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."'"

failure

[spatialguy]

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

Here's a better idea

[Rik Sweeney]

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)]

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:thepiratebay

[mwvdlee]

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

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

Great move

[Bud]

[...] 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]

tried to design a HD movie distribution system.

Oh, bummer.

37 albums

[scafuz]

quoting TFA:

In contrast, online retailer Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple's iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.

i don't think it's a smart move from sony.. but hey....at least there's not spyware in it...

Let me see if I have this right...

[dkh2]

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.

It because if you then upload...

[Eastender]

... you can be tracked and you can be treated as a criminal!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In Summary

[Crypto Gnome]

• 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.

Failure...with a twist

[IndustrialComplex]

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.

Sony Continues to Amaze

[MattW]

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".

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

[seeker_1us]

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.

I'm looking forward

[CaptainZapp]

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.

Re:Failure...with a twist

[deniable]

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.

What's the difference?

[Bootarn]

You could rather go to a music store and buy a CD, then convert it to MP3 using ripper software. Perfectly legal if it's for personal use (at least here in Sweden). Additionally, you have the choice to onvert the CD to a lossless format such as FLAC. If downloading DRM-free music requires you to go to town to buy some card, you'd rather buy a CD . About the same price, more possibilities. Or you could just ignore it all and just download torrents or whatever.

Re:thepiratebay

[kamapuaa]

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

[Kirth]

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:thepiratebay

[Dogtanian]

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:In Summary

[ddrichardson]

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.

And still the PS/3 fanbois....

[Evil Kerek]

And still the PS/3 fanbois don't understand why it is BAD BAD BAD that blu-ray is winning.

Re:thepiratebay

[mi]

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]

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.

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

[BlueCoder]

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:thepiratebay

[sm62704]

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

[sm62704]

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

That illustrates something I've been trying to say here for a long time, and that is that downloading isn't that damned convinient. Pirate Bay or Morpheus are good for indie music, but if you're looking for the top 40 the easiest, cheapest, and still legal way is to plug your radio's headphone jack into your sound card, sample a top-40 station [kuro5hin.org] and spend five minutes showing EAC where to make the cuts.

If you live in St Louis you can have seven rock albums [kuro5hin.org] every Sunday night. Sure, they're FM quality rather than CD quality but if you're ripping to MP3 it doesn't matter anyway.

-mcgrew [slashdot.org]

Missing the point of physical cards

[thpdg]

You're missing the point of the physical cards.
Similar to Wii Points, XBox Live Cards and iTunes cards,
this is so that people without access to a charge card can still participate by paying cash money at a local merchant.
Not everyone has a credit card to use on the Internet.

Re:thepiratebay

[eiapoce]

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?

Brainwashing goes on. COPYING is not STEALING

Re:Let me see if I have this right...

[Curunir_wolf]

Your 8 year old daughter places a copy of the downloaded file in a public location and then Sony can track you down and sue your rear-end off.

But, even if the files are stamped or watermarked, since the sale is based on a physical card with a number (which you can pay cash for), there is no easy way to track where it came from. They could track it to which retail store sold the card, but that's about it.

If they really wanted to be able track who uploaded their music, they would be doing on-line sales like everybody else.

Did anyone think Sony would REALLY go DRM-free?

[elrous0]

Sony--the company that gave us rootkits, the company that fights homebrew tooth-and-nail on their consoles, the company that added not one, but TWO layers of DRM to blu-ray?? Seriously?

Get used to it, though. If blu-ray wins the HD format war, you're going to be seeing a *LOT* more aggressive DRM than this.

Re:Some are so unangry that they have editcountiti

[Marvin01]

But they would be livid to the point of tears if their work was copied and sold commercially.

I can already hear the bellyaching...

Re:thepiratebay

[Eivind]

pennies per track is an overstatement even in low volume.

Let's see, cheap entry-level hosting let's say with DreamHost is $6/month, and that includes 5TB of bandwith. The average song is aproximately 5MB, so this works out to a million songs downloaded for $6. So not only does it not cost -pennies- per track, infact it doesn't even get close to a single penny for a track.

Instead, you can serve up 1500 tracks -- and pay a single penny for the bandwith consumed by all of them in sum.

Physical distribution over the internet is MINDBOGGLINGLY cheap.

Re:thepiratebay

[operagost]

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.

And so that's why we have DRM and the DMCA. Thanks for the insights, Hilary Rosen.

Re:thepiratebay

[truesaer]

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?

I honestly can't believe people even consider this an ethical question. Lots of stuff is made with miniscule effort, that doesn't mean the person who makes it doesn't deserve to be paid. Go take an economics class.