Along the way someone said that there is nothing inherently evil about DRM (I reminded them of the Sony Rootkit fiasco...). But this got me thinking. What could happen if DRM, Copyright issues and the whole mess was taken to its (ill)logic conclusion?

I realised that the media companies are quickly gaining control over the entire cultural history of the 20th century and a method to control the cultural history (such as it is) of the coming centuries.

My take on the whole thing is that DRM should be avoided like the plague. I do not buy any music that foists DRM on me. Neither do I have an issue with recording my LP's (and ironically some tapes) to digital and listening to them. That's fair use.

For new music though, there are not that many compelling options. Magnatune has been around for a long time and supplies some niche independent music. While Magnatune is one of the oldies at this stage, there are hundreds of sites (niche or otherwise) offering independent music.

Magnatune has an unusual business model. It offers the customer the choice of how much they would like ot pay with the average $5 pre-selected. On average, customers actually pay just short of $9!

Its a discussion for another time, but the salient point is that given the choice, and with regard to music they have sourced, a customer will not only pay for music but pay more than they have to.

These successful distributors all deal with so-called niche music, independent music and pretty much everything that the majors would pass on. Which is a good thing.

Nobody is becoming super-rich from these services but the point is providing distribution channels from a musician to their present and future audience and fans.

The majors steer clear of these services, however, another fine online distributor eMusic has been getting mid-management agreement for deals since it began but as these requests bubble up to higher management they unilaterally get knocked on the head even with so-called 'long-tail' music.

The music industry is not run by or for people who appreciate music. It has one goal only - to make money. They try to achieve this by producing cookie cutter music, blowing with the wind (until we are all sick of the smell) and protecting their back-catalogue with uber-zealousness.

Eventually this will lead to people turning away from the traditional music industry and turning on to the likes of Magnatune, MySpace (who knows..!), YouTube etc. as thier primary source of music - Hallelujah!

Software like Democracy Player, Songbird etc. will help to replace the restrictive Media Players from MS, Apple etc.

But by then it will be too late, our cultural history will be locked away from us forever. If you want to legally access a tune form 1950's you will have to talk to the media companies. If you want to legally watch a Betty Boop cartoon, see reruns of Knight Rider, watch the moon landings - you will have to talk to the big media companies.

These media companies will not be interested in taking to individuals or even special interest groups. There is no way they would bow to pressure to release to the public domain all recordings by a 1930's performer - unless they could release a digitally remastered boxed set and the whole nine yards of coffee table books and all the rest of the tchotchke that make the big media companies think that they define popular culture.

In comparison releasing the recordings of an obscure artist to the public domain would cost too much in lawyers fees and paperwork - its more profitable to leave it to moulder in the archives and eventually (blissfully) require dumping and burning.

Increasingly the media companies are using Copyright, DRM and even the DMCA to lock down all our modern cultural history also through conglomeration of corporate bodies (Time Warner AOL Universal) that leads to the consolidation of scattered music/movies/whatever collections under one corporate heel.

When more and more popular culture comes under the sway of fewer people we get a situation where there is no leverage - one side holds all the cards and will never fold.

These corporations have proven that they do not want to release old recordings / media / whatever (see the Eldred case in the states as an offthetopofmyhead example...) unless they can turn enough of a profit from them.

To labour a point - for a large corporation to do this it involves a lot of outlay - lawyers, marketing, lawyers, remixing, lawyers, distribution, lawyers, marketing, lawyers.... This effectively means that these recordings won't ever be released. The content is actually less than worthless to the conglomerate - the best option for them, from a business perspective (their only perspective) would be to destroy the whole kit and kaboodle.

Lets put this bluntly - the media companies would profit from erasing the cultural history of the 20th Century.

Yes, thats a nightmare scenario, but the facts are diverging in this direction...

What to do?

If a grassroots or even independent operation were allowed access to the collection they could cheaply and effectively distribute it, effectively securing it for future generations - the media companies could even get a kick back based on the distribution numbers -there is a lot of money in that long tail - some sort of licensing deal could be setup with the fees used for something altruistic that the companies would otherwise not pay for...whatever, just thinking of a carrot...

This would allow our generation and the next to continue to remix our cultural leagacy to create its own just as we have - remember there are no new stories just variations on a theme.

Plus it would allow the media conglomerates to do what they do best - make press releases and pay lawyers.

What we are heading for now, I truly believe, is a modern digital library of Alexandria.

Anyway, something I feel strongly about so apologies for the long rant.

As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses...

....and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

We are very upset that Windows users don't practice a rigourous backup procedure, we realise that we fucked up, but seriously dudes, those windows users, I mean how hard is it to stick a DVD in and do a backup? Ha ha

This is the same Universal 'music' who has already squared off to the new GooTube (Google owned YouTube) claiming that they would not hesitate to sue them for copyright infringement. Of course it would be cheaper for them to ask Google to take down the infringing videos, but there you go.

Universal is well within its rights (legally if not morally) to sue the two video sharing sites. After all as the article states:

In separate lawsuits, Universal alleged that Grouper.com – recently acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment – and Bolt.com had built up traffic by encouraging users to share music videos from its artists without their permission.

Well fair enough then, people have been sharing these videos on line, without permission even. Thats theft right? I mean everytime someone watches one of those videos online a DVD dissapears in a puff of smoke frm the stores of Universal 'music'. Right?

The article goes on:

In one incident, it claimed a video for the Mariah Carey song “Shake it Off” was viewed more than 50,000 times on Grouper without the company’s permission.

50,000 infringements of copyright. Universal 'music' must be bleeding and walking funny after that surely!

But hey! Wait a second here. Did they just say that 50,000 people watched a Mariah Carey video? Without having to be medicated and propped up in front of it? And more than that, it actually cost Universal 'music' nothing, zilch, nada, diddly-squat to achieve the grand figure of 50,000 viewers?

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE UNIVERSAL 'MUSIC'!!

What the fuck? Do you know how much marketing dollars it takes to make one person watch any video, never mind Mariah Carey? And in this case you have a targetted audience! Captive even (if not captivated). WHY NOT SELL SOME MARIAH CAREY CRAPOLA TO THEM WHEN THEY ARE WATCHING THE VIDEO THAT COST YOU NOTHING TO GET IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES?? Ok it costs money to produce but the distribution cost are nothing!!

ARE THEY FUCKING INSANE? AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO SEES THAT THERE IS A BIG NEW WAY TO MARKET TO THE AUDIENCE HERE?

You can lead a horse to water......

Google are a bunch of pretty smart guys who might even catch on to this an put some pressure on the media companies - make them an offer they cant refuse - and get some brain cells firing in the right way.

Regardless, there are interesting times ahead for us all. If Google has the balls (and more importantly the money) to flaunt the media companies intellectual property rights in an attempt to show them the one true path then we might get somewhere. Maybe even some CEO's might take a chance liten to the lower management and ignore the upper management and drop the dead donkey of DRM and stop treating their customers like criminals. Amen brother

OR, the media companies might just continue with business as usual and bring down Google, the internet, World of Warcraft, for shame.

Damn if I dont need a walk in the sun smeling some flowers right now.

I mean....wow!

I have no words to adequately describe what Microsoft is about to pull off. I am actually, in a perverse way, impressed!

Even their marketing site for Zune expresses their deep, twisted hatred of their customers

Microsoft's Zune marketing site

Auto-conflagrating birds and weirdos with bunnys. Says it all.

Also if you went and bought into the whole Plays for sure system then you are completely b0rked. The DRM in the Zune system (which includes software, hardware and an online music service) is completely incompatible with the DRM for Play For Sure. I haven't been able to find a clear migration strategy for such users either - maybe Microsoft thinks that customers will continue to use both services? Maybe Microsoft is mad.

To "paraphrase" Paul Allen:

Deliberate, deliberate, deliberate, deliberate, deliberate, deliberate, deliberate.....

Some people see this as a power move on Microsofts behalf, a cynical effort to grab market share from Apple and iTunes and keep them using heavy handed DRM. Lets have a quick round up of the pros and cons for that argument:

• Pros : Zune player and iPod look extremely similar
• Cons: Compared to iPod / iTunes the Zune message is diffuse, slightly ugly and un-compelling

• Pros: Microsoft is offering a 'buy out' plan for iTunes users to migrate to Zune (they have not yet offered such a thing for Play for Sure customers...)
• Cons: Microsoft aren't actually offering anything new, its a very 'me too' message - wheres the differentiation? Apple does the 'me too' thing with such style that people think they innovated the product/service in question. True to their history, Microsoft still thinks in beige.

• Pros: Microsoft is increasing the amount of DRM with no good reason other than to lock users into their systems. They are doing this across the board with the new Windows Media player 11 having onerous DRM 'capabilities'. This is plainly a case of locking down the borders and strengthening defences before going into battle.
• Cons: Not many for this argument I would think. People are being good little drones and swallowing the line about DRM 'protecting' them. This is true for Apple as much as for Microsoft.

• Pros: The Zune allows you to share your music with others by using WiFi
• Cons: three days, three plays - 'nuff said

No doubt the zune will be bought in small droves and leave the shelves like slightly warm cakes but in terms of splash - what's it all about?

Disney?

The Disney owned Hollywood records has partnered with Yahoo! to 'test the water'. Some choice quotes follow:

Yahoo tests 'Right' to MP3 downloads

"We're trying to be realistic," said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. "Jesse's single is already online and we haven't put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we're going to see how Jesse's album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward."

Wow! Someone is actually getting it! Yes, there will always be a few (and initially quite a few, possibly mostly) bad eggs, but when the new approach is mainstream and every most media companies are doing it (perhaps ill-advisedly still using DRM on their 'premium' offerings) then most consumers won't mind paying for their music - especially if it follows eMusics lead and sells songs for about 25cent each.

Labels and Netcos will be watching sales of the album, which Yahoo! will promote heavily throughout its network of Web sites to see whether consumers are more interested in buying unprotected MP3 files and whether it has any impact on piracy.

Magnatune has been using a model that allows the consumer choose how much they want to pay for the album. A lot of people choose the 5 dollar minimum. But most choose the recommended price of 9 or 10 dollars and a lsignificant proportion actually pay 15 or 20 dollars per album.

They have been successful at this for years.

The mainstream media companies will see that it will work for them too. It might be slow to catch on and possibly even be a 'loss leader' for them but it will stabilise and they will reap the benefits of not having to lobby the U.S. and other Government to change laws, they wont have to pay clever (and sometimes underhanded) people to invent new ways of locking up your music and they wont have to spend money brokering deals with like-minded companies and hardware manufacturers to produce proprietary formats to lock out the competition.

They might even be so generous as to start paying the artists properly! Who knows?

I will leave the last word with Dave Goldberg of Yahoo! music

"We think this is a really good experiment, because copy protection is not doing anything to stop people from stealing when you can just get unprotected tracks off of a CD or get music illegally online," said Yahoo! Music topper Dave Goldberg. "We think it's good to make it easy for consumers to get digital music on whatever device they want and for companies like us to not be reliant on one particular technology company for how our consumers can access music."

Wow, I'm already feeling pumped!

SpiralFrog will offer those consumers (ed: the young ones) a better experience and environment than they can get from any pirate site.

But Pirates rock! With their three corner hats, wooden legs, parrots and antiquated mode of speech.

some key factors - legal digital files with no viruses or spyware in a controlled client-server architecture

Excellent, client-server architecture - that is SO innovative and will make my music sound MUCH better!

quick downloading

Dude, you just need to configure BitTorrent properly...

...and quality songs and music videos by great artists as among the primary benefits users will gain.

hmm.

So far it sounds great - client-server architecture, fast downloads, no viruses, great music. Sweet. There MUST be a catch somewhere

Digital rights management technology is built-in to all audio and video content as part of measures the company and its partners are actively taking to address piracy.

Uh, oh.

We want to provide the best environment for everyone - OUR PARTNERS and the _{recording artists}, as well as consumers (ed: emphasis mine)

Piracy continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the music industry where illegal file sharing and unauthorized CD burning are the prime means of music piracy. Digital rights protection will help us combat piracy and provide peace of mind for the record labels _{and the artists.}

Sorry, the biggest threat to the music industry nowadays is themselves. Here's a hint - treating customers like crminals is not a good idea!

Offering legally-authorized audio and video downloads in an advertising-supported environment works, as our business model is based on sharing our income streams from that advertising with our content partners like Universal.

Oh god, I feel it coming....

the company's research revealed that consumers are more than willing to 'pay' for their content by watching non-intrusive, contextually-relevant, targeted advertising in an online entertainment environment where advertising is already part of the overall experience.

And there it is. You have to watch a little infomercial every time you want to download a tune

We believe SpiralFrog will deliver an audience we highly desire and need to reach

But killing seals for fur is bad! Oh, wait...

Our audience is heavily into music and can be more easily reached on the web. We see SpiralFrog as an ideal place for us to communicate and build lasting relationships with our core audience and which give us unique new revenue opportunities.

Lasting relationships come from mutual respect.

And the marketing company chimes in...

The challenge is to find ways to integrate messaging and content to engage and add value to consumers' lives rather than just add to the message clutter out there. Companies like SpiralFrog offer a more direct engagement opportunity and have the potential to be of value to consumers and, as a result, our clients

Oh, hang on they arent a marketing company they are a 'communications services group'

Mediaedge:cia is a unit of GroupM, the media investment management arm of WPP Group, one of the world's largest communications services groups.

And finally...

SpiralFrog's target audience - people between the ages of 13 and 34 - is an advertiser's dream

...

This is the core audience we will attract by building a music-centric experience and destination that is second to none, legally delivering what the majority of users want - content they pay for only with their time.

Time is money dude, for real.

It's content that advertisers are willing to pay for on their behalf.

Wait, didn't they just say that we paid for it with our time?

SpiralFrog will launch in beta later this year.

And hopefully sink like a stone to the murky depths, never to be seen again.

But then again it is a frog we are talking about and there is a lot of nuclear waste about - Dagon?

Effectively the music industry maintains that sharing one file leads to a loss of 1000 sales. They claim that these funds need to be recovered and use this as a justification to sue huge numbers of people, unhampered by the burden of proof.

The funds that the RIAA recovers are not returned to the record companies and used to pay salaries, develop artists and pay royalties. The funds are immediately rolled back into the lawsuits.

This invalidates the basis of the RIAA's argument - that the artists need to be paid.

RIAA also sues a whole range of people based on very, very flimsy 'evidence'. This results in many innocent people getting caught in the net and being forced to settle with the RIAA to the tune of $3750 - which doesn't even indemnify them against future litigation.

Innocent people are forced to settle as the alternative - fighting the case in court - would require the defendant to have as deep or deeper pockets than the RIAA.

Pure and simple - scare tactics. Tactics that are not working and only serve to alienate law-abiding citizens and tarnish the image of the music industry and the most important but often overlooked player - the artists.

My point in bringing it up was to illustrate that although their intention was serious the results were hilarious as they completely ignored how English was used by actual English speakers.

We have a similar situation with our contemporary music industry. They have created their own phrasebooks and conversational guides using only the inadequate sources of information available to them. The music industry (as a whole - we are talking generalisations here after all...) lives in an ivory tower that they have meticulously (although unconciously) constructed for themselves.

They KNOW for a fact that the world and its mother wants another boy band or over-sexualised pre-pubescent teen, just as José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino KNEW that the world needed a Portugese-English phrasebook written by two gentlemen who had no knowledge of English and only had a Portugese-French and French-English Dictionary to help them.

I'll expound on what I see are the failings of the music industry at some other time, not to get off the point too much I wanted to establish that the music industry lives in a fantasy land. A land that has as much to do with the reality of the average music listener as lawn edger do for the inuit people.

I provide a partial list of the tenets of the music industry:

1. The music industry is infallible - Any drop in sales is a result of increased filesharing not a result of poor quality output from the music industry
2. Customers can only use approved media formats and players to access the music they purchased - anything else is theft
3. Customers that attempt to exceed their rights are criminals and thus forfeit their music and property as a result

1. This is plainly ridiculous. Yes, most people are happy with the muck that passes for popular music nowadays, but this has been true for many years. Not everyone has the high expectations of true music lovers. Favourite tunes often are tied to a fond memory or evoke a specific period of time in your life. It is never a simple case of 'this music is good' vs. 'this music is bad'.

   However, suggesting that people will buy the same muck time and time again is fantasy. People are very quickly becoming jaded with 'the next big thing'. The amount of time that a tune spends at the 'number one' spot has reduced over the years - a measure both of the dwindling quality of popular music and the attention deficit of consumers

   Studies have been done that conclude that file sharing may actually boost CD sales - and a very complete analysis here. This is attributed to the fact that people use file sharing to test the music before purchase, as there is very little chance for them to hear a wide range of music on the radio, TV etc, and as a result will purchase more music from a newly doscovered artist than intended.

2. There is such a thing as fair use. In its general incarnation it alows customers to make backup copies of their music, and to do whatever they need to in order to access their media.

   This should allow them to lawfully burn a CD to play in their car, rip the music from their CD to their home computer and then copy it to their iPod and from there to their computer in work.

   The freedom required to allow the last case - free movement of your music from device to device - also allows you to take your music and give it to your friends. Strictly speaking this is theft. BUT - in my experience, sharing music with friends results in them seeking out more music from the artist, buying more CD's, attending concerts etc. not to mention word fo mouth and general good will. A net bonus in my opinion.

   As it stands customers cannot do any of this. Music downloaded form iTunes can only be played on the one computer and your iPod. Problems arise when you try to move your music to a new computer, iPod, a CD for your car, your computer at work - oops! you have run out of licences to play your music. What happens when the curent 'generation' of iTunes customers discovers that they cannot move their music collection to their shiny new computer?

   There will be a revolution. A day of reckoning that Apple must see coming and refuses to acknowledge. It will be a watershed in the battle between music industry and music consumers, a battle that so far has been fought silently.

   I'm not just picking on Apple - its just a great example - all the online music stores that employ DRM face the same problem.

3. Executives of the major music companies have suggested that people who fileshare or who attempt to break the DRM on ther music files should have their computers explode or at least have every file on their computer irrevocably deleted.

   On other words, if I want to listen to a copy of some music I bought on iTunes on my home computer and I use a third party tool to restore my consumer rights y allowing me to copy the iTunes music, then I should have very file on my computer destroyed.

   Does that make sense?

Most of the music industries thinking only makes sense if you realise that they consider all their paying customers to be criminals.

Customers expect the following (some of which are unrealistic)

1. Music should be free
2. It should be possible to play purchased music on any device.
3. It should be possible to move purchased music from any device to any other device and/or format any number of times
4. It should be possible to resell purchased music
5. Purchased music should be available for download from the provider at any time

1. Bizzare as it is this sometimes should be true.

   It has been shown that giving away some music can pique interest in the rest of a band's music. It usually dosesn't lead people to think that the band will be giving its music away for free forever.

   Magnatune proved that people will pay what they think the band deserves. Magnatune is an independent internet music company that signs what is essentially a non-exclusive distribution deal with their artists.

   When people come to buy an album or a tune they can choose from a range of prices. The suggested price is usually 8 dollars for an album. The range goes all the way from 5 dollars to 18 dollars.

   As expected, lots of people choose to pay only 5 dollars. Another large bunch of people choose to pay the suggested price. But strangely enough, there is a large number of people who choose to pay the higher amounts. In 2003 the average price paid for an album was $9.82 (couldn't find more recent data)

   Obviously, people like free music, but people also like to reward the artist for a job well done. With an independent company like Magnatune the artist gets paid properly every time.

   psst. Hey Kid. First one's free...

2. This one should be a no-brainer. If you have bought music then you should be able to play it freely on any device you own.

3. This is a little more difficult. It relies heavily on the assumption that the seller will delete all copies of the music from their system.

   What about backups? If you burn backup DVD's of your data then you won't be able to remove just the files you sold. Reburning these backups is an onerous process.

   This basically comes down to requiring that people don't try and sell their purchased music more than once. It comes down to trust

4. Again Magnatune have this one covered.

   iTunes allows you to re-download your songs ONCE and once only - with a special dispensation from the pope himself. ONCE!

   Not sure about the other services as I havent checked. I am signed up with the very promising eMusic and I will let you know if they have this sorted.

I know this is only a cursory examiniation of the problems, lets just call it broad strokes to frame future arguments and lay out some ground work on exactly what my opinions are regarding the state of music.Suffice to say - the music industry, she is broke.