Meaningless personal info nobody cares about March 24, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: drm, mp3
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I’m re-organizing my music. Here’s what I’m noticing:
My favorite music artist of all time: Sting. This guy is mega talented. Writes music, writes lyrics, plays instruments, and sings very well. And he puts on a heck of a concert. I’ve got more of his music than anybody else’s.
My favorite music group of all time: U2. This are for rock bands what Sting is for solo artists. Incredible. Oddly enough, The Joshua Tree is the only thing of their’s I own. Except for my freebit Rattle And Hum HD-DVD, which I was blown away with. On any given night, I could pop that in and be entertained for a couple hours.
The music re-org has been brought on by Yahoo. I’m divorcing myself from my previously balleywhoo’d (<- gross slangulatory misspelling) Yahoo! Unlimited service. It just wasn’t unlimited enough. I’m sick of DRM.
Apparently I’m trying to listen from too many different computers and that’s not allowed. Far worse, some music I’ve purchased ‘outright’ is no longer available for listening. The artist and/or music label snatched it back.
Enough with DRM.
Hello, Amazon DRM-free music downloads.
The customer is always right, part II January 6, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: blu-ray, consumer electronics, drm, hd-dvd, mp3
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Its been a glorious week for consumer electronics. DRM is dead and the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war is over. Consumers win on both fronts.
In the case of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, consumers sat firmly on the sidelines until the industry was collectively ready to start selling players and movies. More movie studios and hardware makers simply picked a side, blu-ray. Thank you!
DRM has been a bit more frustrating. I can’t count how many times in the gym my mp3 player said “no license for playback”, requiring me to remember to sync the thing up with my laptop connected to the Yahoo Unlimited mothership. Ugh. Same goes for “buying” a DRM’d mp3 or wav somewhere and then attempting to play it on your computers (plural) of choice. Ugh.
At long last, the industry realized that while pirates will always pirate, you stand a good chance of turning otherwise good people into pirates if you make your product so #(%&’#$ frustrating to use legally. FINALLY, the recording industry finally sided with its paying customer base and quit using DRM. Thank you!
But Mr Digital Music Consumer, don’t get too cocky with DRM-free content. The stuff is still copyrighted and if you ship it around the internet, the RIAA will know. DRM-free digital music will still be watermarked with a code indicating who it was originally sold to. So if you distribute illegal copies, your essentially sending out red flags that indict yourself.
The customer is always right January 4, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: drm, mp3
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Take it to the bank – DRM is dead. The last major record label has begun selling DRM-free music in mp3 format.
Faced with free-falling music sales, the record industry has finally caved to consumer demand for simplified digital music. For now, Amazon is the most prolific DRM-free mp3 seller and others will soon rise. Yeah, iTunes it out there but they only sell stuff for iPods.
Pretty soon, everybody else in the world will be on a common platform, jubilant with broad compatibility, free from headaches over permissions to play songs on some players but not others, some computers but not others.
Amazon offering DRM-free music December 30, 2007
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: drm, mp3
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Amazon is offering tons of high quality (256 kbps) DRM-free mp3 downloads. This means you can play this stuff on any computer or any mp3 player with no hassle about copyright management, synchronization with some mother ship or other nonsense. My Yahoo Unlimited subscription is trembling.
I understand 3 of the 4 major record labels are on board. It looks like DRM is all but dead. Thank goodness.
