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MySpace Digital Music Service Is DRM-Free
Posted by
kdawson
on Friday September 26, @12:20PM
from the little-music-with-your-gossip dept.
from the little-music-with-your-gossip dept.
Anti-Globalism sends word that MySpace flipped the switch on its online, ad-supported, DRM-free music service that will "... give its roughly 120 million users free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from the world's largest recording labels. Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied. MySpace is hoping to set itself apart from iTunes even further by allowing its users to create an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece, a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm."
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neat (Score:4, Interesting)
Now for an easy way to get to a catalogue using XML so we can do machine-to-machine catalogue matching to download whatever we're still missing.
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Re: (Score:2)
download whatever we're still missing.
If MySpace's downloadable music selection is like their present variety of artist pages then there's nothing to see there, move along(unless you like Britney Spears and Ja Rule).
Re: (Score:2)
I personally don't care that I never own the music- I consume music at a rate that wouldn't be affordable at purchase price.
DRM... MySpace... DRM... MySpace (Score:5, Funny)
Tough choice.
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MySpace? (Score:2, Redundant)
I didn't know it still existed.
Free, eh? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
MySpace.com: We're still relavent! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't go to Facebook because it's better and doesn't have nearly as many in your face annoying ads! Come back! See, easy pirate music!
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Slowly becoming the WalMart of the Internet (Score:2, Funny)
Bad summary (Score:4, Informative)
Myspace doesn't sell anything. If you want to buy a song you have to purchase it from Amazon through the link provided. Otherwise you use Myspace's music player.
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Re: (Score:2)
Myspace doesn't sell anything. If you want to buy a song you have to purchase it from Amazon through the link provided. Otherwise you use Myspace's music player.
That is what makes this a "new music service" from MySpace. It's also what makes this story "news." Good summary. Have a biscuit.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
or you could use Fire Fox's download helper to rip any song directly from the band's myspace page.
Or getmsmp3 [sourceforge.net], which has apparently been abandoned.... Notice reads:
Sorry everyone, but MySpace has its own special music interests now, and this
program can't play nice with their new business model. It's going to be hard
enough for them to be profitable without some script out there that can grab
content without watching ads. So getmsmp3 is officially abandoned. Sorry!
What a confusing article (Score:5, Informative)
Which is it? Again, FTFA:
Sound like the track copying limit is "zero", since it appears you can only play it with a custom player in a browser.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. I still cannot tell if it is ad-supported, or paid subscription, or pay per song.
But more importantly, why can this streaming business model work, and yet Pandora is bleeding from legal fees?
Re:What a confusing article (Score:5, Informative)
Pandora doesn't shove advertising down their viewer's throats. Also, pandora has a ton more listeners
Additionally, Myspace has yet to put this out there, and has yet to put prices out there. Just wait to see how much they charge and then people will start talking. Remember that if it's anything more than apple's 99cents it will be thrown aside as uncompetitive.
Also, since people are purchasing the songs on the same site they listen on, I suspect myspace some kind of way to weasel out of getting charged for the fees (they're not legal fees btw), that Pandora is being charged.
Lastly, Pandora doesn't sell the music themselves. They sell it through others.
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Parent
Re:What a confusing article (Score:5, Informative)
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Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
The catch: the music can be played only on personal computers connected to the Internet and listeners have to tolerate advertising splashed across the screen.
So it sounds like MySpace has made a listening service that allows you to listen to music, but probably has something resembling DRM to keep you from keeping it, listening to it offline, or putting it on portable players.
If you actually want to *buy* the music and keep it without DRM, it shuffles you off to Amazon. Amazon, of course, offers a pretty good DRM-free MP3 store.
Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied.
Which is kind of misunderstanding the issue. iTunes doesn't control how many times a track can be copied, but rather how many devices are authorized to play it. But anyway...
MySpace appears to be in a better position to take on iTunes because its site has always emphasized music.
Weird comments like this are peppered throughout the article. Sounds like someone has beef. The author of the article (like the author of the summary) seem hellbent on painting this as an iTunes killer. However:
Despite its musical bent, MySpace isn't positioning its service as an iTunes killer. "We see this as more of a complement to what Apple is doing and create even more demand for digital music devices,"
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DRM-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
"You can only play the song in our custom application" seems about as restrictive of DRM as you get. How would this possibly be considered to be DRM-free? I also fail to see how this would eliminate limitations on copying, it seems they're attempting to set that limit at exactly zero. (Like all DRM, that will be circumvented, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.)
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Do what you want with "commercial" music (Score:5, Informative)
...but leave indie artists alone please. Myspace, IMHO anyway, is much more important to the music community because of its ability to allow non-commercial, non-signed artists to put their music and group information out there for everyone to see. The big labels have their own mechanism, and Myspace catering to this with DRM-free music is awesome - but please, don't let it affect the indie artists. Keep it where it is, because it works!
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At least get it right... (Score:3, Funny)
This person obviously never used iTunes. Not that I think it is perfect but they are making it out like Apple chose to enforce copy protection. Why does everyone forget the label's forced it?
Even so they got the tech side wrong. If you are going to bash something at least learn how it really works and what the real limitations and problems are, and include a few other services for comparison.
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iTunes doesn't "limit how many times" you can copy (Score:4, Informative)
iTunes doesn't do this. You can burn to CD or copy any iTunes track unlimited times.
iTunes does restrict playlists to ten CD burns, but copying the contents to another playlist resets the counter. The summary is poorly informed.
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Only 96kbit Audio (Score:3, Informative)
Myspace's on demand audio is encoded at a somewhat crap quality of 96kbit/sec
imeem is 33% better with 128kbit audio
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No Radiohead or any Independent artists, though (Score:3, Interesting)
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MyPirateBay (Score:4, Funny)
How does this affect MyPirateBay again?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Every time I see one of these articles I think "iTunes, or the iTunes Music Store".
They're very different animals, and ultimately do very different things. The music store has some restrictions (because there's no way in hell the labels would have allowed it), but the actual iTunes software imposes no such limitations.
Cheers