Yahoo! Sells, Advocates DRM-Free Music

prostoalex writes "Jessica Simpson's 'A Public Affair' will be sold on Yahoo! Music in MP3 format with no DRM attached. According to Yahoo! Music blog, this is a big deal for the major online music store: 'As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day -- the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!'"

please explain

Please explain to me what this really is. I visited the page, and what it looks to be is the users' ability to download an unfettered "customized" mp3 from Simpson where (I assume) a laundry list of common names are inserted into the mp3 (dubbed, no doubt)... giving the customer the illusion of some connection with the artist. (So far, it appears a more correct headline would have been "Yahoo advocates DRM-free music, offers one DRM-free song from their catalog!)"

Obscene marketing and subterfuge aside, I find nothing in the general Yahoo Music offerings to suggest the rest of their music is offered unfettered, free of DRM. Indeed, the FAQ includes the following info:

1. Yahoo! Music does not permit copying or transferring music files to other users. Share function available only for subscribers to access another subscriber's Yahoo! Music Unlimited music files.
2. Using Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription music with a portable device requires Microsoft Windows XP and is subject to an extra monthly/annual subscription fee and is not included in this free trial offer. See details during registration.
3. Yahoo! Music Unlimited: $59.88 per year, billed annually (that's just $4.99 per month); or $6.99 per month, billed monthly. Yahoo! Music Unlimited is available to U.S.-based subscribers only.

There is also a "requirement for Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher mentioned on the Yahoo Music home page -- sheeeesh!.

Any information/explanation or evidence to the contrary would be greatly appreciated, because, other than the free advertising, I'm not seeing any change in direction from Yahoo on this one.

Re:please explain

Yahoo! Music Unlimited is a subscription based service. This is not what the article is refering to. It is refering to the actual selling of music files. With the service you do not own any music but simply pay a fee to be able to access Yahoo!'s collection of music. If you bought the song in question then you would own it outright.

Re:please explain

Re:please explain

I second the motion.

WTF? Being a good slashdotter, I did not read the article before checking out the posts, and then I read the parent post and had to check this out for myself.

So, for $2 I can have my name embedded somehow in a music file of Jessica Simpson? Maybe having her titties embedded in my face, I might throw down $2, but after reading the two links, I still don't see what the extra $1 gives me over a standard $1 track.

I'm all for the token statement against DRM. Its dead on. Yes, DRM free stuff is sold every day. Yes, its still practically illegal or at least easier and better to get MP3s the old fashioned way that are free of DRM. But I have no clue what the point of this Yahoo! thing is besides a slashvertisement astroturfing or whatever you call marketing today.

Re:please explain

The big deal is that Yahoo! actually got the record company to allow them to sell DRM free music.

Speaking of Simpsons...

Bart Simpson: "Hello, I'd like to be included in the song please. Last name Diekoff, first name Aikatmai."

Jessica Simpson: "OOOh, baby, I want you so bad, Aikatmai Diekoff! ... Damnit! Listen, you little saw-headed twerp, if I ever catch you, I'm going to shove my Botox needles down your eyeballs and sic my Pomeranian on your ass!"

Re:please explain

The tracks have unique inaudible soundwave watermarks that can be traced back to the buyer if they are found on P2P networks. This is the only reason the labels are going for it. The tech comes from Fraunhofer [fraunhofer.de]

Re:please explain

Spread frequency watermarks are only effective with individual files (effective means that altering the file enough to guarantee removing the watermark causes an unacceptable loss in quality). If you've got lots of files with different data in the watermark (like the name of the buyer) you can remove the watermark from any file without significant loss in quality. There is (to the best of my knowledge) currently no watermarking system robust to this attack.

You could therefore set up a system where the more people share a file the better quality file can be downloaded - and still guarantee removal of all watermarks specific to any one purchaser.

It's theoretically possible at least but whether a workable system could be set up in practice I don't know.

Less sophisticated watermarking systems (like least significant bit) are trivial to defeat and I assume no competent company is using them.

Re:please explain

I'm no expert and this stuff is cutting edge but I'll try my best to address some of your comments.

Assumming the only variance is the watermark and the tracks are sample for sample nearly the same... it would make it rather not-difficult to remove the water mark

It's not as simple as this comment seems to imply, spread frequency watermarks use transforms (obviously DFT was one of the first to be used) so you can't simply average two files and expect to remove the watermarks.

the file hash will be different. So would that cause every variation to show up on a p2p network . . . assumming most P2P apps use a simple md5 sum or some such

Identifying copies of the same file with different watermarks would definitely be a problem - you'd probably have to rely on uploaders entering accurate metadata of some kind - not ideal.

such a setup might suffer from generational loss

I don't see how this would be relevant you're not making imperfect copies of previous imperfect copies of previous imperfect copies . . . ad nauseum

Artifacts are bound to slip in at some point in the mass sharing frenzy of an ant farm.

It works the other way around - the more versions you have to compare the fewer artifacts will crop up, you get closer and closer to the original un-Watermarked version instead.

you run the risk of generating too much data. In turn it could cause issues scaling

I hadn't thought about this but you're right reversing a DFT is going to be computationally expensive.

Re:Watermarks useless?

Well, the RIAA has sued dead people and people without computers, so presumably they would ignore your excuses, even truthful ones.

Re:please explain

You know what? I don't care.

There are two reasons to oppose DRM - "personal convenience" and "a licence to pirate".

While I've been known to pirate in the past (hell, who hasn't?), my main objection to DRM is that once I buy the file I want to own it. I don't want anyone telling me I can only play it on certain makes of MP3 player, can't transcode it to Ogg Vorbis, stream it to other PCs in my house, etc.

Finally a mainstream media company has somehow persuaded the idiots at the RIAA to allow unDRMed downloads on a trial basis. This is a good thing.

Frankly, anyone who opposes DRMed music primarily because it allows them to pirate and distribute is a thief^H^H^H^H^H copyright violator, and should shut up and sit down now to avoid fucking things up for everyone else.

While I appreciate the OP's information on the watermarking technology, it's completely irrelevant - there's no excuse for sharing the MP3 of this track, now there's an affordable (expensive, sure, but it's only a test), unDRMed cross-platform, mainstream outlet to legally purchase it from.

Anyone pirating this track is frankly working against the chances of the RIAA dropping DRM - you will be ruining a brave (if overdue) experiment, and directly contributing to a future of omnipresent DRM lock-in.

Regardless of what you think of the artist or the song, the sales figures for this track likely dictate the entire future position of the RIAA/music industry. Pirating it is the worst kind of short-term-gain idiocy.

I hate Jessica Simpson and the MP3's overpriced, but I'll be buying this track - and if you're anti-DRM (as opposed to pro-piracy), so should you.

</advocacy>

(Let the accusations of shilldom fly... ;-)

Wah!?

I was taken aback by this. Something tells me they won't be allowed to succede, but it reminds of when WB tried selling a DVD without copy protection and discovered a) it was cheaper for them, and b) made no difference to their sales.

But when I clicked on the link, it took me to a Jessica Simpson page. MINE EYES!!! *clutches eyes and runs away*

Re:Wah!?

Funny- normally my eyes are ok looking at her, its my ears I want to shut off.

Re:Wah!? OH NOES MINE EYES TOO!!!!

I was about to say non DRM is awesome but seriously...Jessica Simpson?

Who's going to buy her music let a lone pirate it!

Great news!!

Pity they didn't choose an artist I would actually want to listen to.

Re:Great news!!

I look forward to the "good taste" DRM that refuses to play music of questionable quality - maybe we can call it peril sensitive?

props to yahoo

Companies talk of thinking different, while others actually perform different. Tip of the hat to yahoo who may strangely become relevant again.

Re:props to yahoo

I personally never saw the point of DRM anyway. ... The reason people pay for digital downloads is that it is convenient and fast.

You forgot another important reason: to compensate the artist. Believe it or not, some people feel good about compensating others for work they find enjoyable (or in the case of linux: useful). I know this is not exactly a popular sentiment here, but I don't really have a problem with DRM. It isn't like I have natural god-given right to have someone's music on my terms alone -- the owner naturally has a say in whether he/she wants to avoid DRM and in all likelihood, give up a significant amount of direct compensation for the recording. Now, DRM-free music may very well be of great benefit for the artist in other ways, but we'd all be fooling ourselves if we thought nobody would take advantage of a DRM-free situation. And even if DRM-free distribution would make an artist the greatest thing in the world, it isn't our choice. People need to be allowed to make lousy decisions.

Personally, I avoid DRM'd music anymore because I got sick of the issues associated with it (I'm thinking of iTunes specifically, emusic is so much simpler), but whoever owns the music gets to make that DRM decision. I can be dissapointed, but I can't really blame them either. Very few people are willing to give as much as those in the GPL world do -- those who let most direct compensation go in exchange for indirect compensation.

Re:props to yahoo

Tip of the hat to yahoo who may strangely become relevant again.

I'm sorry, remind me how the web portal that's held the number one spot in traffic rankings [alexa.com] for years could ever be considered irrelevant?

Sure, they haven't been in the limelight like google has in a few years, but they've still got more eyeballs than anyone else, still employ thousands, and still churn out new stuff all the time.

Translation: Market Speak to Reality

Yahoo said:

As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day -- the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!

This translates into:

OMFG, for the love of god, PLEASE LET US SELL OUR SHIT TO IPOD USERS!!1!!!!!!1!1111!

Basically, what is happening is that all the non-iTunes are getting trounced by iTunes and the iPod. The music industry won't let them sell their music unless it has DRM. Apple isn't selling them the rights to use the DRM that the iPod uses and Apple sure as shit is not going to build in WMA DRM capabilities into the iPod. With iPods being roughly 80% of the MP3 market, this is a massive audience that Yahoo, Napster, Rhapsody, exc can't touch. They desperately want to sell, but they are not allowed to sell unless the music has DRM. Apple won't let them us an iPod compatible form of DRM.

This isn't a marketing ploy to pretend to be anti-DRM when they are not, and this is not being done because they "want to work on other stuff". This is being done because DRM free music is the only way Yahoo and company can break into the monopoly iTunes has over the iPod, which itself has a near monopoly on MP3 players.

This is a play of self interested corporations. Apple wants to lock down the iPod not because they want to set music free, but because they want a monopoly over the service that fills iPods. Yahoo wants to sell DRM free music not because they give a shit about how irritating DRM is to you and me, but because they want to sell music to iPod users. The RIAA, well, they are just evil and eat babies.

I can only imagine the interview

~~~ zomg drm is like so sucky

although, there aren't many musicians opinions i would respect. but good to see at least some "major" artist is pulling against it.

It's a scam, a straw-man

Because when the track doesn't sell for shite (because the content is shite) then everybody will wave and wail that _clearly_ once the track was out there, the reason it didn't sell was that The Pirates(tm) turned it to the P2P dark side.

You know what I am getting at here. 8-)

No DRM not worth the cost of downloading that song

i think the original article read:

"According to Yahoo! Music blog, this is a big deal for the major online music store: 'As you know, we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: Jessica Simpson doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling Jessica Simpson-free music every day), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. We've also been saying that Jessica Simpson has a cost. She's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the Jessica Simpson back off, anyway!'"

never thought it would happen

Is the music industry starting to see sense?

I'm not going to be a /. pessimist and go searching for the loopholes. Sometimes it pays to be an optimist, and I reckon Yahoo et al. are going to need all the encouragement they can get to convince record exec's that this is a Good Idea (TM).

Then we might see some decent music being released unrestricted!

Ah great!

Ah great! Now I have to balance buying a non-DRM'd product to show the people in charge that it can actually work against owning a Jessica Simpson song. The agony of these modern times.

Re:Ah great!

I'm going to buy it to help prove a point to the music industry. Then I'm going to delete it to prove another point to the music industry.

I guess DRM has some uses

I just hope they keep Ashley Simpson's msuic DRMed.

iTunes take note..

I love iTunes. And I love the music store. Lately I have found myself buying CDs that I downloaded from the music store because I wanted non-DRM copies so I can share them on my home network that includes non-iTunes using boxes. I do not think I will be buying anything else from iTunes.

www.beastproject.org

Depends on how you translate that?

For some this may be good news, but for others it may be "Jessica Simpson's music is so crappy that they don't even need to DRM it, cause no one will even want to waste their bandwidth to pirate it."

PSSSSSTTTTT!!!!

Usenet! *GIVES AWAY* DRM-free music.

But keep it to yourself...

Doh!

And there was me thinking that her dad Homer's barbershop quartet LP was much better...

In a related development...

...nobody steals my dog's crap out of my front yard! It's just sitting there. No lock on it! Plain sight. Anyone could take it.

Thank You Yahoo

If Yahoo keeps it up and expands the program it'll be great for us consumers. Hopefully other mainstream companies will follow suit.

The last thing I would have guessed....

I never thought I would live to see the day when a major (really major) company not only publicly supports but actually takes the plunge to sell non-DRM infested music. What's next? Sony will release a $199 PS3? (Har har...)

This kinda reminds me of Gmail. Back when it came out it was just unthinkable that a company would give you more than a few MBs of storage for free let alone a whole GB! Nowadays, everybody gives you at the minimum of 200MB. I think that Yahoo, like Gmail, just might profoundly shift the paradigm of online music distribution like Gmail changed the way we think of free email.

Is this the beginning of the end of DRM? Not quite yet IMO because the RIAA and MPAA are still run by idiots, but I think the day may come sooner than we think if more major players like Yahoo come on board.

Great news

Possibly tomorrow I will be able to get a personalized tune from David Cassidy or maybe The Monkeys!!!

In related news

...Microsoft will now enforce a "Revert to Windows Default" upon setting up AutoUpdate.

Is DRM-free worth $1?

iTunes sells DRM-encumbered music for $0.99 per song. This Jessica Simpson song (which, for now, appears to be a one-off in MP3 formwat) is priced at $1.99. Assuming that you put no value on having "your name" in the version of the song you download, should we consider this a test of the price consumers will pay to be able to do what they want with their music?

I've seen reports that record companies aren't "happy" with the royalties they're getting from iTunes. Could higher-priced, DRM-free releases be part of their solution? Skeptical though I am, I hope so. Even though I have a Mac, an iPod, and many tracks I've bought from the iTunes store, I'd rather Apple not be the "only game in town" for music on my iPod. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, even through a reality distortion field I expect.

They spelled my name wrong

It's supposed to be Bryan not Brian [yahoo.com]. Now how am I supposed to get a truely personalized track. (Yes I'm being facetious)

Major Online Music Store

Wait, Yahoo! has an online music store? /Not really trolling, actually didn't know about it until now, or at least, forgot about it.

Let me be Devil's Advocate

Jessica Simpson... who's that? Wasn't her name Lisa? Whatever.

I could imagine that this is yet another move to prove that non-DRMed music can't be sold. I mean, who's gonna buy that song? If it was from some artist that has global relevance, ok. I could see a truely comparable result. So, the result will be that DRM is a key requirement for selling music online, because we'll clearly see that the latest Robby Williams (with DRM) will outsell this Jessica Simpson song by magnitudes.

Uh, those engineers aren't working all that hard

After once happily installing to x64, the Yahoo! music engine no longer works on this architecture/OS despite having been a mainstream Microsoft release for over a year now. There isn't really any support for their music product line aside from a pittance of online help pages. It's a bit offensive to me as someone locked into x64 to hear that they are working away so hard when they lag behind their compeditors on entire platforms while not acknowledging their lack of support for x64 on their product web site.

About Jessica

While she may not be high on the average Slashdot user's, i.e. male, perhaps older than 20, I believe the 13-16 crowd like her music and will beg mommy and daddy to get them the new Jessica song. Remember folks as much as you want it to be true the people who post here are not the majority in this country. I have a feeling this won't do that great because it is not offered by the iTunes Music Store but it is still a step in the right direction.
 

This much should be obvious

This much should be blindingly obvious. However, for the benefit of the people on the 8-bit bus:

1) This is a trial balloon. If it sells well, it may convince some retailers to experiment with further DRM free tracks. If it sells poorly, it will serve as "proof" that DRM is needed.

2) There's at least somebody on the command chain who wants this to fail. Hence the $1.99 price.

3) The record company couldn't stomach the idea of a totally naked mp3 so they came up with this lame idea of embedding the purchaser's name in the file. If course this is easily worked around, but so's regular DRM. This is to deter the teeming masses. If John Q. Moron decides to fileshare, he'll soon be indicted by a thousand copies of "Jessica Loves John Q. Moron" floating around. You might add that they were being slightly clever by selling this crude copy protection measure as a value added feature.

I'd also speculate that might be meant to caution Microsoft ever so lightly. MS is openly scheming against its current music partners by introducing Urge and Zune. But it wants to keep them hooked on Plays For Sure while making sure their services are inferior to its own offerings. This is Yahoo's way of saying, "Look Microsoft, we might not need your crap DRM after all, so watch yourself."

Stating the obvious: This is about the iPod

Before getting all excited about Yahoos altruism, think about the business side.

Apple has what...80%... of the portable music player market?

Until apple decides to share their DRM, everyone else (including Yahoo) is locked out of the iPod market.

MP3s are their only way in. If they can manage to line up some labels, they will suddenly have access to a totally new and much larger customer base.
   

No DRM = Perfect, but $2/Tune = Faulty

I'm ecstatic that Yahoo wants to offer unencumbered tunes. But $2.00 / song? That's more than I pay for a 16-bit PCM CD. Besides, they don't have to package, distribute (old-skool distribute, that is) or keep brick-and-mortars. I might get interested/serious if it were $2 / album ... I've already spent $500 this year with allofmp3. I'm not opposed to spending, I'm just not going to play sucker to suckers.

Sounds good, but...

1. What's the bitrate? It needs to be at least 192 kbps.

2. Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair"? Hmm, I was considering downloading just to show I'm supportive of a non-DRM model, even if it would need future tweaks, but just to try get the industry on the right track. BUT... Jessica Simpson? I really don't know if I can do this. :-(

DRM or Not...

Jessica Simpson != Music.

Okay sort of DRM

This is actually *gasp* the sort of DRM I could live with. A unique fingerprint that is traceable to the original buyer, so that they can find you if you pirate. But it doesn't actually hinder fair use at all. I really wouldn't mind if this became standard practice, as it only affects those who are actually doing something illegal, and leaves the rest of us alone. W00t technological, instead of legal, solutions to problems.

Cool, but eMusic has more for less

It is nice to hear an Internet superpower talk about selling "plain old MP3s," but eMusic [emusic.com] has been doing this for years (well before the iPod even existed). They don't have acts like Jessica Simpson, or even Radiohead, but they do have a huge collection of quality, interesting music. Loads of Indie Rock, Underground Hiphop, old and new jazz, lots of classic stuff and new albums come in everyday. It's cheap and no watermarks, either.

I'm a serious music collector and plain MP3s simplify my collection--DRM is a major headache when you just want to HAVE music and store it anyway you like.

Double Standards

So this is just Yahoo saying that record-labels shouldn't protect their music with DRM because that locks third party vendors out, but it's ok when Yahoo does the same thing (with things like Yahoo! Unlimited) that locks non-windows users out.

I think we all need to wait a few more years till digital audio watermarking comes of age, and embedded buyer identification is able to sustain compression and re-recording (say, putting soundcard out to soundcard in and recording). Once that sort of technology exists, all the crap that the music industry keeps on throwing (like harassing P2P developers, locking out non-DRM platforms) will no longer be legally justifiable - if for each pirated song they can actually identify the guy who bought it and shared it, they needn't go after the medium used for doing the sharing.

Brilliant Yahoo!

"We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!'"

I want to give Yahoo! a big sloppy kiss now. That's exactly the kind of thinking that might make them some money in the music business.

RIAA can't lose

The RIAA can't lose on this one. There's three possible scenarios:

1) The track doesn't sell well: See? The pirates really ARE hurting the industry because Jessica Simpson is a mainstream artist and why wouldn't she sell well under normal conditions? We've released a track in good faith and the pirates HAVE to be supressing sales.

2) The track sells really well: Ahh, the price-point for online music is really $2 per track, not $1 (as per itunes). Apple, raise your iTunes prices and give us the lion's share.

3) The track sells about the same as on iTunes: See? DRM makes no difference at all to consumers. It doesn't hurt sales at all. Long live DRM!

Pfff. They don't have "Zaphod"... (n/t)

no text

I was curious and bought it... here's my review:

After some trouble with their website (a big fat banner was blocking access to any name between b and g) I was able to get my "personalized" version of the song. The name gets inserted twice in the middle of the song, but sounds kinda sloppy and she's not singing it, rather a backup singer / overdubbed. The mp3 is in 256kbit, but it's extremely quiet compared to other mp3s. I compared it with the version on iTunes and that one is at least 3-4 times louder. It's almost as if they used a non-mastered version of the song... not good...

btw: the instrumental of the song is so blatantly a ripoff of Madonna's Holiday that I wonder if they will get sued over it... ;)

Finally!

Although the article ans source of music blows, the stance from Yahoo is one of the most logical things I have h