In Microsoft's case, I think the problem is that they kept coming up with different online stores. MSN, PFS and now Zune Marketplace? Why scattershot the business when they could just keep working on one instead of redoing them again and again?

Were any promises made by any of these services that said they'd be around forever and that the music you paid money for is "yours"?

If there weren't, and they didn't, and you STILL paid them money then:

+ Watch video

This makes me wonder what Apple is doing that allows they to continually update iTunes while maintaining DRM compatibility.

.... and illegal downloads come storming back!

@strider_mt2k: Good thing all of my purchases through iTunes were upgraded to iTunes Plus sometime afterwards =D

This certainly does make a stronger case for services like Amazon.com, because if Amazon were to ever disappear, none of your files go away, and it's in a format that's universally accepted.

@Joseph:
Apple is succeding.
That's what the others failed to do.

DRM is the prohibition of our time. Eventually it will end the same way - in bloody, bloody mob violence.

The main problem with DRM as a concept comes to this:

What's the point in stopping people from copying their music when said music is already available (ripped from another source) freely to anyone with half a brain?

@Gann: I thought Drugs was...But I guess we can fit DRM in that list too..

@Gann:
It was said at the start and it's still true: DRM only hurts the ones who support it.

@Kaiser-Machead:
I don't bash anyone for making their own choices.
If Apple's DRM works for you and not against you then maybe they are doing it right.
I'm old school in that I tend to buy CDs when I do at all.
I probably also don't count because my musical tastes run towards older stuff that's more readily available in that format.

From my vantage point it seems silly, that's all.

@Gann: yeah! no wait. no! errrr. you can still buy music right? hmmm guess it's not prohibition.

I love how the Winbots constantly rant and rave that Apple locks you down, potentially screwing you over in the future.

They fail to admit, of course, that it's Microsoft that ACTUALLY HAS locked people down and then screwed them over.

Reality bites.

Corporations are pure, evil. They'd sell you your own repackaged snot if they could, and the idea of ethics wouldn't deign to waft over the aether of their conscious....(brought to you by Carl's Jr.)

(...and Acura TSX)

In this case it's still a lot like DRM, because even with the booze, you still only rent it!

And that's why I loved FairUse. All my legal purchases DRM free, and now with Amazon, no need to worry about it going forward.

@strider_mt2k: Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Initially, I purchased lots of CD's up until the point where a few had tracks I didn't want, so now it's sort of a mix between albums I love and songs I want by themselves.

Yea, I just bought a Kindle. I hope it will survive.

I don't buy music with DRM. I buy mostly CDs which I can rip to anything I want.

Completely off topic, but am I the only one who sees in the image some sort of pregnant goat man, running while looking over his/her right sholder. Possibly to avoid whatever tortuous evil is spitting at it?

(Man, I need more sleep on the weekends....)

I ended up buying a bunch of music on iTunes without reading the fine print beforehand and got hosed when it came to freely moving my music around. To be honest, online music purchase is convenient, but for a savings of only a couple of dollars I would rather get a CD and burn a lossless audio format version to my computer for higher quality sound. As for buying entire albums, I have no problem with it and I find that if I like a couple of the tracks on the CD, the others are worth a listen too.

@Guizzy: Yeah, but some people have a moral standard they uphold. I buy music to support the artist, even if it is only a little they get from the companies. Being a semipro musician, I can undertand it must realy suck to have someone steal your hard work and not pay you for it. Blay Blah Blah, no one pays a painter after they sell their painting blah blah blah.

OK, no this or that OS hater here, hell, I'm just a it-doesn't-work-for-me hater:

First, I *bought* a bunch of music in Yahoo Music. Got tired of their janky player, so had to strip out the DRM's. And so, I am now a criminal (DMCA).

THEN, went to Zune Marketplace for buying music. Since I use WMP mainly for my music, quickly discovered a Zune playlist is not the same as a WMP playlist and vice-versa (and no way to convert either way except by editing the file manually!).

Oh yeah, then the next issue: I'll be playing a Zune DRM'ed song in WMP and suddenly, no music. It tells me I have to login via Zune and auth the song. WTF? I BOUGHT the d@mn song.. yet apparently, every so often you still have to re-auth the song through Zune.

But here is the catch: Unlike Yahoo Music's "Re-License all Content" feature, with Zune you have to *listen* to I'd say about 5 seconds of the song before the license is refreshed. NO mass re-auth.

So now I get to strip all the DRM BS off my Zune purchases. Criminal x 2, according to the DMCA.

But wait! It gets better! I have about half my CD collection ripped, so about 35 gigs of WMA's, some bought and still DRM'ed, other's ripped WMA's.

With FairUse4WM, first, I get to find which directories contain the DRM'ed songs. Run it. THEN, delete the originals and rename the stripped WMA's to the original file name so my libraries don't get all whacked.

Anybody know a simpler way? Bueller? Bueller?

OK, lest you think iTunes escapes my rant ... it doesn't. I buy music video's from iTunes. Zune offers them in little itty bitty format. iTunes offers them in standard size. All I want to be able to do is stream my property over to my Xbox... but No!.... nobody has broken the DRM on iTunes music videos. O sure, plenty of "screen grab types" or workarounds that degrade quality, but nothing for just ripping the DRM off. So I guess I am supposed to buy an Apple TV thingy?!?!?

"No good deed goes unpunished!"

Thank you for allowing me my rant. It's nice to have a place with sympathetic people to hear my frothing-at-the-mouth rants. Thank-you.

Bittorrent FTW.

Now if artists would put up donation pages on their websites for people who like the music they downloaded, perhaps we could do away with these online stores altogether.

Either that, or continue to claim that copying music is killing the artists.

@LagunaSol: Microsoft's DRM was actually less of a lockdown than Apple's in at least one specific regard: choice of portable MP3 players.

Apple's DRM: iPods only.
Microsoft's DRM: a few different manufacturers. (but not Apple)

Of course, I'm not saying Janus doesn't suck. But that's probably the basis of their argument.

Exactly. It always sickens me how RIAA claims that it's stealing the 'livelihood of artists', ignoring the fact that the artist sees, what, 1% of CD sales, on a good contract? All the money comes from concerts.

DRM is just the music industry refusing to adapt, holding onto outdated business models and plugging their ears, shouting 'la la la'.

All recorded music formats (all storage formats, for that matter), are perishable. How many Edison wax-playing phonograph cylinders still around? Try playing a 1/4 inch reel-to-reel lately? What about 78 RPM vinyl or, eventually, all vinyl? 8-tracks? Cassettes? DATs?

No storage format is eternal. They all have half-lives somewhere between milk and the cow it came from.

Assuming that Microsoft is ever able to discontinue Windows XP, it should be interesting to see if they turn off XP activation/re-activation when XP reaches its End of Life (5 years past sales discontinuation, I think).

@nightsky: But I'm paying for that music anyway! If I were a dirty pirate and intended to pirate music, I wouldn't buy it. I'd get off a P2P site.

That's the point; those that do uphold that moral standard are being punished for it with DRMed files, and those that don't get their music without DRM elsewhere.

Real music pirates don't painfully crack the DRM from download sites. They rip pre-release CDs, have access to industry insiders and whatnot. DRM has no noticeable effect on music piracy whatsoever.

@frigg: But you can extend their life indefinitely by copying them to another media. It isn't under question whether that falls within fair use; it simply does. With DRM, the providers actively try to keep you from doing a backup; and label anyone who attempts to cirumvent it a pirate.

@jlawson: As an entertainment law student and sibling to a successful musician I can assure you it's closer to 10 percent of RETAIL which used to be an agreed 16.99 for a single disc and 24.99 for a double CD set. Our rule of thumb around the house was that after Sony recouped production costs we'd see about $1 per sale. Concerts are good but merchandising, licensing, and quarterly publishing royalties make the world go 'round and the bank account refill itself no matter how many shopping trips you go on.

DRM is evil. Plain and simple.

Though if Apple ever does decide to shut down its DRM servers they'll probably attempt to play nice but it just won't work very well.

I'm just waiting on people to mass migrate over to Amazon after that happens.

@tanya.peacock:
DRM isn't Apple's idea. It's a concession they had to make to the RIAA to not face a constant barrage of lawsuits. That said, it's one of the better DRM setups out there, allowing you five licenses per download, and it's set up such that you can convert all DRM-protected AAC files to DRM-free MP3 files...provided you don't mind the loss of quality.

Currently, they're offering DRM-optional service, where the artists/studios can decide whether or not to offer their music DRM-free through iTunes.

@hypereric:
OH WUNNERFUL! Now FairUseWM 1.3 Fix 2 (which is supposed to work Vista/Zune) doesn't work on Vista!

And now I'm so frothing-at-the-mouth that I'm replying to myself!

"Attention, SLYSOFT, You're doing a hell of job in the DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray category. But your attention is now needed in the music category."

@nightsky: In your painter example, they don't have to -- the doctrine of first sale says so.

So I'm thinking you sign up for a all-you-can-eat service. download everything, then unlock it after they die. totally legit, right.

DRM is an out of control system in response to another out of control system, P2P.

Before anyone gets upset at me for saying that, really if cars could be copied instantly and distributed there wouldn't be a car industry.

The RIAA is absolutely wrong in their attempt to keep the system they're used to. They need to change their business model. It's particularly laughable that the content holders like the RIAA got their start by pirating music. I guess that they're trying to limit their future competition. Why do you need a music industry distribution system anymore? The whole model is outmoded.

Now the music industry doesn't want to hear that of course but they're late in their response. If they had developed DRM fifteen years ago, there would not have been a big uproar.

I'd like to see a plugin for iTunes which lets you shop the AmazonMP3 store instead of the iTunes Music Store. Anyone know of such a beast?

@sergio_e:
Even at the numbers you mentioned, that's really the point I was going after. Hard goods and concerts; you can't exactly pirate a t-shirt. (Well, you could press your own with copyrighted images you printed out, but that's not the issue at hand here). I was just really saying that the loss of CD sales isn't going to really hurt the artist all that much, when putting it aside where all the other money comes from. Merchandising!

Also, I'd like to throw out the point that if anything, music piracy helps the artist more than harms them. It's free publicity! I've found a ton of new bands from being able to listen them after they were "illegally" put on YouTube, or MySpace accounts, etc. That made me go out and buy a CD, so I could have a hard copy. That's money that I wouldn't have spent otherwise, if some dirty musician-raping renegade didn't upload a 3-minute track.

DRM is a failing system for a system that's doomed.

@Guizzy: "But you can extend their life indefinitely by copying them to another media. It isn't under question whether that falls within fair use; it simply does. With DRM, the providers actively try to keep you from doing a backup; and label anyone who attempts to cirumvent it a pirate."

Copying analog formats in the analog domain in the past doesn't extend their life indefinitely because there's degradation with each copy. Assuming you only make one analog copy to an open digital format, (WAV, AIFF, whatever) you only have the degradation of the initial transfer/conversion.

As long as you pay the price of one pass through analog, you can save any digital file with DRM in an open digital format in exactly the same way, with one stage of d/a-a/d degradation, just as you would save vintage analog formats in digital form.

The only difference is that DRM prevents exact digital formats, something that wasn't technically possible (and therefore actively prevented) with analog formats.

Also, as a practical matter, you'd need high quality conversion or your DRM-free backups will sound like poo for all of eternity.

@frigg: Of course the RIAA's Holy Grail is to stop up the a/d-d/a hole as well.

I have no interest in renting music. If I want to listen to music I don't own, then I'll do it for free by listening to the radio (or internet 'radio'). If I'm going to pay for it, then I'd better own something.

@jlawson: I agree with you. I just thought I'd donate some factual numbers as opposed to guesstimates. I know a lot of people who play the guessing game about what kind of money we bring in and the common assumption is that CD sales don't matter. I say it depends on the artist. Some don't tour like they would like to for various reasons. Some artists already have millions so relatively speaking, going platinum isn't going to change their lifestyle for the better, but a smaller artist who might have went gold if not for piracy could have really used all they could get because of the hard legal and marketing costs involved with producing a record that still have to be recouped. What you don't want to do is lose money on a record and have to pay a label back out of your merchandising which might not be that much because of the fact that you "didn't sell well". In fact, sales equal power. If my brother doesn't go platinum then promoters will negotiate lower on appearance and performance fees. There are certain places you want to be sales wise in order to even be able to negotiate tour terms in the first place. It's all a gamble and one that people don't want to make on an artist that can't produce the numbers. Consider "album sales" a barometer of sorts that dictates all other revenue streams even if it makes up a relatively small portion of overall revenue. Album sales actually put food on the table for a lot of people not just the artist and the CEO of the label.

Just to play Devil's Advocate here for a second *dons Nomex underwear* but were you under the impression that you were buying music? You didn't buy music! You bought a format (a really stupid format that had some arcane DRM associated with it, but nevertheless, a format).

And when the format player went out of business, you have no more right to complain than I do, because I can't find anybody making 8 track tape players anymore. That was another stupid format. Go ahead, laugh at me for being so dumb. And good luck getting your DRM protected files to play. Really.

The moral of the story is to go to Amazon or Wal-Mart or anyplace that's selling MP-3's and buy that format. Don't buy iTunes, don't buy Zune, buy something that is unlikely to disappear. Ever.

Perhaps it's just me, but Wally World and Amazon are two of the most annoying places to shop. At a real store, you might actually meet real people and get real service. Support your local record shop.

CD and DVD are too popular to die anytime soon. If you care about quality and near-universal compatibility, why wouldn't you buy a disc? Regift/resell the disc if it turns out that 75% of the tracks are crap; you're still ahead, and the artist gets paid.

I fail to see how buying MP3s is a "solution". The audio quality is poor (lossy). Sounds like CRAP on a real stereo. And if file size is your thing, MP3 isn't as efficient as MP4 (AAC) encoding. To me, it's easy and foolproof to rip the best files for the iPod and save the original disc for backup. Sure beats the good old days of mix tapes!

To be fair, Google actually refunded people.

@chaoslink:
Yeah, it's called your computer. How can people not know this yet? All you need to do to get an MP3 file into iTunes is use the Import function. Buy your inferior MP3 files wherever you want, import them into iTunes, and dump them to your poor, unfortunate iPod.

@SalParadise:
Or continue to buy real CDs and rip them to whatever digital format you want. Then you don't have to settle for the outdated MP3 format, and when AAC becomes outdated in its own turn, you can _upgrade_ all of your audio files to the next format. And if an elephant steps on your computer (heaven forfend), you can rerip the music to a new one.

Comment on Five Stores That Hosed Customers With DRM Another story of a digital store that hosed customers is that of Triton ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(content_delivery) ) "Triton was a digital delivery and digital rights management service created by Digital Interactive Streams, which abruptly went out of business in early October 2006. Triton was a new competitor in the rapidly growing market for electronic distribution of video games. Triton was being used to serve budget-oriented games from such publishers as Strategy First and Global Star, and was most known for distributing Prey." ... "In early October, 2006, owners of Prey who had purchased it via Triton began to complain about problems purchasing the game, activating it, and reaching customer service. Joe Siegler of 3DRealms, the publisher of Prey, managed to find out that Triton and Digital Interactive Streams had gone out of business suddenly and apparently without warning." Due to the publisher mailing out retail copies, everybody who had bought Prey was saved. However, those who bought any other game on the Triton service lost their games completely.