Sony's Idea of DRM-Free Music

edmicman writes "Leave it to Sony to mess up DRM-free music downloads. What is the point of DRM-free tracks if you still have to go to a retail store to buy them? From the Infoworld article: 'The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM, from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada... The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card's covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."'"

thepiratebay

[jacquesm (154384)]

Has lots of DRM free sony downloads, without any of that hassle of going to a store :)

coming soon to a bittorrent client near you...

Re:thepiratebay

[mwvdlee (775178)]

Odd as it is, there is a point to your comment though.

Non-paying people get a BETTER product all-round than paying consumers.

Re:thepiratebay

[Kirth (183)]

Absolutely. And you not only get a product without limitations, but a better product too, because you can download something other than Britney Spears.

It's a complete misunderstanding on Sonys part on how basic economics work:

An illegal copy basically is a COMPETING PRODUCT, with no limitations, for a better price.

Re:

[mi (197448)]

An illegal copy basically is a COMPETING PRODUCT, with no limitations, for a better price.

Although Sony should study the rest of your and GP's comment to end the stupidity, your last sentence reveals an alarming lack of either scruples or thought.

I mean, would you accept the availability of low-cost stolen car stereos and GPS-devices as a valid argument for why the electronics manufacturers should lower their prices?

Re:thepiratebay

[JoeFromPhilly (792856)]

I mean, would you accept the availability of low-cost stolen car stereos and GPS-devices as a valid argument for why the electronics manufacturers should lower their prices?

Absolutely. Or they could design stereos that are more difficult to steal. Or they could work with police to shut down the markets for stolen goods. But they are competing with stolen goods. Pretending that they aren't doesn't solve the problem.

Re:thepiratebay

[Ender_Stonebender (60900)]

No. But there is a major economic difference: If a car stereo costs $200 at retail, chances are that divides up as something like $125 for parts and assembly cost, $25 transportation costs, and $50 profit divided among manufacturer, middle-men, and retail outlet. For a digital download, "parts and assembly" costs (payment for studio time, session musicians, etc.) are a few thousand dollars ONCE, then never needs to be paid again, transport is dirt-cheap (on the order of pennies per track, even lower in volume), and once the initial costs are recouped, close to 100% of the consumer's cost is profit to the record company. (iTunes has a lower profit margin for the record companies as Apple gets a cut as well.) You will NEVER find that with a physical product.

And I would happily buy a car stereo (or GPS device) that retails new for $200 for $50 at a pawn shop - assuming that I'm fairly certain the owner of the pawn shop was not knowingly in receipt of stolen goods.

Re:thepiratebay

[FunWithKnives (775464)]

It depends. Are these magical, self-cloning car stereos and GPS devices? No? Then your argument holds no water. It is not even a question of apples to oranges. At least those are both fruit. Copying and stealing are completely different. As much as I do not want to explain this yet again, I will. When you steal my car stereo, you have deprived me of it. I must then purchase, at my own cost, a new one. When you copy my entire music library, there is no deprivation involved. I still have my music library, and you now have an identical reproduction of it.

Once you realize the differences here, the situation becomes a purely moral one. Is it ethical to share what you have with others, if doing so deprives you of nothing? What about the corporate music industry? Is it ethical to deny these major labels a profit on something which can be so easily reproduced with such a miniscule amount of labor?

Musicians, on the other hand, are different. They are the ones who create the art. Even so, however, that does not mean that the creation of this art fits the established definition of "labor." Any musician who plays or sings for the love of it, which is as it should be, does not view what they do as labor. Creating music is not the same as an eight hour day in the cube farm. It is not a chore. It is something done out of love and often necessity. You could compare it in some ways to why Open Source and Free Software developers do what they do. It is like an addiction.

Still, artists should be compensated accordingly for their live performances, and donations in exchange for copies of their recordings would also be nice, though not necessary. The issue is that musicians are regular people as well. They should not be treated as some sort of royalty and end up millionaires. They should be able to bring in enough from their music to support themselves, of course, but twenty cars, four mansions and a private jet is absolutely ludicrous. Also, what most major artists make is a drop in the bucket when compared to what the music executives take. Food for thought, that.

To wrap it all into a neat little bundle: Cheap recording equipment, along with peer to peer and other technologies made possible by the ubiquity of the Internet, should be utilized to cut out middle-men completely. The antiquated music industry should be completely destroyed and replaced with a system that allows free copying and trading of music. Artists would become popular by, what a novel idea, the people deciding whether or not to listen to them. They would support themselves via live performances, merchandise if applicable, and donations from fans.

Buisinessmen should not have control over an art-form.

Re:

[kamapuaa (555446)]

Yes, and these nations are either Cambodia, in Southeast Africa, or in the Middle East. Every other nation is a signature of the Berne Convention, and respects copyright.

Re:thepiratebay

[CRCulver (715279)]

Even in a number of Berne Convention signatory countries it is de facto legal because police do not prosecute piracy (and, in some cases, actually facilitate it). Sure, most nations on Earth might have been muscled into signing copyright laws, but add up the populations of countries where piracy flourishes, and it seems that the vast majority of the world doesn't recognize this odd concept of "intellectual property".

Re:thepiratebay

[renegadesx (977007)]

Hey kids, give a warm /. welcome to Darl McBride

Re:thepiratebay

[timster (32400)]

The "police" don't do so much to prosecute piracy in the US either, at least where it comes to individual music downloads. The enforcement activity is being driven by the industry in the form of civil lawsuits.

Re:thepiratebay

[init100 (915886)]

Not every country has the ridiculous fine/damage levels as the US. This means that in some countries, you could get caught without being indebted for the rest of your life.

Re:thepiratebay

[sm62704 (957197)]

Not every country has the ridiculous fine/damage levels as the US. This means that in some countries, you could get caught without being indebted for the rest of your life.

What annoys and at the same time greatly amuses me is that if you walk into a store and steal a CD and get caught, you have a choice of paying a small misdemeanor fine or can demand a criminal trial where you are presumed innocent until found guilty of a misdemeanor and pay a relatively small fine.

But if you infringe copyright by downloading you will be offered to pay a several thousand dollar settlement or go to civil court where you are presumed giolty and have to pay up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If we didn't have the best legislators money could buy would our laws be so brain-dead? I've said it before, when they start writing respectable laws I'll start respecting the law.

That hooker I paid last night really sucked (journal coming soon). But she didn't suck as much as Sony.

Re:thepiratebay

[jacquesm (154384)]

bad form to reply to my own post, for those who can't wait to get their hands on the amazing content listed in TFA and that are currently not in a position to get their card from the local store (due to financial, weather or ethical constraints) here you go:

http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3823582/Barry_Manilow_-_The_Greatest_Songs_Of_The_Seventies.3823582.TPB.torrent [thepiratebay.org]

http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3958971/Britney_Spears_-_Blackout_(2007)_Dance_%5BBYANOUS%5D.3958971.TPB.torrent [thepiratebay.org]

Seriously though, when Sony decided it was ok to include a rootkit with their music I think they did not realize just how much damage they were doing to their brand.

Re:

[Dogtanian (588974)]

Seriously though, when Sony decided it was ok to include a rootkit with their music I think they did not realize just how much damage they were doing to their brand.

The rootkit fiasco may be well-known and unpopular amongst Slashdot readers, but I'm really not convinced that it's had that significant an impact amongst the public in general.

I bet that the majority haven't heard of it, or at least have forgotten most of the details (including Sony's involvement), and that most of the others don't consider it that big a deal, even though they should.

Re:

[sm62704 (957197)]

You're right. Nobody I know in meatspace knew about it, and when I mentioned a "rootkit" the answer was "huh?" I had to explain what a rootkit was. I finally gave up.

Re:thepiratebay

[sorak (246725)]

Oh great, Pirate Bay is going to be slashdotted now...Their sys admins will report that Manilow, spears, and sucky music in general have become a cultural phenomena. The word "manilowed" will become a verb meaning "was crappy for fifty years, and, for no apparent reason, became incredibly popular".

The "Encyclopedia of Crap that Never happened" (not to be confused with the O'Reilly factor) will attribute it to Sony's "It's cool to be old and curly-haired" campaign, but we'll both know the real reason.

I hate you more than you'll ever know.

Re:thepiratebay

[ThirdPrize (938147)]

Yeah, but is it any good? Browse music and sort by #seeds (only guarantee of being able to download something) and what do you get?

Amy_Winehouse-Back_To_Black_(Deluxe_Edition)-2CD-2007-UKP
Alicia Keys - As I Am [2007][CD+SkidVid_XviD+Cov]192Kbps
Top 40 singles Uk 06.01.2008 DHZ.Inc Release
Ministry Of Sound The Annual 2008
Kanye West - Graduation (2007) 224kbs
Timbaland-Present_Shock_Value_(Deluxe_Edition)-2CD-2007-SMO
Juno Soundtrack
Alicia Keys - As I Am (2007) Soul And R&B [BYANOUS]
Lupe Fiasco-The Cool (2007) Rap & Hip-Hop [BYANOUS]
The_Killers-Sawdust-2007-404
Daft Punk - Alive 2007 + Encore [Splitted into tracks]
Britney Spears - Blackout [2007][CD+SkidVid_XviD+Cov]192Kbps
Billboard 2007 Year End Top 100 Charts (Pop 100 and Hot 100)
Rihanna - Good Girl Gone Bad [2007][CD+SkidVid+Cov]192Kbps
Linkin Park - Minutes To Midnight [2007][CD+SkidVid+Cov]192Kbps
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (256Kbps)
Foo Fighters-Echoes Silence Patience & Grace[FullCD+Video][320kb
Top 1000 Pop Hits of the 80s (4.32gb)
Leona Lewis - Spirit [2007][CD+SkidVid_XviD+Cov]192Kbps
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Top 40 singles hit 40 Uk best of 2007 DHZ.Inc Release
The Rolling Stone Magazines 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time
Michael Buble - Call Me Irresponsible [2007]
Birdman - 5 * Stunna
Wyclef_Jean-Carnival_Vol_II_Memoirs_Of_An_Immigrant-2007-404
Tiesto-Club_Life_037-Cable-12-14-2007 -Legal-Ups
Bob Marley Discography
Gorillaz-D-Sides-2CD-2007-OURLEADERiSSiTEOP_ORLY
OneRepublic-Dreaming Out Loud[FullCD+Video][320kbps]-FiNsTeRc
Now That's What I Call Music 68

I would have to call that a fairly random selection of commercial rubbish. for more alternative music it's still easier to get it from a shop or on-line. And yes, I did once leave my PC on for a wek trying to download one album.

Re:thepiratebay

[nmg196 (184961)]

> yes, I did once leave my PC on for a wek trying to download one album.

Open your firewall then. The albums will download about 10 times quicker.

Re:thepiratebay

[ComaVN (325750)]

I blame Java courses [slashdot.org] for people not understanding the difference.

failure

[spatialguy (951355)]

And in a few months time, they'll evaluate and state that the consumers aren't ready yet for DRM-free music.

Failure...with a twist

[IndustrialComplex (975015)]

Actually this sounds like some suppliers twisted Sony's arm in a failed attempt to keep the 'brick and mortar' style music store alive. I'm certain that the eventual failure of the 'pirate-friendly' mp3s is a pleasant side effect.

Kind of like how release dates for most games are tied to the physical retail releases.

Re:

[deniable (76198)]

Well, those stores are only in the US and Canada. This is a low tech solution to region locking. You have to be in one of those countries to buy the card. It was probably easier for Sony than checking IP addresses.

Barry Manilow and Britney Spears!

[Nicolas MONNET (4727)]

With such quality music, how is it possible they're losing market share??!

You have to go to a physical store...

[drspliff (652992)]

What a load of bollocks, so I go in-store, and instead of purchasing the CD and ripping them myself, I get a lower quality version already ripped.. wait a minute... this is going to be cheaper right?

Some other shops have got it right, like my local Virgin Megastore who let you pick any cd or 7/12", scan the barcode at a listening station and listen to it before I buy the physical cd... if I can't even do this in their stores, then they've got the completely wrong idea and are so disconnected from their own customers that I really feel quite sorry for them.

Re:

[jackpot777 (1159971)]

IIRC, there were three sizes of vinyl. The seven inch, played at 45 rpm, was the single. A 10" disc was called an EP, and held two songs per side (EP stood for extended play). And then there was the 12" platter.

Twelve inch discs used to be just albums, played at 33 1/3 rpm. But the rise of dance remixes meant releases were put on 12" discs to be played at 45.

Or, if you were John Peel, just play everything at 78 rpm [google.com] and say "I think I played that at the wrong speed..."

Here's a better idea

[Rik Sweeney (471717)]

instead of going into the retail store, turning right and picking up the platinum pass, I'm going to turn left and pick up the CD.

Best idea

[sqrt(2) (786011)]

I'll stay home and get the torrent with the FLAC files.

That is, if any music Sony put out was even worth downloading.

Re:Best idea

[Rik Sweeney (471717)]

True, but doing it my way means you get some exercise and fresh air.

Granted, if you drive or use public transport you probably won't get much exercise. And if you live in the city then it'd probably be better for you to stay inside.

Plus I have to spend money.

Shit, your way's much better. I'm going to do that instead from now on.

Re:

[squiggleslash (241428)]

Are you sure you want to do that? This is Sony we're talking about, the music publisher who thought rootkits were a legitimate thing to put on music CDs...

Britney Spears

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

I dunno, I'd pay to hear a Britney cover of "Wait for the Blackout". Particularly now she's a lot fucking crazier now than Dave Vanian ever was.

Congratulations!

[TheVelvetFlamebait (986083)]

You are officially the first person on Slashdot to get modded up for expressing a desire to listen to Brittany Spears!

Dear Sony

[AbandonAllHope (211475)]

http://adrinael.net/wrong2.jpg [adrinael.net]

Great move

[Bud (1705)]

[...] first have to go to a retail store [...] they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."'"

Uhh... great artist selection, there. If I have to walk down to the retail store and then choose between Britney and Barry Manilow, I would rather save my hard-earned money.

Within a couple of months Sony will "accidentally" leak the sad numbers of their non-DRM trial to select members of the press, who will then write scathing opinion pieces about how the rampant piracy is so widespread that even removing DRM can't help the music industry.

--Bud

Imagine if these dorks

[Brummund (447393)]

tried to design a HD movie distribution system.

Oh, bummer.

Think of it this way

[eclectro (227083)]

Britney Spears and Barry Manilow is a rootkit for the human brain.

Let me see if I have this right...

[dkh2 (29130)]

So, they want me to go to a brick-and-mortar store and spend $12.99 to buy a secret code that will allow me to download MP3s of one album that I could have purchased at that same store for, um, $12.99. Nevermind the fact that even if the downloads are all ripped at over 256kbps they're nowhere near the over 720kbps I'm going to rip from the actual disk in .flac or .ogg, and once you've downsampled in a lossy format there really is no going back to full quality.

Yeah. Right.

In Summary

[Crypto Gnome (651401)]

• US and Canada only
• retail Brix-N-Mortar visit required
• Purchase a "Card with secret code"
• Card enables download of one album from a selection of 37 (another album means another visit and another card)
• TFA says "MP3 format" but for all you know it's encoded as mono@32kbps with literally zero info in the ID3 tags
• For all those hoops you just jumped through, not significantly cheaper than just purchasing the CD
• does this work on Linux? MacOS? BeOS? AmigaOS? (before you whine about "it's just a download" you've *all* had some site you went to where it simply did not work on "your OS and browser of choice")

Or you could read the short version: MultiNational MegaCorp with a History of fair-use violating DRM enforcement and downright corporate shenanigans (rootkit, anyone?) releases DRM-free program more difficult to operate than the-clock-on-your-vcr and of actual negative value to end-customers.

Consensus seems to be that 6 months from now SonyBMG will issue an "I Told You So" press release claiming they went all out to allow DRM-free downloads and nobody wanted it.

Re:In Summary

[ddrichardson (869910)]

Consensus seems to be that 6 months from now SonyBMG will issue an "I Told You So" press release claiming they went all out to allow DRM-free downloads and nobody wanted it.

There are quite a lot of people saying this and it may well be true but it makes no difference, it's the buying public they are now trying to shoehorn into something they don't want not just a bunch of people trying to justify peer-to-peer but their actual buying customers that they are now alienating.

Take my wife (please) - would never dream of pirating anything and is completely technophobic. Yet when she cannot put the CD she just bought onto her MP3 player, she sees no reason for me not to get it from a torrent site. She has even started saying some things we've said for years, only last night we watched a DVD and when that irritating "you wouldn't steal a handbag or a car so why steal a DVD" unskippable advert comes up she points out the obvious - why is that on a DVD I bought?

Point is, I think that everyone is starting to get pissed off with being treated as a criminal.

Sony's clever plan

[Farmer Tim (530755)]

I see what they're doing. By making people choose between Britney Spears and Barry Manilow they're attempting to prove that popular music is no worse now than it's ever been.

Sony Continues to Amaze

[MattW (97290)]

Just when you thought Sony couldn't demonstrate any more incompetence in the marketplace...

Let's make our product:

* Hard to get
* More expensive than the (legal!) competition
* Packaged in bundles consumers don't want
* Install dangerous malware on our customers' computers (and get sued)

Sony once again proves adept at charting a beeline directly for the scrapheap of history. About what you'd expect from the company that thought up the "Ringle".

Re:

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

Sony is, at the end of the day, a Japanese company, and Japanese companies seem notably inflexible when it comes to opening things up. It is entirely consistent with behavior I've seen from other Japanese vendors: they've never met a closed system they didn't like.

I don't see the problem with this...

[seeker_1us (1203072)]

Other than the fact that Sony is self-sabatoging their DRM-free sales.

Buy a card from a retail store? Fair enough. That seems reasonable.

Limited selection of music... well maybe they just want to test the waters. Although it sounds like the lack of quality (Britney Spears wasn't good even when she WAS good) may mean they are trying to purposefully set the program up for failure.

None of this is unreasonable to the customer, and I'd do it to buy legal, DRM-free music.

Except for the fact that this is Sony, which I have determined NEVER to give any money to again. These are the unrepentant bastards who infected millions of computers with rootkits (their executives should have gone to prison for that, but the corruption of the current government is for another discussion), put self destruct sequences in the Blu-Ray player specs, sell DVD's that won't play in many DVD players, shut down Lik-Sang, made digital music players that ONLY used a proprietary Sony music format, screwed the early adopters of HDTV (Blu-ray players won't work with non-drm'd inputs)...

Sony is a bunch of asshats. Fuckem.

Scratchcard are fine

[91degrees (207121)]

It means kids can buy them rather than having to rely on a credit card. They take up no shelf space so a lot of convenience stores can offer them rather than just record stores.

I'm looking forward

[CaptainZapp (182233)]

to when the "secret code" for some reason doesn't work. Oughta be fun to deal with sony-BMG customer "care".

Folks that can't handle it, like obviously Sony-BMGs management, should really stay clear from an Absinthe bottle.

Propping up existing distribution chain

[Dan East (318230)]

Sony is trying to prop up the existing music distribution chain. Instead of going into Wal-Mart to buy a CD, you instead go there to buy a card. Either way, you still had to go to Wal-Mart to get your music. Obviously Wal-Mart will receive some sort of profit off of that sale, in lieu of profit off of an actual CD.

I don't know if this is good or bad. On one hand, it may keep a music section in retailers a bit longer, providing a place to walk in and lay hands on a physical album set. On the other hand, that extra middle-man keeps the cost of music slightly higher. I think this is a fairly responsible thing for Sony to do, because it will help prevent a drastic change which could be detrimental in the short term.

Dan East

Better idea

[noidentity (188756)]

I've got a better idea, if it's something you have to go to a store to get. They could put DRM-free lossless versions of the songs on small optical discs (they'd be cheap) that you buy at the counter, no codes or anything. They might even be able to get them to play in current portable music players. They'd be digital, of course. Maybe some other company has tried this before?

The whole list

[De Lemming (227104)]

These are the 37 titles (from http://gift.musicpass.com/ [musicpass.com]):

The initial slate of Platinum MusicPass titles is as follows:

Platinum MusicPass Albums with Bonus Material (slrp $12.99):

Alejandro Fernandez, Viento A Favor
Alicia Keys, As I Am
Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing
Backstreet Boys, UnBreakable
Barry Manilow, The Greatest Songs of the Seventies
Bob Dylan, Dylan
Boys Like Girls, Boys Like Girls
Brad Paisley, 5th Gear
Britney Spears, Blackout
Brooks & Dunn, Cowboy Town
Bruce Springsteen, Magic
Calle 13, Residente o Visitante
Camila, Todo Cambio
Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride
Casting Crowns, The Altar and The Door
Celine Dion, Taking Chances
Chris Brown, Exclusive
Daughtry, Daughtry
Elvis Presley, Elvis 30 #1 Hits
Jennifer Lopez, Brave
John Mayer, Continuum
Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
Martina McBride, Waking Up Laughing
P!nk, I'm Not Dead
Santana, Ultimate Santana
Sara Bareilles, Little Voice
Sean Kingston, Sean Kingston
The Fray, How To Save A Life
Three Days Grace, One-X
Tony Bennett, Duets

Platinum MusicPass Compilations (slrp $12.99)

Various, 70's POP HITS
Various, ROCK OF THE 70's
Various, SENSATIONAL 60's
Various, COUNTRY GOLD: THE 90's
Various, 80's POP HITS
Various, CLASSIC ROCK
Various, Everlasting Love

Expanded MusicPass Titles (slrp $19.99 versions which include the complete album, bonus material, plus choice of one additional album from that same artist's rich catalog of recordings.)

Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
Celine Dion, Taking Chances

I'm the customer, let me tell you want I want

[BlueCoder (223005)]

Before MP3's I wasn't into music that much. I remember when MP3's came on the scene years before the popular public had heard of them, ... downloading them by modem, this was before cable modems and DSL, it would take at least 15/20 minutes a song.

At first I just downloaded but naturally every year or so I'd get a crash or something would happen and I would lose my collection. All the current stuff you can find at decent quality but not necessarily stuff from two or five years back. And not all rips are the same so I eventually found myself just buying the CD's just to rip them myself at higher quality. I never bought CD's before this. I fell into the pattern of downloading the new stuff and buying at least 2/3 of the stuff within a couple years by shopping for used CD's in stores and online. Usually paying no more than like $7 a CD but remember that chances are I only like 2 songs on the disc. I buy my music, maybe not how the music industry would me to; but non the less I do, it's on my terms and it works for me.

Want do I want? Electronic per song transferable digital licenses. And with those access to the music companies online computers to download the music. And I want the FTC and FCC involved so that the licenses are locked in and guaranteed so that when the technology and protocols of the digital licenses change they are guaranteed transferable to the next technology. And songs are not locked into one account or device(as they are with apple), your free to sell and transfer the per song licenses to someone else in the free market. And it would be nice if the licenses covered all relatively close versions of the song sung by the same performer so they can't charge you again for acoustic, karaoke, different file formats, or higher bit quality. In other words you own the rights to listen to that song and your entitled to all versions of it. That would be worth something.

Re:Hurray!

[deniable (76198)]

And for an encore:

Oh Sony, you came and you took without giving,
You've taken it all, oh Sony.

Misspent youth with only AM radio.