can drm-free really compete with free-free?

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Permalink Reply by Arthur Reeder on May 31, 2007 at 1:46am

All DRM does is block consumers. It does not curb piracy. Since the AACS controversy (09 F9...) the cracking community has broken all the new DRM keys and made public before the new discs hit the store shelves. It's a pointless (and expensive) battle.

I used to buy from iTunes when hymn first came out. If I was running OSX or XP now, I'd probably do it now.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Woolf on May 31, 2007 at 1:52am

yeah, it's a fine line between introducing friends to new music and giving them copies of your shit. it's important to protect content creators in some way, but DRM is just a broken concept.

seem to me like the future of stuff like music is Give It All Away. copies of music will probably one day have to be free, and bands will make their money from developing communities around their work, performing live, and using their notoriety to obtain endorsements and sponsors.

DRM will always lose out to the Internet -- we can all share information so quickly that they just can't win. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Dateh on May 31, 2007 at 2:30am

i definitely agree with both of you.

traditionally, artists have been taught to simply accept that they will never make money from their albums. the bulk of their earnings come from merch, touring, tv & film appearances, and other misc. contract jobs. so artists are mostly unaffected by downloading. it has always been the record label that survived off of album sales.

but, record labels are drowning, and now in a desperate move to stay afloat, they are starting to ink deals that claim ownership over the traditionally off-limit merch, touring, and stuff.

i am split. on one hand, record labels typically do a great job of promoting artists. on the other hand, their role in this business is appearing more and more obsolete. personally, i predict that record companies are simply going to move into the merchandising and tour support business and abandon music sales altogether.

but what will that mean for artists? will they get screwed in the process? hmm...

still, all of this current chaos between business and technology is exciting. i can't wait to see where everything will eventually fall into place.

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Permalink Reply by Sarnix on June 1, 2007 at 11:07am

Is this really a recent development?

but, record labels are drowning, and now in a desperate move to stay afloat, they are starting to ink deals that claim ownership over the traditionally off-limit merch, touring, and stuff.

I really like music, but I just couldn't care less about the music industry. I see them as seperate entities that can do without eachother; artists/bands and the music industry.
I cannot see how they will beat free-free music or even come close to competing with free-free music.

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Permalink Reply by Rob Sammons on May 31, 2007 at 3:44am

i won't upgrade as i dont want a different music player so I dont see the point and I save money

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Permalink Reply by Joseph on May 31, 2007 at 8:16pm

I don't think it really changes anything. Those who want to pirate to avoid 1 dollar a track fees will most likely continue to pirate to avoid 1.39 a track fees.

Did you also know that the DRM free itunes tracks embed your user information into the track? If you buy a DRM free track, you can copy it over into linux and use the grep command on the file to search for your user id within the file. I think you could also do this in osX in a terminal window although I haven't tried that. If you choose to share these and they get out on the net, they could trace it back to you.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Dateh on May 31, 2007 at 10:46pm

oh, i heard about this! but i don't think it's bad, necessarily. the main point was to get apple/labels to allow us to have more control over the music we purchase. although embedding trackers in our files isn't exactly giving us full fair use, it's far better than stupid drm. we'll just have to keep watching and see how this all pans out.

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Permalink Reply by Mike McKinstry on June 1, 2007 at 12:23pm

Think of it this way......A book is not individual to one person, you can pass a book around your friends and they can all read it. Why should it have been like that for music? Now drm-free is here, I think it is for the better.

I agree with Steve when he talks about musicians probably going along the lines of free music in the future. I thought that music was all about empowerment, making you feel good not making you feel like you have just forked out a bomb 'cos an album costs a lot of dosh.
But at the end of the day you do have to pay slightly more for the drm music so steve jobs is getting us by increasing how much we have to pay for the tracks in the first place.

And the whole embedding your information in the track info is slightly Big Brotherish.....

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Permalink Reply by Derek on January 14, 2009 at 5:28pm

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| iTunes DRM-Free Files Contain Personal Info |
| from the musical-steganography dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 13, @02:39 (Music) |
| http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/13/036211 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

r2k writes "Apple's iTunes Plus files are DRM-free, but sharing the files
on P2P networks may be an extremely bad idea. A report published by CNet
highlights the fact that the account information and email address of the
iTunes account holder is [0]hidden inside each and every DRM-free
download. I checked, and I found I couldn't access the information using
an ID3 tag editor, but using Notepad I found my email address stored
inside the audio file itself."

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