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iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:21 PM
from the what-part-of-"my-music"-do-you-not-understand? dept.
from the what-part-of-"my-music"-do-you-not-understand? dept.
twitter writes, "The BBC's summarizes a Jupiter Research study, 'iPod fans shunning iTunes store.' From the article: '83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites... [T]he only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music — especially CDs.' This is despite years of iTunes promotion and apparent success. Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
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News: Students Skip College Music Services 246 comments
WSJdpatton writes "College students don't turn down much that's free. But when it comes to online music, even free hasn't been enough to persuade many students to use the digital download services colleges and universities are providing." I know that the Ctrax service offered by my current school — Temple University — and many others (it's "available to all college students with a '.edu' email address") has an ugly, awkward interface. Worse, the free (gratis) part is an expiring, "tethered" collection of music for those who use it; downloads to keep are fee-per-track.
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DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly, iTunes has increased my music purchases significantly, though on CD,
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it odd how I'm so anti-iTunes due to the stated reasons, but I'm more than willing to buy games on Xbox Live Arcade, seeing as they fit within similar restrictions. Well, only if they're original and not repackaged retro-games I've played to death.
It probably has to do with the fact that Xbox Live Arcade games are only available through a restricted medium, where I can bypass iTunes and buy a non-DRMed CD and Vorbis it.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Insightful)
When is this faux-audiophile bullshit going to end. DRM does not change the sound of music. It does not sound any different.
A DRMd 128kbps AAC file decrypts and uncompresses to the exact same waveform as a non-DRMd 128kbps AAC file. It sounds just as bad.
A DRMd lossless format decrypts and uncompresses to the exact same waveform as a non-DRMd lossless file. It sounds just as good.
You cannot tell the difference between a DRMd file and a non DRMd file all else being equal. End of story, no argument, thank you take the next gate out of here.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Funny)
In my experience it changes the music in odd ways different to the changes that compression cause. It gives a bass that's more harsh, and increases the midrange while levelling out in the high end. That's an issue totally separate to what happens when you compress with AAC or MP3 or whatever. If you want to test, make an mp3 and then make two identical copies of the file. Run one of the resulting compressed files through an encryption utility (it doesn't have to be Apple's fairplay, even sending it via PGP email will do) and then decrypt it. Play the never-encrypted file and play the encrypted then decrypted file one after another, you'll easily tell the difference.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the biggest load of crap I've read on /. in a long time. Congratulations!
Encryption makes the data appear pseudo-random, however the decryption will return the bits, before they are inserted into the audio buffer, to the exact same state they were in prior to encryption.
Your own test bears this out -- just do a comparison of the resulting files. The computer has no way of knowing that the "encrypted" file was ever even encrypted (as you aren't replacing the bits -- you're duplicating them). If you can hear a difference, it's only because the voices in your head are getting louder. Or maybe your tinfoil hat is askew.
Yaz.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Informative)
As it happens, I know quite a bit about digital signaling. I also know that that "bit" you're reading is going to be converted several times from when you read it fro the hard disk, by a variety of independent subsystems which set their own bit levels as high or low, based on their own signaling specifications.
You read some bits off your hard drive. The bits sitting on your drive have no voltage -- they're simply a magnetic field. This field get translated into either a 1 or a 0 bit. The drive controller copies this into a voltage that it then transmits across the drive bus to a bus controller. This bus controller then copies the bit to the system bus. The system bus copies it to the CPU, which copies it to RAM, which is then refreshed thousands of times per second. This is then copied back onto the system bus, and send to your audio hardware, which feeds it through a DAC.
Each of these transmissions is a copy operation on the bit -- not on the strength of the magnetic field, or whatever voltage was being applied to the transmitting component. So signaling in this case makes no difference -- so long as each field or voltage fits within the proper tolerances, it will be treated as a 1 or a 0, and will be raised high or low at the new voltage level as a completely new signal during each conversion. As such, it isn't the case that if the bit is magnetically weak on your hard drive that it will have a lower-than-normal voltage once it finally gets into RAM.
Thinking of it another way, it isn't like using a tin-can-and-string telephone to transmit data. It's more like the telephone game, where someone says something to someone, who then tells the message to the next person, and so on until the recipient receives the message. It doesn't matter if the first speaker is male or female -- the last person to pass on the message is going to state the same message regardless, in their own voice. The only difference in the case of a computer is that most stages have integrity checking to verify that the message is received properly, and in some cases can either request a retransmission if the integrity checking fails, or can receive the data in a manner that it can be reconstructed with mathematical certainty by using appropriate data encodings.
Encryption makes no difference. The system is not analogue -- it is digital. And the system only knows two digits. Each individual subsystem has completely different mechanisms for representing those bits, and that representation is completely independent of other subsystems. Reading an encrypted block from your hard drive causes the encrypted data to be copied into RAM, from which a decrypted copy is placed into RAM. This copy is generated electrically in exactly the same fashion if it had been read unencrypted from the hard drive. By the time it gets to the audio DAC, the data is identical from both a data and a signaling standpoint.
I'm sure you can handily replace the needle on a record player arm, but you know absolutely squat about digital signaling.
Yaz.
Parent
Playing devil's advocate... (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be possible that the decryption algorithm introduces some jitter by taking a varying amount of time to decrypt a chunk of data [cryptography.com]. A poorly-engineered system might pass this jitter through to the DAC, resulting in degraded audio quality. It might also be possible that the decryption operations cause the CPU to introduce additional noise on the power rails, which might also impact audio quality in a poorly-engineered system.
So, I don't think it's impossible that DRM affects sound quality. I'm just not convinced that it actually does.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between a DRM'd song and one that you rip yourself is an issue of control. With iTunes you are stuck with 128kbps AAC encoded by their in house encoding/DRM software. When you rip a song yourself you have the option of using any one of myriad different encoders, algorithms, bitrates, configurations, and etc. I usually use 240-355 VBR WMA encoding for personal use.
Personally I've only purchased one album from iTunes (unfortunatly I can no longer play it because I've changed computers too many times) and while their encoding method is fine for listening through earbuds, it shows noticable degredation vs. PCM on my 7.1 home theater setup. But it has nothing to do with watermarking DRM and it definately has nothing to do with quantum theory and schrodinger's cat, it is all about the bitrate and the encoding software. And Apple uses a substandard encoder set to a bitrate that is almost pallatable to AOL dial-up customers.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Informative)
Just so you know, there is a button in the iTunes Music Store account information page that lets you deauthorize all the computers that you've previously authorized to play your music. It only lets you do this once a year IIRC, but it's useful if you've reached your limit of 5 computers and can't get to an authorized computer to deauthorize it.
Parent
Re:It's "let's pretend to be a programmer day" (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:It's "let's pretend to be a programmer day" (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Informative)
No, but I cannot purchase from the iTMS songs that are encoded at higher rates. That was my point.
Parent
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Funny)
It may not be rational, but if it gets the plebes to opose DRM, it's good for everyone in the long run.
Parent
but I already have a TON of CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would've thought? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bad statistic (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an iPod, I rarely buy anything from the iTunes Music Store, and it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with DRM. The albums I want to buy are quite often in the $12-$13 range on iTunes, and I can get them in CD form at the same price or even cheaper. When I buy the CD I get a) higher quality, and b) a permanent backup I can store in a closet or cupboard.
I think what's really going on is that people can see the obvious: the price structure (digital vs. physical medium) is currently way out of whack. You don't save anything by buying the digital version! Why would you do it? It's not like I ever find myself saying "I just HAVE to own the new Audioslave, and I can't BEAR to wait 3 or 4 days for it!"
Let me see if I have this right (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Every other online music store is a failure
Therefore, people don't like DRM.
Yeah, I see how that conclusion follows those two assumptions. How about, iTunes is successful because the iPod is successful and yet, that said, most people prefer to own a CD version of their digital music. Perhaps because they can encode either lossless or at a higher bitrate than offered by iTunes?
The average Joe most likely thinks that DRM is one of those new pop bands he's heard about.
Apparent success? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going to take a while before downloads overtake CD sales (if ever), but that doesn't mean that a new technology in a new market isn't successful.
1.5 Billion Songs != Shunning (Score:5, Insightful)
But I guess no one will read an article that says "iPod users gradually adopting iTunes Music Store to supplement CD sales."
Re:1.5 Billion Songs != Shunning (Score:5, Insightful)
Jump through hoops? I'm not sure what you are talking about. You simply insert the disc into your CD-ROM drive, iTunes rips the files, tags them, and transfers to your iPod. It's exactly as convenient as listening to the CD in a normal player.
It be like everyone was buying cassete players, but still buying 8 track tapes and recording them onto cassettes.
Not really, because the CD was a quantum leap in convenience from tapes. No more rewinding, or hunting for songs. It was also a big increase in audio quality. Never mind the fact that 8-tracks never had the kind of market dominance that CDs enjoy.
Similarly, the iPod was also a big increase in convenience. No more sorting through physical discs to find your CDs. No more bulky collections to carry around. The iPod did not increase quality - but the main reason for the success of both the CD and the iPod was not quality but convenience.
Maybe the switch will happen when the CD player is less dominant elsewhere (like stereos) and the media center PC becomes a reality in every home.
That's pretty much already happened. How many people actually play CDs in standalone CD players these days? How many people have a computer with a CD-ROM? I'm not sure why you need a "media center" PC to use iTunes. The difference is that people already have huge collections of CDs, and have stores that sell CDs in their neighborhood. I don't think it has much to do with people not being comfortable with using their PCs for music.
Parent
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I was totally with the article up until the last sentance, which makes a stupid, spun, assumption based on a causality. "People are buying CDs more than online music," great. "People PREFER buying CDs to online music," still good. "Online music has DRM," yes. But "Therefore people must not be buying online music because of the DRM," is NOT a good proof. DRM is one of MANY characteristics that separate CDs from music downloads, and I would argue it to be one of the least important to people. Even the "lossy/non-lossy" arguement is a very small, elite few, compared to the masses, of whome hardly care about the quality of their music. No, the three biggest reasons why CDs are still more popular is: tradition, the regularity of going to shop at a place, where you can then pick out music. And the third, which I think is probably the biggest, is the ownership of a physical object after purchase.
If people put money down on something, they want to be able to physically "hold it in their hand" (so to speak). It's human nature, we're used to dealing with physical objects. Being told, "now you have it, now go have fun" without any physical evidence doesn't naturally feel as ligitimate has being able to spend money, and hold in your hand the item you just bought. This may change, but currently people are comfortable exchanging money for items, admissions, but we haven't yet completely bought into this "paying money for non-physical data" thing.
I remember a study that showed that the majority of computer users didn't consider illegally downloading software or media to be anywhere as offensive as shoplifting. Similarly, I would suggest that people don't consider purchasing something online to be of the same legitimacy as buying something in a store.
Give me a decent, unbiased study that shows me that the common person gives much of a shit about DRM, and I'll listen, but this says nothing at all.
magnatune.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only do they not have DRM, but they encourage you to give away up to three copies of the music you buy, as a form of advertising.
They have a sliding scale on prices: you can choose what you want to pay, within a reasonable range. (I just checked, and at least for the album I checked, the range was from $5 to $18.) If you only like one song on an album, pay less for the album. If you really want to encourage an artist to make more albums, pay more. That's cool.
When you buy an album, the artist gets 50% of whatever you pay. Not 50% of the profits, and then they cook the books so they "don't have any profits"... 50% of the gross income. That's outstanding. I love their slogan: "We are not evil."
I have no connection to them, other than being a satisfied customer.
steveha
Re:Let's be honest here (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent