know how the rest of you feel about those QuickTime codecs without Linux players. My message to web designers: Fewer Formats, Fewer Clicks.
David Gould
Poof? (Score:1)
As you said, who wants low-quailty tracks? And whatever quality the original is, the filtered bootleg is going to be lower, right?
David Gould
Re:Tom Waits, Epitaph, and MP3s (Score:1)
Matador has - http://www.matador.recs.com/mp3 is the address if I remember correctly. It's not big or anything, but they're throwing the "gimme free music now or else I'll pout" crowd a bone.
Neutral Milk Hotel (Score:1)
The more you know...
Tom Waits, Epitaph, and MP3s (Score:2)
MP3s for sale, well, I support, but I don't think they're the hottest idea. I've always been a big fan of music in general, and therefore a big "try before you buy" advocate. Sell the songs for 99 cents and you might have some buyers, but drop the bitrate or dub them to mono and put 'em out for free and you'll get a following. How many times have we heard Hip Song X on the radio, said, "Oh, I'll buy that album," then found out the album sucks, or the band is overproduced and can't play three chords live, or some other horrible situation? The way I see it is that MP3s are a nice way to reintroduce musicianship and integrity to the industry, things which have long gone unrecognized. They allow independant artists who are talented to get recognized and popular artists to have a chance to truly prove their worth. It's been said millions of times: set the water level and society will swim to meet it. Now we can hear Hip Song X on the radio and then go and find the rest of the album somewhere to determine whether or not its worth our $13.99 or greater. If it isn't, oh well. That band will have their moment and then fade away, perhaps faster than usual. However, if it truly is a great record that deserves notice, it will be noticed and bought and exhalted, despite what the big six and other critics think.
I'm just ranting, really, at this point, and we all know the virtues of MP3s. Epitaph is taking a step in the right direction. Now if Matador [recs.com] and Merge [mrg2000.com] (Superchunk's label, with Neutral Milk Hotel, Rocket From The Crypt, Portastatic, Magenetic Fields, Ladybug Transistor, and Third Eye Foundation, amongst others) and Touch & Go [southern.com] (Jesus Lizard, Blonde Redhead) and SubPop [subpop.com] (a whole buncha bands, even though the label tends to get sneered at) and, hell, Grand Royal [grandroyal.com] (Beastie Boys' label, now with Lucious Jackson, Ben Lee, Butter 08, and some other fairly hip groups) would open up and do the same thing, we'd really be cooking with gas. Show the RIAA just what they're up against.
Tom Waits! (Score:1)
Re:Let us not forget (Score:1)
At least, I cant.
I Thought... (Score:1)
...when I first read the "headline" that one of my favorite groups in college was recording again. That'd be Epitaph that made "Outside the Law" on Billingsgate. Too bad.
BTW, to keep this slightly on topic: My $0.02 is that MP3 is a great idea for making samples of each song on a CD available. Long gone are the days when radio stations used to play most of the songs on an album/CD. Now you just get the bit hit single ("With a bullet? With a bullet!"). Not enough for me anyways in order to make the decision to buy a CD.
I'd like to know where the poster who said he was paying US$15 for CDs was buying them. The last few times I've looked in a music store at the local mall the average price was in the $18-$19 range. Last time I paid as low as $15 was when I bought a CD that Richard Pinhas was selling at his show in Chicago. I actually prefer buying them that way; at least I know that the artist is getting the lion's share of the money and it's not going for lights and floor space rental at a megamall. Mail order CDs are usually a much better buy as well (but you gotta know what you're looking for).
Re:I Thought... (Score:1)
``Try Best Buy, if you have one in your area.''
Been there... done that. Best Buy's OK for some things. They used to have a decent jazz section but they seem to have pretty much phased that out. About all I'd buy from them now is a CD version of an old album that I like.
I judge a music store by the artists that they see fit to make a plastic divider for. It's not a perfect method but it tells me something about the music they choose to stock. If I don't see dividers for artists that I like I look for the "miscellaneous" dividers like "Rock - A", etc. If they don't see fit to stock artists that I would want to buy under either of those categories then they're probably not worth wasting the time looking for anything. Life's too short to keep returning to a store that thinks that what everyone wants to buy is the Back Street Boys and N'Sync. Maybe I'm too harsh on Best Buy but they haven't been stocking anything that I'd be interested in spending money on (although I did stumble upon a re-release of Henry Cow's first recording) and their clerks are fairly clueless. True story: Teenage kid (holding up a copy of "Dark Side of the Moon"): Is this good? Best Buy droid: "Oh Yah! That's their first CD."
Maybe I've just known too many folks who've actually owned record stores and really gave a damn about what they stocked and really knew about the music to tolerate outfits like this that couldn't even be bothered to hire people who knew what they were selling.
Agreed. Tower prices are getting out of hand. What ruined Tower for me, before their prices got jacked up, was the narrowing selection. If they carry an artist it's usually just the latest couple of releases and that bothers me. One of the Towers in the Chicago area used to be a place called Rose Records. Before Tower bought them out, they were the best place to find a great selection. That used to have a really cool method of stocking their records. You looked up the artist in one of the dozens of Schaum (sp?) catalogs that were scattered around the store (attached to strings with masking tape - really high-tech) and looked up the recording by the label and the record label's stock number. It was wierd that you'd be going through the racks and find some really strange artists in the same bin.
But then isn't this quite the thread fork...
WTF? (Score:1)
SDMI can only be dumped to a portable mp3/SDMI player *three times*?
All the more reason to *not* get one of those players then. The technology just doesn't support it. If you want to shell out the big bucks, you can get an hour's worth of music on those things. But if you want to listen to something different and don't want to pay ~$50 for another memory module, you'd have to erase it and dump a different set of files to the device. Meaning you can only take the SDMI files with you three times.
portable mp3 players are a nice idea, but the technology/market isn't up to a point where they're yet feasable as an affordable portable listening device. You're better off getting a soundcard with an optical output (like the Xitel Storm Platinum [xitel.com] ) and recording those songs onto minidisc. Cheap, swappable storage, and if you can listen to them on the computer, you can dump them on as many minidiscs as you like as often as you like.
Re:99 cents an album and they'd take over the worl (Score:1)
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
Flaws (Score:1)
Flaw #2 is simply that some hacker will spent a few weeks and crack the security.
Flaw #3 is that the "storare box" will be either to big (heavy) to carry around as a portable player, or to small to be able to contain all i want.
Flaw #4 is that if the "black box" fails, you'll lose your data, without a chance of recovery. That wouldn't happen if your CD player broke down...
Flaw #5 is that you'd have to purchase boxes for your car, the bathroom, the living room, the computer room,
Hell no... (Score:1)
Re:I'm no fan of SDMI, but... (Score:1)
Re:I'm no fan of SDMI, but... (Score:1)
Re:99 cents an album and they'd take over the worl (Score:1)
Re:I like the second article (Score:1)
Re:audio copy protection is dead already (Score:1)
Proves the point... (Score:1)
So the rest sounded plausible? (Score:1)
*sigh* Ok, yes, that's cute, but you're still having to make an analog copy. (And I guess after that, you can make as many digital copies as you need to.)
But I was hoping someone would tell me that my idea was implausible, or that some aspect of it, higher upstream, wouldn't work because ________. Instead, I'm just seeing silence. If what I described works, then SDMI may be similar.
BTW, once they have a closed black box that uses a secure protocol (with the chips all dunked in epoxy so you can't easily anaylze it ;-) to store and retrieve music, they won't have just stopped digital copies. It'll also be easy to add "features" like usage counting/logging, and automatic "uploads" of those logs to the record companies, as part of the download protocol, so they can bill for on a per-listen basis. They'll get everything they want.
Ugh, I don't like this. We gotta do something, or else it's going to really happen.
I think the best defense it to talk the musicians out of it. Many of them (well, at least in the metal genre) are pretty accessible. Or better yet, prove to them that they can make money selling MP3 music, by pointing to Epitaph's success (assuming Epitaph actually succeeds).
Without musicians, the SDMI backers will have nothing to protect, except for "corporate music" which will probably generate enough revenue to keep 'em going, but shouldn't effect everyone else too badly.
How I would design SDMI (Score:3)
I have an entirely speculative idea on how SDMI might work, based simply on how I would do it, if I were a music industry asshole. You're all going to hate it, but maybe it will be fun to poke holes in my idea. Gee, I'm just begging for flames, aren't I? :-)
The goal: Minimize the exposure of digital data in plaintext form. If the data ever passes through a user-programmable computer system or a network, it must be in encrypted form.
The first thing I'de do is tell users to forget about any delusions that they will ever be able to play SDMI music through a conventional sound card. As many others have mentioned, it is impossible to protect the data if that happens, because someone will just use a virtual soundcard driver to slurp up the plaintext data. Likewise, SDMI music "files" stored on a general-purpose computer must never be reusable. In fact, your SDMI music is not going to be stored on the same drive your Windoze system is....
And here is the gimmick: I would design a spec for a black box that plugs into a USB or firewire port. This box would be an embedded computer with hard disk. This system would be used for all SDMI storage. Users would never have access to music files on their own hard disks which are accessible by general-purpose computers.
Downloading music from a server would really be a transaction between my storage box and the server. There would be a secure encrypted link. That way, the data can pass through a general-purpose computer, so users can use the internet, web browsers (with a plugin, of course), etc. to get the files. But the data would be encrypted and useless at any point between the server and my box. Only as it is written to my embedded system would the data be decrypted. (And it would probably be scrambled, like DVD is, before writing to HD, in case some cracker takes the HD out of my box.)
Playback would be the same idea: a secure link between the embedded box and a SDMI speaker.
Tada! Impossible to copy data (except by analog sampling the speaker output) and all the user has to do is buy a USB SDMIdrive and USB SDMIspeakers. Fire away if you see any technical problems.
And if you think you see a marketing problem (e.g. "Users would not buy the fucking box and new speakers") then I'de like to remind you that we're talking about the same kind of people who throw away a perfectly good P100 because it didn't run Win98 fast enough, and they "upgraded" to Win98 because someone sent them an MS Office 2000 document. So don't try to tell me that consumers aren't suckers or that they reject bad ideas.
I think I see some ways to attack SDMI, but it's going to be a long hard battle, where you're not only fighting a large industry, but also fighting the hypnotized herd who funds it... It will be like Windoze all over again. Please point out my logic flaws, because this is getting depressing.
Re:I like the second article (Score:1)
Still not good enough (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong: I love MP3's, I've endcoded 11GB of them so far, and until I buy a second CD drive I'll be playing them when I know I have to swap a lot of data CD's in and out of the computer. But still...
link to the music (Score:1)
None of this really matters.... (Score:1)
Who in their right mind would buy digital music that gets stored on their hard drive when they could buy a CD and not have to worry about losing the data or accidently deleting it.
The pirates won't stop pirating. MP3 encoders won't stop coming out. MP3 players won't stop coming out. Rio won't go away.
RIAA can't stop MP3 any more than they can stop Microsoft from using their Word document format. All they are doing is trying to provide a "legal alternative" for the consumer buzz about MP3. I don't buy it, probably nobody who has MP3s will, and the new consumers won't see any advantages SDMI offers over a real CD.
So who cares? The MP3 "industry" and underground have nothing to fear.
I'm no fan of SDMI, but... (Score:2)
I don't really understand why everybody seems to think downloadable music is such a great thing. Maybe when MP3 sound quality improves (like, to CD quality), and the portable players can hold a reasonable amount (at least 300 MB) for a reasonable price (sub $200), it'll be great. But for now I really see it as "the way to listen to songs you don't like enough to actually buy."
Honestly, I've bought more CDs since I started listening to MP3s than I ever did before. Download a song, find out you love it, download a couple more from the album, love them too, buy the whole album.
From what I understand, the amount of money the artists make off radio plays is insignificant; it's all about the publicity. In that regard, MP3s can just be the new radio. Let everybody download the new single for free in 96 khz, then if they like it, they can just go buy the cd for the regular ridiculous price.
But what do I know. I know I have 5 more problems to do solving recurrences for my Algorithms class, and it's due at 11 am, and it's 4:30am right now. Sigh. What a slacker I am.
Re:I Thought... (Score:1)
Re:99 cents an album and they'd take over the worl (Score:2)
tell that to epitaph (or any other company).
they'll crap themselves that the market will fall out from under their cds, and then they'll be left with a bunch of plastic on their shelves.
the only way e-music companies can get big labels to allow mp3 distribution is to present them with a model that is very similar to the current cd market. The labels probably don't want to shift millions of mp3s for a small price, they just want to make sure they aren't left out in the cold if the whole thing takes off.
+++++
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
hell, often i'll consider buying a cd just because it says Hellcat on it. (so far i've not been disappointed by anything they've produced)
as far as epitaph goes, there's still some good bands on epitaph and many of them seem perfectly happy with where they are. I've never heard anyone in Rancid have anything bad to say about Bret or Epitaph. While i dont read a whole lot of punk mags and zines lately, the only person i have heard say anything bad was Dexter from Offspring. (and his problem sounded more like he and bret just dont like each other).
audio copy protection is dead already (Score:1)
since all the freely available mp3 encoders and decoders won't go away anytime in the future.
Any protected digital music format needs to be decoded and played back through the soundcard.
There are plenty of soundcards with digital output. It's impossible to hinder people to make high quality MP3s from the digital signal.
And there are still those old fashioned audio CD thingies. They are easy to rip and won't go away anytime soon.
One can restrict future portable MP3 players. Yes. But that's it.
Re:audio copy protection is dead already (Score:1)
but with a digital sound card you get the same result anyway. Anyway, a dummy driver surely is a cleaner solution.
How can you keep track of copies? (Score:1)
Re:I'm no fan of SDMI, but... (Score:1)
sending it to everybody he knows?
They probably don't.
There will always be pirates burning CD's, and people illegally
trading MP3's.. but I'm guessing that the fact that it's simple and
cheap enough to do it legally now will encourage people who honor the
artists to do buy legitimate copies.
Personally, I think this is a _GREAT_ idea (one I had some time ago,
too..) I'm hoping that this becomes widespread, so I never have to go
to a store and waste time *hoping* that they carry a CD I want (which
doesn't happen often - usually the CD's I want to buy are 'out of
stock'.)
The key behind this is convenience - it's inexpensive, and it's easy.
Watermarking is an issue (Score:1)
If the watermarks survive the output stage of the soundcard, then sdmi enabled players may still not play them (or is that sdmi-II)
anyway, don't hold your breath coz sdmi is dead in the water
also, it is the copyright holders own decision as to what licence/format they release their music on, somewhat similar to the case with software.
I support the right to release sdmi crippled music, I just don't expect anyone to want to bother downloading it and playing it.
But then again, a lot of ppl eat McDonalds, so don't underestimate marketing power.
-- Reverend Vryl
Very good idea (Score:1)
#include "various_economic_and_marketing_reasons"
// sorry, gettin lazy after like 5 posts
Let us not forget (Score:1)
I'm just as guilty about downloading tons of MP3s as the next guy, but let us not forget that the sound quality of an MP3 is nowhere near as good as a cd. Yes MP3s are easy and convenient and I love them, too. But they are not as good.
-
Guess what we do now. (Score:1)
Recognize efforts like these, and pay a measely buck for guarenteed, easy, and fast access to songs you like that puts money in the artist's pocket too.
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
as for his heroin addiction, a few people say that he's back at it, again. alledgely, Epitaph isn't doing so hot, since almost all the music they've put out in the last year has sold like poop (probably because dumb punk rock gets old after 15 years).
Tom Waits, however, is God.
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
Not as extreme as you might think (OT) (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Tom Waits, Epitaph, and MP3s (Score:1)
Re:Watermarking is an issue (Score:1)
who will pay for low-quality tracks?
Re:I like the second article (Score:1)
"The Man(TM)" doesn't always think things through
_______Dan________
I also sang on "do whatcha like"
and if you missed it
I'm the one that said "just grab em in the biscuits"
The whole idea needs some work... (Score:1)
Before I pay for digital music, I need to know that I can download songs I have paid for anytime I want. I want the company to keep track of the songs I have paid for, and to make the songs available for download by me at anytime (at higher and higher bit rates and in different formats as times change). That way, I can pay for a song once, and never have to worry about losing it. This way, the music companies can still control the music (I don't agree with them doing this, but it is inevitable that they will try) by making the music players unable to save to disk; you will need to download a song each time you want to hear it. Plus, each portable device can be given an encryption key, and the PC music players can encrypt the song for one portable device only. That way, per download, you can only send the song to one portable device, and can't trade from one portable to another. Furthermore, each download could be watermarked with the owner's information. If said owner distributes his songs, the record companies can trace it back to said owner.
Of course, there will always be ways to circumvent any security measure. The only thing the record companies can do is make their distribution so much more convenient that the majority of people don't bother to pirate. It looks like they can do that, too: with the new satellite networks going up (designed to provide digital music to cars across the entire country), record companies could stream songs I request (that I have purchased already... Or, they could implement a pay-per-play system) to my devices (each with a separate encryption key). That way, only devices I have authorized can listen to my songs (I can register my friend's car radio so I can listen to my songs in her car), and the record company can make sure I am only listening to one song at a time. Under this system, I have every song I've ever owned available to me at any time on any of my home or portable devices. On a pay-per-play basis, I have virtually every song available to me, all on a portable satellite device. Pirate MP3s just don't compete with that sort of convenience, even if they are free. Record companies remain in control, can charge for songs, albums, pay-per-play, or even stream me advertisements and give me the songs for free. And it seems as though the technology to distribute songs in this way is almost available.
Unfortunately, the artists lose under a system like this. Once again, the record company gets rich while the artist gets squat per album sale. Oh well, once a proletarian, always a proletarian.
Re:I'm no fan of SDMI, but... (Score:1)
Get another job, no music.
Get another job, little music after work.
Die from starvation.
When, and if, I release my stuff, I'm gonna do it on my own, over the 'net, bypassing the record companies as well, not because I'm greedy, but because I need money in this society to pay for all sorts of things . . .
hasta la bye bye
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
Check out Lint's (Tim Armstrong lead singer for RANCID) label Hellcat (distibuted by Epitaph), hopefully he'll follow suit.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm MP3'sssss
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
Unless he released all of his stuff in MP3 format that is, His only saving grace is Max and Johnny from the Swinging Utters.
Re:A few notes (Score:1)
I think I've got the new album around here somewhere?????
Oh Yeah I've saved a backup copy on my hard drive in commpressed format to save space.
caseyriddell@yahoo.com
hmmm (Score:1)
Re:How can you keep track of copies? (Score:1)
Re:Still not good enough (Score:1)
audiosurge.com [audiosurge.com] Capturing the Energy of Music