EMI Ditches DRM After All > A good start

A good start

Yep. Though $1.29 is a bit pricy, no DRM and better sound is probably worth an extra 30 cents. They should drop the price of the DRMed songs. EMI should also do this with other places like Napster, Yahoo Music, Urge and Rhapsody.

Once more companies find that people are willing to pay a bit extra for DRMless songs you'll see how fast the others drop it. Less face it, the people that are willing to buy music in the first place are probably the LEAST likely to pirate the stuff.

How could this work at Napster, etc.? They require DRM to make sure you pay each month. Otherwise I could sign up for one month, download every single song on there and then cancel my subscription and without DRM I would get to keep all those songs.
--
»web.mac.com/jwsmiths/

They could adopt eMusic's model. You get to download a
limited number of tracks per month for a flat rate fee.

The key I guess would be the # of tracks... That model favors someone who downloads songs very frequently (someone who likes to download the newest albums) rather than someone who likes a few particular bands or songs of a genre. Not saying I don't like a lot of modern bands, but I probably don't download enough songs consistently to save money via that approach.
--
»web.mac.com/jwsmiths/

reply to Count Zero

reply to Count Zero
I doubt that anyone would agree that less than eight songs a month would be "very frequently". That's what you'd get from iTunes for what eMusic charges for considerably more.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange.

reply to Count Zero

reply to Count Zero


Of course, you COULD just use cool edit or some such, play the song back and record it to the hard drive as a WAV. So long DRM, Hello all platforms.

I just use a virtual CD drive. "Burn" it to the CD, convert to MP3, delete CD file, rinse and repeat. Never even touches analog.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange.

reply to Jehu
I know. I was responding to an earlier post that suggested Napster should adopt a DRM-free program.
--
»web.mac.com/jwsmiths/

reply to RadioDoc
Still loses quality because the "virtual" CD -> MP3 step.
--
»web.mac.com/jwsmiths/

Nope.

How does it not? When you convert from AAC -> PCM on CD you don't lose any quality, but when you re-encode that PCM from the CD into an MP3 it DOES lose quality.
--
»web.mac.com/jwsmiths/

Depends on what you are using, and at what bitrate. AAC already does serious damage to the audio quality of the source material so it becomes a matter of degree. There is nothing stopping me from using any format I want. That's kind of the point of the exercise, right? I can even leave it as raw PCM.

Most people are so used to listening to crappy audio via iPods, etc., that they probably can't tell the difference anyway. Look at all the satellite radio fans who think it sounds great.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange.

Oh I agree - XM sounds like shit to me, about the only thing I can stand to listen to on it is the comedy channels and news (and even those aren't worth paying for IMHO). I can tell it doesn't have nearly the depth of even a 256kbps AAC I rip from a CD with iTunes.

And yes it is a matter of degrees. Seeing as how the original format was 128 or 256kbps AAC it isn't as clean as the original source, then translating it into MP3 results in another loss of quality. Of course if you use a higher bitrate MP3 it is a lower degree of loss if you aren't using great speakers or listening in a quiet environment (or just aren't a snob about sound quality) it all amounts to a hill of beans anyways.
--
»web.mac.com/jwsmiths/

Yep. Most listeners under about 30 wouldn't know decent sounding audio these days, which is why iPods, with their puny earbuds, sell like hotcakes, right along with flimsy plastic-case speakers and "home theater" systems which anyone who truly knows audio would laugh at.

But this about ditching DRM without the blessing of anyone, and it works just fine the way I described. The higher bitrate is just the come-on for the no-DRM pitch.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange.

reply to RadioDoc
The iPod is just a MP3 player, depending on the quality of the content is the amount of quality you will get, same applies to any other player unless for some reason its audio out is simply shit.

I think it more applies to cellphones with compressed 3gp videos and they play them extremely loud watching a few blocks of pixels saying "that's my friend!" "There is tina HEY!".

Also the source files quality is what matters, if you burn it on to a virtual CD aka ISO it will simply convert the audio to a uncompressed format/AIFF from there you simply transfer that over and either choose to convert from the original source which in most cases would make perfect sense if the original source was never encoded and is simply a raw and will make no sense if we are talking about a compressed source.
--
The only limits we have are the one's we set ourselves.

reply to RadioDoc

Oh I certainly agree about the quality issue. Problem is that by the time it's put on iTunes, et. al. it's been compressed and corrupted beyond anything that could be considered "hi fi". Pulling it out to raw PCM basically gives you what's left of the corpse.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange.