iPodDailyNews - Where iPod news comes first

Huh!
"One device" as in one brand of mp3 players. Sure, you can play iTMS songs on computers, CD players and other products, but that's not the point I was making since you can do that with Sony's new CDs as well. The point is that it is proprietary and Apple has not been too anxious to allow other's to use Fairplay. Sony, on the other hand, has been more than willing to use Fairplay on their CDs, but Apple won't allow it.

I would prefer a world where DRM wasn't necessary but as long as we have the "you can return CDs for a store credit. i've done it before after burning a copy" attitude it's never going to happen. Fine, I can live with that. A lot of people here complain about the decisions that companies make that negatively affect their purchases without realizing that their beloved Apple is doing the same thing. Either be honest about the issues when you complain or just learn to deal with the way things are.

Here's what I wrote as feedback on the Sony site:

If copy-protected Sony CD's can't be played on iPods, then I will never buy them to give as gifts. All my friends and family have iPods.

Two little things...
1. Oh, no! Backstreet Boys! I'm so disappointed that I won't be able to put Backstreet Boys on my iPod!
2. this is why we have iTunes.

quoting Metryq: "Care to name a few of these "tons" of possibilities? What else do you want to do with the music beside play it on the computer, a CD, or on your iPod? Upload it on P2P, perhaps?"

Open your mind a little. There are plenty of legit uses for music. How about a cell phone, car stereo with a built-in hard drive that syncs to an iPod or wirelessy to your computer, home media server, etc. All of those markets exist and unless Apple develops a product will not be able to play Fairplay songs. If Apple makes one I'd most likely buy it, but they should allow other companies to fill the void for a niche product like EyeHome if they aren't interested. Consumers like me want choice and innovation and Apple is for once stifling it. Now, as a shareholder, I can appreciate the lock and revenue stream they have going. Doesn't mean it is the best thing for consumers.

Here's one that bugs the &$#k outta me.

If I buy the explicit language version of a CD, why can't I get clean versions of songs for free if I request it?

Congress would have fun with this one.

iTMS music only works on one device.

Of all the MP3 players in the world, iTMS music works on over 80% of them. A few million more than just one.

Very nice move by the dinosaurs.. RRROOOOAAARRRR!

Duly noted.. you don't want to work with the worlds most dominant media player... Got it..

Thanks for stoppin' by..

Sony will go out of business in about a week from now.

What came first, the iPod, or this DRM?

I think we have already won. If not, we'll open it up. Who blinks first?

I'm just left confused at this move by Sony BMG and EMI. I understand and fully support their desire to protect their property from illegal copying, but for them to turn around and give instructions on how to bypass the protection is just plain illogical in my mind.

Are these "CD"s intended for the general music listening audience which use them in their home stereos, automobiles, portable CD players?

I've tried to look at this from all angles, but I just can't comprehend how this can possibly lead to increased CD sales, which is their ultimate goal.

Way to sell fewer and fewer CD's BMG and Sony !!

Didn't have enough problems in the first place? The article makes it sound like it's the iPod they're going after, but with the accompanying software allowing only "one archived copy", it's obvious they're still living in the past trying to sell CDs and music DVDs. Physical digital media (oxymoronic, I know)has a much larger profit margin. Gotta pay for their filler tracks, too.

Didn't Sony have enough backlash from PC/Mac users whose hard drives were trashed from the previous round of copy protection ?? The music labels continue to bite their own noses off to spite their faces.

Like ae, I can't remember the last time I bought a major CD release. And I keep on shredding BMG and Columbia music club whining "come back dear customer" letters.

I'll stick with iTunes Music Store, thank you very much. If I need to change the format, there's always Audio Hyjack.

Eventually al these iPod killers will *hopefully* learn from their past. Sony connect (or w/e), iod still around. yahoo, ipod still around. Windows media player, i[od still around. Alternative to Cd that wont rip to itunes? that'll definatly work

Hey, everyone, Sony is trying to drive people to buy music online.

Now that both CDs and online songs have copy-protection, the only reason left to buy CDs is for the AIFF quality or other extras tucked into the package.

I am not sure how I will respond if a CD I really want to own is released in this bastardized format. Fortunately, nothing afflicted with this DRM is on my "to buy" list.

But, I don't like where this is headed...

If you are really panicked about all of this going just buy your music from the iTunes Music Store.

If music being free is what bothers you about online music purchases then use Jhymn: http://www.hymn-project.org/

There is much blame to go around.

Apple with their closed iTMS DRM.
Sony/EMI with their crippled CDs.
... and of course: Us (we download music w/o paying for it)

What works for me:
I don't buy from iTMS.
I won't (will try not to) buy Sony/EMI crippled discs.
... will try to buy CDs of the music I download and happen to like.

disillusioned says: "A lot of people here complain about the decisions that companies make that negatively affect their purchases without realizing that their beloved Apple is doing the same thing."

Well yes, but no. Not quite the same thing. Yes Apple is using a DRM on the songs purchased from the iTunes store. But that DRM is really quite liberal. Among its many more liberal features is the ability to burn copies to CD with no further restrictions in place (although, the resulting CD file will still sound no better than the 128bps that created it). Furthermore, the iTunes software doesn't default to some copy protected format, nor does it prevent you from grabbing uncompressed audio.

I, too, "would prefer a world where DRM wasn't necessary." I just can't imagine that world anymore.

I would be willing to put up with very restrictive DRM, if the damn record companies would provide me with the higher quality 24bit/96KHz+ masters instead of the sound that is squashed down to 16bit/44.1KHz with all the dynamics compressed to the point where it sounds loud even during the quiet parts.

A world of high resolution CD/DVD is a DRM world I could live in peacefully...

Since these disks do not conform to the CD specification, don't have the logo (like you really notice it) and are labeled (in tiny type?) that they are not compatible in all players, then I think music stores should segregate these types of disks in their own section. DVDs are in their own section, blank disks are, etc. The only real similarity is that the disc is the same size.

Putting these disks in with all the other conforming CDs implies that they are the same and compatible, IMHO.

If they were in their own section, I wonder what kind of sales would result?...

So I guess well' be using P2P to get our Sony, BMG & EMI stuff from now on.

If "Artists" such as the Backstreet Boys and their kind, really cared about their art, and realise that the power to create music is the power to make people happy, then they wouldnt care who was paying, how much they were paying, or how they were doing it. They would simply say "Thanks for listening. If we made one person smile because they heard our music then we can sleep easy tonight." But they don't. The sooner people around the world stop buying pointless things from Sony and BMG that claim to be music written by artists, and start buying propper music from real artists who are doing it for a love of music, the quicker this will all end. These short sighted and greedy companies only have money and power because you all keep buying Britney Spears CDs. Get some self respect and stop helping them. You work hard enough for your money. Stop giving it to people who want to sue you and make you feel like a criminal.

I just sent Sony the following feedback:

I will never buy a CD that will not work with my iPod. I hope that eventually you'll realize that many of the millions of other iPod owners feel the same way.

I'm all for capitalism, but how about capitalizing on a market that actually exists?

Maybe Apple should offer a transfer service at its stores. Bring in a protected CD and rip it on one of the stores machines and transfer to your iPod.

I ran into a Siouxsie and the Banshees CD single a year or two back ("Dizzy", I believe) that had some sort of anti-copying crud on it. I couldn't rip it to my iTunes under OS X.

Crap!, I thought.

Then I had an idea. I popped the CD into an old machine running OS 9 and iTunes 2, and guess what. It ripped just fine. Then it was a simple matter of copying the ripped file over to to my OS X machine over the network.

I bet all these newer CDs with this Janus-derived DRM stuff on them would rip into iTunes 2, since it doesn't have any code in it that pays any attention to any sort of DRM. Maybe Classic isn't as dead as we all thought...

Richard Smith, the Backstreet Boys and their kind are no more than wage slaves, who get mere pennies per dollar on CD sales (if their contract doesn't swindle them out of that much), and no say in what the big labels choose to do with them (short of not signing their contracts with the labels to start with). The people in charge are the execs and CEOs, mean sharks the lot of them, who got control of the music industry when they were the only ones who could afford to make records or had the power to get music on the radio. They are megalodons now, still trying to hold on to power over music, artist, and listener, while technology has passed them by and their extinction is long overdue.

That is what this is all really about: control. The big labels are used to controlling music. But they ran into a bind: CD sales were down, file sharing was up, and their yacht payments were about to default. So they go hat in hand to one Steve Jobs, begging the heroic, wonder-working, CEO of a miraculously resurrected Apple to come and save them, which he did. Thus was born the iTunes Music Store.

Houston, we got one whale of a problem here. Steve Jobs is now the one with power in the music industry. He shares it with iPod users, and Garage Band users, and indie artists on iTunes - all who benefit from all that he and Apple have done to democratize music. Which is great, unless you are part of a pack of mean label execs who want their power back. Whoops!

So here they are: attacking iPod with copy protected CDs, going after iTunes with a patent suit (gee, wonder who's funding that?), running to Congress to cry about iPod being proprietary (fortunately Congress told them to grow up for a change), etc. All of it is to attack that mean Steve Jobs who *sob* took their power away and put it back where it belonged - with the artists and the people. Oh, yeah, they'll show him - exactly how mature they aren't!

Richard, I do agree with the rest of your post. Boycott the mean sharks like Sony and EMI (the RIAA has a nice list of members to base a boycott list off of), and go for the indie artists. I've been discovering some great indie music on iTunes, and getting it is so easy and fun, even on a dial up account.

OS X Tiger: now and forever the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.

Just need to encourage CD stores, to avoid trouble with returns by labeling the recordings with a bright orange "WARNING - not compatible with iPod music players", and in small print "The contents of this NON-STANDARD music recording does not meet the ISO/IEC 13490-1:1995 standard for music CD recording."

I don't buy cd's anymore - I rip them from whatever source I can find. Since the music labels get a piece of every blank cd I buy, I consider that a license to fill that cd with music from any label receiving the money. Since most of the cd's are not used for music, I'm always behind. Since the hundreds of vinyl albums in my basement will not play on my cd player or iPod, I own even more licenses that I can't use. I can't "steal" enough music to ever catch up. It also seems rather foolish to pay $18 for a music cd that cost a hundred grand to record when I can buy a movie on dvd for $8 that cost a hundred million bucks to make and get a whole album's worth of music tossed in. The record labels are dinosaurs - the sooner they die off the sooner we'll get some fossil fuel out of the deal.

Step 1: Put the non-CD into a player.
Step 2: Connect the player with a Mac using a Griffin iMic.
Step 3: Start the application FinalVinyl (free from Griffin)
Step 4: Press the "play" button.
Step 5: Start the recording into AIFF
Step 6: Stop the recording
Step 7: Burn a CD or import into iTunes.
Step 8: Return the CD, claim that it does not play on your twelve year old stereo equipment (give them an obscure brand name); (it says: may not play on all CD players; how can you know whether it works on yours before you try?)

Why not loop it through a PowerMac's optical ports and keep it completely in the digital domain?...

I have bought these copy protected disks and if I cannot import them to itunes simply send them back to head office for a refund. The money has been forth coming - I imagine the point made. Invariably I have found someone else with a copy I can use - you decide who is the loser.

Sony and the record companies are missing the boat. Music is an emotional experience, when I want a song I want to buy it NOW. Which is easier, buy 24 hours a day from iTunes or waiting for Best Buy to open? Of course Wal-Mart is open 24 hours too but screw them.