Yahoo! offering up an unrestricted $1.99 MP3 download

It's not like some sort of DRM floodgate has been unlocked, and now unrestricted files flow freely from the Yahoo! Music vaults, but one unrestricted MP3 file has made its way onto their site, so we're going to milk it for all its worth. The song, "A Public Affair" by Jessica Simpson, can be "personalized" by choosing your name before downloading, which gets yourself inserted into the lyrics. If you'd rather not have Jessica singing your name, you can at least sit on the sidelines with us and debate the ramifications of the release. Yahoo! Music's official blog discusses the future of unprotected MP3 releases, stating the premium price was for the custom content, and mulls over the possibility of a $1.09 price point for straight up MP3 files. They don't see much hope of getting the labels to go for it just yet, but with experiments like this it shows we at least have Yahoo! on our side trying to make the music market more of a free one.

[Via paidContent]

[Sam @ Jul 21st 2006 1:20AM]

Folks, This download service/purchase does not worrk when using a Mac. I tried this with Firefox and Safari anf Yahoo crapped out... The funny thing is that Yahoo Music says, '..use the latest Internet Explorer for Mac..' guys, there is NO Internet Explorer anymore.. get with it Yaohoo Music..

[ryan @ Jul 21st 2006 1:21AM]

the reason they let u do this isnt because they are trying to get over drm... its because nobody will pirate a song with some1 elses name in it. sorry for the cynicsm

[Jan Holm @ Jul 21st 2006 1:34AM]

I never have, and never will buy DRM protected music
online. Who are they fooling with DRM - yup the ones
that actually bought the darn thing. Pirates will find
a way no matter what. Fortunately the club music scene
is very cool - most sites offering unprotected, but
"watermarked" music. Traxsource, Beatport, Juno and
others. I actually bought a couple of wav's at juno.co.uk.

[tf @ Jul 21st 2006 1:36AM]

1. There are no ramifications.

2. Yahoo is not on your side. They just know better than being on MS's and can't get on Apple's and can't develop their own.

[hmurchison @ Jul 21st 2006 1:41AM]

Never had a problem with iTunes restrictions. If I want DRM free music I just burn to a CD and then re-rip. Have people actually gotten so lazy they will be twice as much for a little less inconvenience?

[tjash1991 @ Jul 21st 2006 1:52AM]

Haha, I tried this. Jessica doesnt actually say your name. A computer generated voice puts it in like 3 spots in the song.

I just wasted my 2.00 thinking Jessica Simpson would say my name in the song...

[Adam @ Jul 21st 2006 1:57AM]

Even though I'm rich, I'm still cheap. I think anything more than $.25 for a downloaded song is a bunch of bull honky. You have to download songs that don't sound as good as a CD and burn them yourself on your own discs. That takes time and effort. Paying $1.99 or even $1 per track is more expensive in terms of time and effort than buying CDs retail. The music industry is insane like http://ultrarealism.blogspot.com/ Now that's insane!

[Jan Holm @ Jul 21st 2006 2:00AM]

att hmurchison

Burn & Re-Rip. I really cant be bothered, not
because I'm lazy.

Life is short, I want mine to be quality. Burn
and Re-rip doesnt meet my idea of quality time.

[AC @ Jul 21st 2006 2:12AM]

lol.. so how much would you pay to un-DRM your music? sounds like a potential business idea.. hmm...

[Jan Holm @ Jul 21st 2006 2:33AM]

I will not pay more for non DRM compressed formats. 1-1.5$

I will pay 2-3 times more for non DRM uncompressed wav.
3-5$

[Tech^CF @ Jul 21st 2006 3:38AM]

Way to go Yahoo!

[Yori Guvanovich @ Jul 21st 2006 4:24AM]

Why would anyone in their right mind use Itunes? Sites like allofmp3.com charge about 1/10th the price for non-DRM, high bit rate music. The interface is easy, if not easier than other libraries. And if you are leary about Russian sites, then use a one-time use CC.

[grant @ Jul 21st 2006 4:58AM]

Wow, Jessica Simpson doesn't really look anything like Jessica Simpson anymore. Crazy.

[Jeff @ Jul 21st 2006 7:51AM]

"If I want DRM free music I just burn to a CD and then re-rip. Have people actually gotten so lazy they will be twice as much for a little less inconvenience?"

a) some of us actually care about sound quality. Burning and re-ripping means you are going through three different encoding conversions (once to make the AAC, once to make the CD, once to make the mp3). You lose quality at every step, and you're starting off with a fairly low-quality 128k AAC file to begin with.

b) some of us actually have principles. You apparently don't care about being anally raped by the DRM industry. Many of us do.

"Why would anyone in their right mind use Itunes? Sites like allofmp3.com charge about 1/10th the price for non-DRM, high bit rate music."

There is the pretty valid argument that would ask why anyone in their right mind would *pay* to pirate music.

I mean, yes, allofmp3.com is legal in Russia. That doesn't make it legal here, even just for us to use. (You can read copyright law if you want; just because something is legal to do in another country doesn't mean you can do it here.) So you may as well just download off bittorrent or emule or whatever. If you're using allofmp3, what exactly are you paying them for? To the RIAA, you're just as much a criminal as if you got that music for free.

That said, I use allofmp3.com when I just can't find something anywhere else. It's tough to find older music on file sharing nets.

I would be more inclined to buy music legally if it was all in mp3 format and I could choose a high bit rate using a good encoder like LAME (the industry could learn this bit from allofmp3, though honestly, in most cases allofmp3 is starting from a pre-encoded file so what you get is two generations removed).

But no way would I pay $1.99 or even $.99. Sorry, but raw music files are just not worth that much. When I pay $10 or $15 for an album, I do so because I'm getting a physical product. The data on that product is worth some fraction of that less to me; I would say probably about 20 cents per track.

So, long story short, if the industry starts selling mp3 files for all artists at 20 cents per track, I will start buying music legally.

[gbx.emu @ Jul 21st 2006 8:12AM]

How exactly is the name synthesized? She couldn't have sung / recorded all the word in the dictionary.

[treetrunk @ Jul 21st 2006 8:19AM]

Jeff - it's not as simple as that. You're correct that "just because something is legal to do in another country doesn't mean you can do it here", however, that doesn't make it automatically illegal either - something that to the best of my knowledge is yet to be tested in court. As far as I know there are no laws specific to downloading music over the internet from another country - the nearest it gets is the laws regarding importation of music on a "physical" medium such as CD. These laws allow the exception of private/personal use - though again, this has not been tested in court.

[Pacey @ Jul 21st 2006 8:19AM]

Jeff,

So you won't pay a dollar for a song becasue thats too expensive, but you will pay 15 dollars for a 5 cent piece of plastic with those songs on it? Using your math of 20 cents per song, there's maybe 2-3 dolars worth of 'materials' per CD. So today, I can buy the songs I want (usually only 2 or 3 an album) for less than half what the CD would cost me to buy. Now, not only do I have the song in my iPod, but I have the CD (which just cost me 4-5 times what my total on iTunes would have been) laying around my house taking up space and collecting dust.

And since when do digital files degrade when you convert them. The songs I got off iTunes and converted sound just as good as the originals. If you can really hear the difference, get do a doctor, you might just be the next lost son of Krypton.

I don't like DRM as much as the next person, but come on, there is a cost v. benifit thing here that 90% of the people will agree with. It's EXACTLY why the iTunes business model works so well. The general public complained to the record industry that $X was too much for a CD, especially when only 1 or 2 songs were worth it. Jobbs hit the nail right on the head because the percieved value of the song is worth more to the general public than having to deal with DRM.

In fact, I bet that if you sat outside the apple store and did a survey of everyone who walked out w/ a fresh new iPod, you'd find that maybe 20% of those people even know what DRM is.

The ONLY time I have run into an issue with the DRM was when I was setting up all my music on my network. You wanna know how dificult that was to solve? I put iTunes on my other PC's too... problem solved.

iTunes was really the first commercially successful way to legally get MP3 music off the web. Don't get upset w/ Apple because the RIAA doesn't want to cater to the consumer.

[Drew @ Jul 21st 2006 9:01AM]

...Or instead of burning and re-ripping the music to CDs, you could buy the CD at Circuit City for 9.99 and have all of the songs, full quality, at your fingertips to rip into any format for any player and not be locked into a player/format.

[Dman @ Jul 21st 2006 9:03AM]

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Don't like it? Don't buy it.

iTunes is a convenience for those that prefer not to venture to Best Buys and Walmart (or just sample new music). It is a simple, quick way to purchase music and ready to go for you iPod. No re-ripping, nothing.

Want high-quality, DRM-free music? You already know to just buy the damn CD and you probably do. iTunes isn't meant for you and thats fine because it's perfect for the millions out there that just care about the convenience.

I do believe there will be a point within a couple years, when mass-consumers hear 128kbps AAC files compared to higher-quality versions, it'll be like viewing VHS compared to DVD/HD and a difference will be apparent. On that note, does anyone regret buying VHS tapes? Would you regret AAC?

Pacey, the sound quality definitely diminishes by ripping and re-ripping, sorry you can't tell the difference.

[Nathan M @ Jul 21st 2006 9:17AM]

If it's so important that the music be unprotected, just buy it from iTunes and use Hymn to decrypt them.

http://www.hymn-project.org/

'Tis what I do. Though at the moment I don't have a DAP and I don't move my music about so much, so it doesn't much matter. I just wanted to be able to listen to it in other media players. xD

[John @ Jul 21st 2006 9:29AM]

This is a hilarious situation, seeing as how eMusic sells DRM-free MP3s for 25 cents each.

[Chris @ Jul 21st 2006 9:34AM]

My problem with DRM and iTunes has nothing to do with wanting free music so much as wanting to own my music when I buy it. DRM has done nothing but drive me away from buying music online, I'd still much rather buy a CD and rip it to mp3 or ogg and not be restricted from the way that I use the CD that I just bought. Mac people can keep their iTunes and they can take their smarmy punk of a TV spokesman with them.

[DG @ Jul 21st 2006 9:52AM]

I buy CDs on yourmusic.com for $6 apiece. Their selection isn't terrific, but I'm building a nice little jazz collection, and it just isn't worth it to buy one jazz track at a time for $.99.

I don't mind iTunes for pop song purchases. I'm not currently using a DAP (my iPod mini bit the dust and I don't feel like replacing it) and considering I'm on a Mac, I'm not actually overwhelmed by choices.

But really, I use nice headphones or a nice stereo to listen to my music. If you're using a lame computer setup to being with, who cares about the quality of the source file?

[Ryan Gardner @ Jul 21st 2006 9:52AM]

Hmm... I wonder if their business model will make Allofmp3.com scared... Oh wait - They are 1.99 for an entire album. Nevermind.

[pito189 @ Jul 21st 2006 10:13AM]

"...Or instead of burning and re-ripping the music to CDs, you could buy the CD at Circuit City for 9.99 and have all of the songs, full quality, at your fingertips to rip into any format for any player and not be locked into a player/format."

Yeah but that CD I just burned has 20 different songs on it, most not from the same artist let alone the same CD. So if I went to Circuit City I would be paying $199.99 for all those songs. So thats not really a cost effective idea.

[lankysob @ Jul 21st 2006 10:22AM]

...wouldn't be the first time Jessica Simpson screamed my name...

[yuppicide @ Jul 21st 2006 11:27AM]

That Jessica Simpson idea sounded cool at first until someone said it was computer generated.

I think they should offer a service that's only good for a limited time (say 24 hours) that she actually sings it and sings ANY name you want.

I'd rather have her singing yuppicide or maybe fuckface..

[evo @ Jul 21st 2006 12:08PM]

Pacey--

"And since when do digital files degrade when you convert them."

This is a well-known fact. All the popular encodings used for music (e.g. MP3, AAC, WM) are lossy, meaning they discard information in order to compress the file size. In general, the audible artifacts that are created when lossy encoding is too aggressive are quite obvious, especially in music with lots of high frequencies. Running an audio stream through multiple encodings/decodings increases the distortion because you're losing data at every step.

Now, granted, whether an individual cares about this distortion or not is another thing, but it does unquestionably exist. Some recordings fare better than others. I'm assuming that people listening to Jessica Simpson generally wouldn't care.

[Davix Baxtin @ Jul 21st 2006 12:55PM]

This is a bad deal. Period. Advice to the music industry.

1. Use better global asset management. Stop suing kids and dead people and go after producers of illegal content. You cannot compete with free you idiots.

2. Stop using DRM. Only paying consumers deal with it, pirates get the best deal...No DRM.

3. Embrace new business models. Not all of us like CDs.

4. Lower your prices. 1.99 for a track, let alone a .99 cents, is too much.

[??? @ Jul 21st 2006 4:53PM]

wow, i still don't believe that many people purchase music... my advice is to research how to use a torrent file.

why pay when high quality unprotected files are at your fingertips?

[Clint @ Jul 21st 2006 7:07PM]

I can't believe you people actually bought a Jessucka Simpson song and admitted it to the world! That's funnier than them trying to sell her crappy song with computer generated names! What a trip!

[Vezquex @ Jul 21st 2006 7:31PM]

29 comments and yet all the standard arguments are not present, so if I might:

Why don't you download illegally and mail the artist (or the studio) a check? You can pay them the 8 cents they were gonna get anyway, the ~$1 you would've paid Apple or Walmart or Yahoo, or whatever you feel they deserve.

[I,Robot @ Jul 23rd 2006 1:35AM]

Um... the song is free, because Jessica Simpson SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!! They KNOW this, so their try to boost her NO Talent, singing ass by GIVING away her crappy music.

I wouldn't give Jessica Simpson a Penny for her music, and I can't be bothered to steal it. Call me when she find some talent.

[Jeff Bridges @ Jul 25th 2006 2:49PM]

Jessica doesn't actually say my name, her back-up singers do. How dissapointing. I'd totally pay two bucks to hear Jessica singing my name - I can think of more than a few more, uhh, personal uses for that little piece of audio. But, alas, it's not Jessica. I'm crying in my laptop over here.

[blardy @ Aug 10th 2006 4:03AM]

No thanks yahoo, I already have emule.

[JuanJose Galvez @ Sep 14th 2007 10:17PM]

Talk about expensive! I perfer the much cheaper Russian sites, I wrote a post on it the subject on my blog http://juanjose.blackfalconsolutions.com/.
You can find the post here: http://juanjose.blackfalconsolutions.com/2007/09/14/very-cheap-and-legal-mp3-downloads/

[mp3lover @ Jul 28th 2008 2:00PM]

it;s too expensive, i buy mp3 here http://pageslipper.com