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Sell on iTunes with TuneCore
Have you ever considered selling your own music on iTunes? A service called TuneCore makes that possible. You pay a small charge to deliver your album to iTunes plus a yearly fee. If people start buying your tunes, you earn $0.70 per track. So let's say you create an album with 8 tracks. You pay $0.99 per track upload plus another $0.99 for the album listing, and $9.98 for the first year album fee. That works out to--scratches head--8 x $0.99 + 1 x $0.99 + $9.98 = $18.89 to upload and store that 8-track album. After the first year, you continue to pay $9.98 per year per album. That album would start earning money for you after the first 26-or-so sales, if I did the math right which is always questionable. So what does selling through iTunes get you? First of all, nearly anyone who doesn't use Linux can use iTunes to buy your tracks, so your product is pretty accessible. Second, I'm guessing that TuneCore takes care of a lot of the accounting issues, so you just upload and you're done until you start earning money--if you start earning money. Obviously, you'd have to take care of your own marketing, but this would make a great way to distribute material for non-profits like schools for audio-only material. This of course, assumes, that TuneCore ends up being reliable and trustworthy. TuneCore offers a complete FAQ of their service here.
Poll Results: Updating your iTunes Music
The results are in! When Apple announced that users will be able to upgrade some of their music to higher bitrate, DRM-free files for $0.30 each, we asked, will you be making the upgrade? Sixty four percent of the 3,951 readers who responded said, "Yes," and the remaining thirty six percent - 1,408 readers - said, "No." A number of you commented that you would have selected "Some" if it had been an option, so take that into consideration when viewing our highly unscientific results. Personally, I won't be upgrading, as I'm not an audiophile and don't feel restricted by Fairplay. C'est la vie.
TUAW Reader Feedback: DRM-free Fallout Predictions
The deal is signed. DRM is optional. iTunes is much less "crippled-by-design". So what will the EMI/Apple deal mean to iTunes in the long run? Here are my predictions. Feel free to chime in with your own in the comments. The 99-cent flat pricing model is dead. Once people get used to the two-tiered system, I expect backlist prices to drop--and new release prices to rise. Once EMI folds, the rest of the music industry will follow. If it makes money, it makes money. And if it makes more money than before, it kind of defeats the whole "Piracy is costing the music industry" argument. The 128 kbps track is on the way out. You can always downsample, but you can't upsample. It doesn't cost Apple all that much more to store and send better quality music. I see the lower quality tracks disappearing over time.
What those thirty cents buy you
Earlier today, Scott posted details of the new EMI upgrade pricing. It's going to cost you thirty cents to upgrade your music to the new higher-quality DRM-free tracks. So what do those thirty cents buy you? Here's a quick run down of the highlights. Music Quality. First and most obviously, you're buying better quality music. The new 256 kbps AAC tracks offer twice the bitrate of the current DRM'ed selections. More bits mean that the music will be more faithful to the original audio quality. Can your ears really tell the difference? It depends on the kind of listener you are. My sister buys high-end speakers and goes on about the audio experience. Me, I still listen to audio tapes I've ripped to iTunes. Interoperability. No DRM means that your music will play back on many more platforms, like the Zune. Of course if your media player doesn't support AAC, you're kind of out of luck unless you want to convert your music or buy a better player (which the lack of DRM makes possible). Interoperability also means you can better take advantage of fair use in other media like videos. Best of both worlds. For your thirty cent upgrade, you will presumably own both the original track you downloaded as well as the better quality larger track you upgraded to. If you own a small shuffle as well as a larger nano, iPhone or video iPod, you might be able to create separate syncs to take advantage of the space-versus-quality versions of your tracks. This means a lot of extra work and it means you will need to buy your music twice. At least until Apple discontinues its 99-cent DRM pricing model, which is a door that these new $1.29 tracks opens. Convenience. It's not exactly a secret that you've long been able to burn your iTunes purchases to CD and then rip them back without DRM. But for thirty cents, you can now skip the burn/rip step and save yourself a bit of time. If DRM-free music has an intrinsic value to you, perhaps those thirty cents isn't too high a price to pay to skip the work of doing it all by hand.
Starbucks launches record label
Building on the success of its iTunes-based "Hear Music" page, Starbucks has decided to launch its own record label. Hear Music will sign its own artists, and sell its recordings through Starbucks stores and iTunes. According to the AP, Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, says the company has focused on the success of its iTunes page. One can only presume that in addition to the standard RIAA/Simon Cowell approach[1] to signing musicians, Starbucks will also provide a small percentage of highly-decaffeinated Fair Trade Certified™ recordings, where lucky musicians will receive equitable royalties if ordered in Grande or Venti sizes. Because "Medium" and "Large" talents do not exist at Starbucks. [1] You have potential but frankly I was bored.[2] [2] I really felt your performance. You made it your own.[3] [3] Dawg. Dawg. Dawg.
Recording music with popcatcher
Cnet tracked down this fascinating Swedish gadget. The PopCatcher MD-601 allows you to capture ad-free music from over-the-air radio stations and save them as DRM-free MP3s. PopCatcher distinguishes music from speech and captures songs automatically from whichever station you've tuned to. It comes with its own MP3 player, but you certainly aren't tied to that player. The MP3 files are fully transportable. You can connect PopCatcher to a personal computer via its USB cable and use iTunes to load your new music library onto your iPod. If I'm reading the webpage correctly, PopCatcher costs about 1500 krona which equates to about US $200. It seems to be for sale exclusively in Scandinavia at this time although they're taking notification requests for other countries.
Apple founders film released as DRM-free download
TUAW reader Steve pointed us to this article about "In Search of Silicon Valley". It's a film about a trio (Steve O'Hear, Fleeta Siegel and Selwyn George) who travels from London to Silicon Valley, tracks down Apple pioneers Woz, Hertzfeld, Raskin, and Kawasaki as well as other net luminaries like Tim O'Reilly and Dan Kottke, and talks with them. The film takes place over the period of a month and the discussions range all over the place. You can read reviews at TechCrunch and Kirkville. After a limited DVD distribution, they've decided to release the film via Streamburst, a site that allows consumers to buy video without DRM. The download will set you back a very reasonable #3.99 (about $8 in US currency), though I'm not sure if the online version will include the DVD extras (about 30 more minutes of interviews on top of the 55 minute film). You can view the trailer at their storefront. Other Streamburst films include "Long Way Round", a TV series with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman that I've been meaning to watch for forever, and Race to Dakar about the 2006 Dakar Rally.
Microsoft DRM means no BitTorrent Media for OS X
BitTorrent is opening up a new site that's going to sell TV shows and movies in direct competition to iTunes. But... Engadget reveals that the new BitTorrent Entertainment Network plans to use Microsoft DRM to protect its TV shows and movies, making it a pretty good bet that OS X users will not be able to play purchased or rented media on their computers without using Windows. BitTorrent has not released much in the way of specifics as to which DRM flavor they'll be using, but I'm guessing it's something along the same lines as the DRM used by the new Walmart service. BitTorrent will offer movies from Fox, Paramount, Warner, and MGM.Update: Fixed the inline link from bittorent to bittorrent. Thanks everyone who pointed out the error.Update 2: From the site: "There are clients available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but purchased or rented content will only work on Windows at this time."Update 3: No portable media: "We do not permit transfer or download to portable devices such as iPods, Zunes, PlayStation Portables, or similar devices at this time."
Cory Doctorow on Steve's 'Thoughts on Music'
We all know that Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing fame, hates DRM with the red hot passion of a thousand suns. Most people aren't fans of DRM, but view it as a necessary evil in a world where it is very easy for one person to copy and distribute your 'product' without one red cent going into your pocket. Steve's open letter heard 'round the web was seen by some as a rallying cry to rid the world of DRM (audio only, I mean no one wants to see pirated copies of 'A Bug's Life' popping up everywhere), however, Mr. Doctorow makes a case (that's a Salon article, so you either need have a Salon membership, or sit through a short ad to read it) that Steve was merely posturing. Furthermore, Doctorow thinks the letter was a clever way to shift blame from Apple to the record labels and hide the fact that the iTunes/iPod combo is a 'roach motel'.Cory is a good writer (I have enjoyed a few of his novels greatly), however, I think he is really over selling the FUD here. Sure, FairPlay is lame. I hate DRM as much as the next guy (well, unless I am standing next to Cory that is) but FairPlay is ridiculously easy to get around, even without breaking the letter of the law. Simply burn an audio CD of your purchased iTunes tracks and like magic you can do whatever you want with that CD (though this only works if you burn an audio CD). You can put it in a Walkman, you can toss it out the window, you can make thousands of copies of it (from the CD, iTunes does limit you to 7 burns of a playlist with FairPlay, though you can get around that too since the limit is based on the order of the songs), or you can even re-import the music on the CD into any format you like (Ogg anyone?).That solves the iTunes Store lock in problem, because if you are really that passionate about moving from iTunes you'll figure this trick out. So we now know you can rid all of your iTunes audio purchases of DRM with a little time and effort but what about Cory's assertion that 'once you put music on your iPod, you can't get it off again without Apple's software?' While that is what Apple would like you to believe, once again this limitation is laughably easy to get around. There are a boatload of apps that will move stuff off of your iPod and onto your Mac (I'm a big fan of iPodRip) which are all able to function because the music folder on your iPod is simply hidden, and not really 'locked down'. Furthermore, if you're comfortable using some rudimentary Terminal commands you can even navigate to the music folder yourself and get at your music that way without spending a cent (though, I suppose in that case you would technically be using Apple's software in the form of OS X). Cory's point, even though it is obfuscated by a slight tint of overreaction, remains valid: DRM treats consumers like thieves and really serves as nothing more than a point of contention between those willing to buy their music legally and the companies that want to sell it. The only way that we will know for certain if Steve really meant what he wrote in that letter is to wait and see. Here's hoping that the future of the iTunes Store is DRM free.
Macrovision responds to Steve
Fred Amoroso, president and CEO of Macrovision, has posted a public response to Steve Job's recent open letter on DRM. Amoroso[1] argues that DRM is of net-benefit to the consumer. It allows consumers to rent intellectual property, such as video, software and games as well as music, without having to buy it and stimulates the creation of high-value entertainment because it protects the rights of the creators. The problem, he suggests, is that DRM is not interoperable and open. DRM systems (like FairPlay, which is not mentioned by name except later in the letter where Amoroso offers to take it over from Apple[2]) prevent portability between devices. Amoroso's statement is very much in line with the RIAA and Warner Music. The only new twist is the suggestion that companies like Apple force consumers into piracy by not opening up their DRM. He thinks piracy occurs because illegal content is more accessible and easier to use. As if people wouldn't pirate music if they could play iTunes purchases on a Zune. He proposes that abandoning DRM, moving say to unprotected MP3, will "doom" consumers to a more expensive "one size fits all" solution, a conclusion that I find hard to accept. Nothing says "interoperability" quite like a complete absence of DRM. [1] A name eerily like, but not quite an anagram of, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth of Apprentice fame. [2] In a statement that rings of "stand and deliver", Amaroso writes: "At Macrovision we are willing to lead this industry effort...[and will] assume responsibility for FairPlay as a part of our evolving DRM offering and enable it to interoperate across other DRMs, thus increasing consumer choice and driving commonality across devices."
Warner Music Group Head defends DRM
Edgar Bronfman Jr, chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group, thinks DRM is a good thing (though that article does get his name wrong). It protects intellectual property. He doesn't think, however, that DRM should limit listeners to a single device, instead he believes in "interoperability". In a speech in Barcelona, he suggested that the music industry could achieve interoperability without sacrificing rights management. Bronfman did not mention Apple or Jobs by name, but one suspects this is another vote for Apple licensing FairPlay, or for opening up the iPod to 3rd party DRM schemes. That puts WMG in line with the official RIAA stance. Of course, there's always DVD Jon, and his FairPlay-for-sale scheme.
SanDisk does up its own "Open Letter," drops the ball
If we didn't know any better, we'd accuse SanDisk of a bit of anti-Apple-ism right here. Sure, it's hard for Eli Harari, CEO of SanDisk, to come out in agreement with a competitor of his whose market domination makes his 2nd place standing look completely inconsequential, but there was really no need for SanDisk to shoot themselves in the foot here. See, while Steve Jobs laid out quite clearly the ridiculous nature of DRM for digital distribution, even if sidestepping the issue on FairPlay interoperability at the same time, Eli seems to be perfectly fine with the way things are in DRM land. "SanDisk is looking at the big picture, by creating solutions rather than conflict. Building an infrastructure to give consumers fair access to digital content while protecting content creators is vital for the long-term health of the music industry, as well as to our business and to our competitors. SanDisk stands committed to making this happen." SanDisk's open letter highlights the numerous music stores its players interoperate with, and poo-poos proprietary systems which is all well and good, even commendable, but lines like "the decision on using digital rights management (DRM) should rest with the music industry, not with device makers." don't really win them a lot of points with consumers. This all especially rings false since Mr. Harari seemed plenty miffed by the music industry's stance on DRM at his recent CES press conference, stating that he hoped the industry was coming around. So what's it going to be, Eli?[Thanks, Matt]
RIAA: Open up FairPlay to competitors
The RIAA doesn't want to drop DRM. It wants Apple to license FairPlay to competitors. In this Globe and Mail story, Mitch Bainwol, chief RIAA dude, says that licensing FairPlay to other manufacturers would allow iTunes purchases to be played on other devices. This move would, presumably, keep rampant piracy at bay by allowing more people to purchase at the iTunes store and play that music on their...Zune? Er, or something like that. The bottom line seems to be that the RIAA does not want to do away with digital rights restrictions and they still think we're all pirates. Arggggh, me hearties! Thanks everyone who pointed out the RIAA response.
RIAA misreads Jobs' open letter on DRM, thinks he's offering to license FairPlay
Steve Jobs' open letter about DRM and music yesterday definitely got a lot of tongues wagging, but there's one group that might want to re-read what he wrote. Bit Player (you gotta scroll down to the bottom of the post) reports that our old friends at the RIAA issued a response today lauding Apple's offer to license FairPlay as a "welcome breakthrough" that would be a "real victory for fans, artists and labels." There's only one problem: Jobs didn't offer to license FairPlay at all. In fact, he makes it pretty clear that he thinks that switching to an open model for DRM wouldn't work ("Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.") and that the best option is to eliminate DRM altogether. We already knew that the majors are totally in denial about this stuff, but to pretend that his letter (however motivated) was anything other than a broadside against DRM is silly.
France and Germany pile on the EU iTunes anti-DRM pressures
Apple doesn't seem to have given much weight to Norway's threats of repercussions for the continued iPod + iTunes + FairPlay lockdown, but even if the Norwegians decided to actually get nasty about it, Apple could always pull iPods from Norway shelves and take its business elsewhere. However, Apple might have to start paying attention now that other EU members are hopping aboard, with France and Germany leading the charge. Norway, which had originally set a June '06 date for an Apple response, which then got bumped to August, has a fresh September date for Apple to respond to, and the members of this new anti-DRM coalition are promising increased pressure as that date looms near. No telling how this will end up playing out, but we're sure Apple isn't going to give up its little cash-cow ecosystem without a fight. All of this is in addition to a law that went into effect in France last August which allows regulators to force Apple to open up the iPod and iTunes, but we haven't heard a peep out of that one so far.[Via Slashdot]
Apple planning on licensing FairPlay to accessory makers?
There's not a whole lot to go on here as far as confirmation or source, but the rumor is juicy, so we thought we'd pass it along anyways. Tech.co.uk is reporting that Apple is working up a licensing program for Made For iPod licensees that would allow manufacturers to build FairPlay decoding products. We've already seen semi-interoperable products, such as the EVA8000 that Netgear just recently announced, which can work with protected files off of a Windows machine, but that's a far cry from what a fully licensed FairPlay device could do, and we'd be surprised to see Apple open itself up to competition with its own streaming products -- the Airport Express and Apple TV. There's also the possibility that such functionality could allow device makers to include enhancements to their accessories such as album artwork or other track info built into the codec, but we'll have to wait and see what Apple has to say about this, if anything: they're purported be to be launching the program in the next couple of weeks.
DRM + iPhone = eeEEEeee-vil says NYT
I spent some of my lazy holiday Monday pondering an appropriate response to Randall Stross's article (not clearly billed as either news or opinion) in Sunday's New York Times entitled Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs, a fairly... odd interweaving of gripes about the 'lock-in' factor of the iTunes Store, starting with his contention that FairPlay is 'crippleware.' He's taking that term from the delightful Tucker vs. Apple lawsuit, which should give you a hint where he's coming from on this one.Stross (who also wrote a fine item in 2005 about why Sony didn't build the iPod) has some basic points: DRM bad; iTunes Store has DRM; look at Plays for Sure and all the Microsoft customers that got rogered; iPhone bad; eMusic and other unencumbered music sales online, good.While I have no real love for FairPlay, and I do worry that my iTunes purchases might not survive future device changes, I couldn't quite put my finger on the core bogosity of his thesis. As is often the case in the Mac-blogosphere, John Gruber got his opinion out of his brain with more speed and pith than I could muster: You can "pledge a lifetime commitment to the iPod" and never once come into contact with a FairPlay-protected song or video. If you don't like FairPlay's restrictions - and there are plenty of good reasons not to - then don't buy any, and rip your music from regular CDs.iTunes Store music and video locks you in. iPods and iPhones do not. Gruber is right, but I would say (after the needed pondering) that he doesn't go far enough. More after the break...
DVD Jon's is back to once again make FairPlay fair
As much as we'd like to hang on to the importance of PlaysForSure -- and its rather timely compromise -- at the end of the day, it's only about 10% of the digital music market. The other 90% goes to Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme, which is probably why over the years it's been such a massive target for such projects as Hymn, JHymn, PlayFair, PyMusique, myTunes and myFairTunes6, and the original FairPlay circumvention tool developed by DVD Jon et. al., QTFairUse, as well as FairKeys (which spawned the similar but not Jon-developed QTFairUse -- we missing any?). Now that Apple's latest iteration of iTunes is fairly wide open, however, DVD Jon is back in the game -- but this time he's looking at FairPlay for more commercial means. Like Navio and Real before it, Jon's new business, DoubleTwist Ventures, based in San Francisco, intends not to sell users means by which they can unlock their digital music library; instead, they intend to sell partners the ability to DRM their media with FairPlay, cutting Apple out of the media vending food chain. Not a new concept at all, but when Real tried it, Apple were quick to put the kibosh on their efforts, and the impending possibility of a lawsuit was enough to eventually get them to stop fighting the man. As far as we know, Navio has neither been taken to court, nor actually licensed its artificial FairPlay technology to any partners. But for someone as high profile as Jon Johansen to move to the Bay and start up a business that undermines Apple's digital media sales business right in their own back yard, well, let's just say we're hoping DoubleTwist set aside some cash for possible legal expenses.
FairPlay for sale, and not by Apple
You may know Jon Lech Johansen as 'DVD Jon,' a name he acquired after he wrote DeCSS, which unscrambles the content on DVDs to make copying possible. He isn't a fan of DRM, as you can imagine, and has set his sights on Apple in the past. He has reverse engineered a previous version ofFairPlay, Apple's propriety DRM that comes along (for free!) on any item purchased from the iTunes Store. The iPod is the only device that is officially capable of playing FairPlay DRM'ed files, and the iTunes Store is the only store that sells FairPlay tracks and movies.That is, until now. It seems that Jon wants to license his version of FairPlay to any company that might want to have their content play securely on an iPod. Now, he doesn't seem to think that this is illegal since he hasn't reverse engineered FairPlay. Instead, he created something new that acts just like it. I wonder what Apple legal will think of that.
FairPlay: coming to a classroom near you?
We haven't talked about iTunes U here in a while, but it's been on my mind lately, as I'm heading up my U's roll-out. It's a long, tortuous process--because of our internal bureaucracy, not Apple's--but, despite the fact I haven't been talking to our official reps (the extent of those conversations has been "we're still working out the details"), I have had the opportunity to sit down with some people from Apple and talk about the project. One of the topics of discussion was the direction of iTunes U 2.0 development. Apparently Apple has significantly increased the personnel dedicated to the project and has a number of enhancements planned. The person I was talking to couldn't tell me what, exactly, but he said that they were looking at community feature requests. Naturally, my next question was "well, what features have people requested?" The answers surprised me. Among the most requested features is on-site storage. This was a little bit of a shock, since one of the selling points for me was letting Apple handle the potentially multi-terabyte storage requirements and not worring about managing--not to mention funding--a SAN of that size myself. I can understand, though, that people want to keep control of their own information, and have on-site backups, etc. Closely following that was e-commerce capability. Again, a bit of a surprise. I wouldn't expect a free service to allow me to charge for access. on the other hand, I suspect that some professors would like to include materials that require royalty payment, so some vehicle for processing that will be required eventually, I suppose.The #1 request, though, completely floored me: DRM. In fact, it is so in-demand that it has apparently been the deal-breaker for the majority of universities that had been approached about iTunes U and refused. That revelation literally left me speechless. It's one thing to realize that not everyone is as rabidly anti-DRM as I am, but DRM in the classroom flies in the face of not only my general IP position, but everything I like to believe about academic freedom. I've heard of cases, of course, where universities have claimed faculty-developed course materials as work-for-hire and property of the university, but that's never been the case at any university I've been associated with and I've generally understood that those were fringe cases. The idea that a significant number of universities would refuse to participate in iTunes U because of a lack of DRM is just...staggering.Of course, that doesn't mean that FairPlay or any other DRM will find its way into iTunes U. But if Apple is dedicated to the project and the one of the biggest stumbling blocks seems to be DRM, well, you do the math.And the worst part? If FairPlay does show up it won't be Apple's fault, or even the RIAA's. The universities will have done it to themselves.Update: just wanted to clarify that second sentence a little. It's come to my attention that the original wording led a couple of people to jump to incorrect conclusions. You guys remember the bit about "assume," right?
