Browsing through my iTunes library yesterday, I realized something. I buy a lot of music. Using my peers and college friends as an example, I am one of the few people that actually purchases music anymore. It’s really an appalling concept these days – everyone’s a pirate. Right now you’re probably laughing at me, thinking something along the lines of “this guy’s a nut… paying for music, pshh.” Well, I’ll tell you why I pay for music.
College + RIAA
While living on a college campus, students must be aware that everything is heavily monitored and logged. The Georgia Tech Office of Information Technology would routinely send out warnings for copyright infringement when they discovered or outside agencies informed them of such acts. There is a policy along the lines of 3 strikes and you’re out. But those are for when the RIAA is feeling nice. Not so to my friend which we’ll name Joe for now. Freshman year (2004), the RIAA released their list of subpoenas. Surprisingly several Georgia Tech IP addresses were on this list. Everyone in my dorm hall was interested whose IPs these were so we went around the floor counting IPs (the IPs were sequential from room to room). Two rooms down from my IP was my neighbor Joe’s – he was in for a wake-up call. He was cited for 3 counts of copyright infringement. In the end he settled for something over $3,000. A hefty fine for 3 songs. This was back when a college to college p2p file-sharing network called i2hub was still running.
Needless to say, that hit a little too close to home for me. Pirating anything on a college network is risky business. Not only do you have the RIAA on the lookout, but there are campus officials staring at your packets everyday. On an unrelated note, a friend (maybe he’ll make an appearance in the comments) got his internet taken away for a month for a network offense. Maybe this is just the locked-down nature of the network at a technical school, but the point remains the same. Paying for music can keep me safe from such prosecution and is literally a small price to pay compared to possible legal/other fees if prosecuted. For example, my friend’s dad even offered to pay for all of his music to avoid legal trouble from pirating on campus.
Speaking of the RIAA, they had a campaign a while back where they would find popular downloads, replace them with corrupted files and then redistribute them. This made pirating any somewhat popular song near impossible.
iTunes Makes it So Easy
Excellent file-sharing applications like Acquisition and MyTunes make downloading a trivial task. But even great programs like that require great effort to find the best quality song or albums. Even if you find the entire album via a shady torrent site, it might not be fast, might contain malware or be password protected and make you go to a sketchy site to find the password. All of these make for great cases to purchase music through iTunes or other such applications/music stores. It also helps that iTunes is my all-in-one app; I purchase music from it, play and burn music with it.
Purchasing an album on iTunes is no harder than a quick search and then clicking a button to buy it. It automatically gets integrated into my library so there’s no drag-n-drop that you would have when downloading otherwise. iTunes is also like that impulse-buy aisle at the grocery store. If you see something you like in the music store, you can be listening to it the next minute. Even that’s hard to come buy with the best p2p program. There’s absolutely no guesswork with iTunes. However there are those times when you crave that really oddball song that not even iTunes has. You’re left to your own devices in those cases.
As of recently, iTunes has allayed the qualms of those that avoided music downloads since they offered no “extra” content like the little pamphlet in CDs that is generally the first thing people look at after purchasing a CD. More and more often you can find albums on iTunes that come with digitized versions of those archaic pamphlets and now push the envelope with a bonus music video for one of the singles on the album. Now there is actually incentive to go the digital purchase route rather than compact disc or piracy.
iTunes almost has this viral quality to it. Everywhere you go, people and companies are offering free iTunes songs downloads. You can technically download quite a few songs by taking up companies on these offers. Gap had a deal where if you try on a pair of jeans you get a free download. I tried on lots of jeans that weekend. The pen company BIC had a similar offer, but they were looking for survey info I believe. However their system had a bug in it and people in the know got away with hundreds of iTunes downloads. =) iTunes gift certificates are almost valid currency now. Things like this seem to be working as studies show that p2p users are buying more music now.
What about DRM’s you say? Yes, even I have fallen victim to that 5 authorizations per computer deal with iTunes. Being the tinkerer I am, I’m always destroying partitions here and there and reinstalling OS X. Of course iTunes treats that like a new computer and when you hit the 5 computer wall you’ve lost all of your paid-for music. That can get extremely annoying fast. There’s always the argument that you can burn your music and then rip it.. but is that realistic when you start talking about thousands of songs? No.
Last week Yahoo! made some noise when they announced that they wanted to distribute DRM-free music, priced slightly higher than iTunes. This is a step in the right direction, unlike what Georgia Tech and other college campuses are doing to slow-down the whole college piracy thing. Some universities are instituting a deal with Napster where students can download as much music as they want but once they graduate, the DRM’d songs will cease playing. That’s crap.
The reasons given in the article are not surprising. DRM prevents students from retaining songs after graduation when they must leave the service. Students want to own their music, not rent it. The services weren’t compatible with the iPods owned by 42% of students.
Source
Georgia Tech is (rumor has it) in works with Ruckus to provide cost free songs that are also DRM’d to Hades. If iTunes wasn’t so damned convenient, I could find myself and my roommates (who am I kidding, my roommates don’t pay for anything) purchasing CDs and sharing them in their pristine, DRM-free format.
Supporting the Artist
This is also a key reason for why I buy music. When faced with the decision to buy an album or not, my job is made a lot easier when I’m looking at smaller bands that really could use the money; bands like those featured on PureVolume.
So now it’s time for me to ask you. Do you buy music or acquire it through “other means”… and why. Hopefully most of the stuff above made sense, it’s more like a structured rant than anything else.
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I’ve purchased quite an amount of music off iTunes, but I still definitely prefer actually going to the music store and purchasing an album. It only costs about 5 dollars more than an album on iTunes, and it also gives you the great cover art, as well as a physical copy of the music (no DRM for me!).
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I also appreciate the physical quality of purchasing a CD. But walking across campus to the GT Barnes & Nobles isn’t as attractive as clicking a mouse… hehe.
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I have bought over 700 tracks from iTunes, and have now started to purchase all my music on CD’s. I like having the album there, it’s full quality, and it looks nice on my shelf ;)
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I don’t know many people who pay for music. It’s difficult to explain why paying for music is better than pirating it, and I think you explained it well ;).
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You know that if Georgia Tech signs a deal with Ruckus we will be all over that like ants at a picnic. Give it a few weeks and someone will have found a way to crack the DRM and copy it into a MP3 DRM-free format. iTunes is great but I still have issues paying a buck a song. Call me cheap but I like something tangible with my purchases.
In regards to the one month suspension..it was 3 months and all I said was ***** ***. OIT actually forgot they had suspended me. The kid deserved it..
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So in a sense, you’re not buying music “to support the artist” per se, but to ease your fears about getting in trouble with the RIAA. If that’s the case, what’s your stance on sites like allofmp3.com? Do you ever look into independent artists where you can buy music from them directly (and DRM-free)?
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Over 400 free songs. That’s what cheating the pen company survey thing got me.
By the way, I dugg this. Enjoy.
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Why_I_pay_for_music
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That’s what I forgot.. the supporting the artist stance. That actually does play a role in my purchasing of music. It makes my decision easier when considering purchasing albums from smaller bands like Taking Back Sunday.
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Paul Paul Paul. I read your article and all I see is “I buy music because I’m afraid to get caught by the RIAA.” If this is your reasoning, then you are allowing the RIAA’s terrorism to work. They can’t catch everybody, but make a big deal about the ones they do catch, so people will fear them.
I support you in your investments; but make sure you’re making purchases for the right reasons–which shouldn’t include avoiding a lawsuit.
And “Joe” kinda deserved it.
Hey everyone we have a special appearance by roommate #1 above.
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Paul, you know you can deauthorize computers even after you’ve killed the install. There is an option in the iTunes music store to deauthorize all your computers. Then you just have to go around and reauthorize all the computers you want to use.
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Now you tell me Ron… =)
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Reasons why I DO steal music:
1. It’s legal, at least here in Canada. Or should I say, not legal, but not illegal either…
2. Artists get very little back from CD purchases, you’re giving companies your money, not the artist. If you want to support an artist, go see them in concert. That’s where they make all of their money.
3. I’d rather not support the RIAA. The way they’re treating people is completely reprehensible and I hope they get whats coming for them. They’re not about music, or supporting artists, or anything that I would be interested in supporting. They’re interested in making money, lots of it, and would rather see others suffer in their pursuit of this goal.
As far as I’m concerned, the RIAA is contributing to the problem, not the solution.
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A very good argument towards the whole “to buy or not to buy” music issue, but it hasn’t solved the issue of pricing and limitation. US99c a track is still the standard at Apple I believe, and in most cases it is cheaper to still go to a store and buy it on a CD. Atleast from the CD you get better quality and without DRM.
About the whole RIAA issue, this is crap, how do they have permission to search your computer, or the files you have shared and then sue you? Firstly how do they know you computer wasn’t just hacked and used as a music server? How do they know exactly who is using the computer in the house? What do they achieve by sueing people who couldn’t afford to buy the music in the first place, other then for them to make more money, which in turns gives them more power to sue people.
I think pirating thrives because people don’t see the simple things. People want simple and easy to do. They don’t want to have to be tied to anything, and they don’t want to have to lost there freedom. I think this will continue until there is a true wireless audio system, were you pay a monthly fee for unlimited music, and then just stream it or buffer it on the move. That means that if you friedn is on the same service, you can send music to them legally, and it will be cheaper then paying a massive fee per song.
Microsoft has already seen this and are currently working on a device titled the Zune, which will be a portable wireless music device. There is also a device currently released called the Music Gremlin (http://www.unobtainable.info/2006/06/19/music-gremlin-first-true-wireless-dap/) . Both devices have the ability to update your playlist from a list of millions of song, while roaming around the place, and then to even share that music with other people on the service.
In the future I would suggest that is what is going to happen, and if companies like Apple don’t release a good wireless player they may end up getting left behind. As always there are issues with every technology, but as wireless networks get faster, with bigger ranges it becomes more logical to do it is way.
Sorry guys for the big fat writeup, and most of it probably didn’t make any sense.
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Well it’s something you normally don’t see in the iTunes Music Store. That button only appears in your account settings when you have five computer authorized. By the way, you can only use that feature once a year.
Now back to the topic on hand. I’ve slowly seen a trend with me that I’m starting to actually purchase software and movies. On top of it, I feel good about it. I’m not doing it just because I have to.
However, on the music front I haven’t purchased a CD in ages. Well, I should say a RIAA CD. I’ve bought tons of CDs from indie bands which I have seen at shows, but none from any of the major bands.
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Since about last November I buy most of my music on iTunes since its (1) simply very convenient and (2) it’s way cheaper than buying CDs if you’re not in the US. In Austria most of the albums cost around 16EUR compared to the 9.99EUR for an album on itunes. Since the DRM doesn’t keep me from making “hardcopies” of the songs I don’t have a problem with it. But what I don’t like about itunes is, that it’s not really international. From time to time I would really love to go to the Korean or Japanese music store and buy some music, but I can’t. Stupid.
I’ve actually never really considered really pirating music since I see music as nothing else than software … and actually I somewhen in the future I want to make a living of producing software ;-) And if people work, they deserve to get paid.
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Nice post and I can totally see where you’re coming from. Personally I won’t download from ITMS. I can just about live with the DRM but the low quality AAC files I cannot. ITMS would be wonderful if they offered a lossless download format such as Apple’s own ALE (which allows for DRM).
Until then I’ll be buying CD’s that sell for the same price here in the UK or using the mighty allofmp3 who do supply music in a lossless format. I also feel that by using ITMS we’re hastening the demise of the CD (which the RIAA would love) and relinquishing some of our rights as consumers.
While the convenience of ITMS is absolutely the way forward, low quality possibly self-destructing downloads aren’t.
It seems like the consensus is that people wouldn’t mind paying for music if it’s DRM-free and lossless. I can’t agree more.
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Take a step back and read this from Kevin Kelly before taking a stand:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2006/03/the_rise_and_fa.php
Now I will take a stand:
“Don’t buy music until RIAA changes it’s tune!!!”
DRM’d to Hades. Paul do you have a copyright on that phrase, if not I’d like to use it in an up and coming blog post I have been trying to hash out for ages. I thought I best check, you being so buddy buddy with people like the RIAA who knows what firestorm you could rain down on little ole me if I used it without permission.
On a serious note I competely agree with your article even though it has a acquiescing tone about it. I must say I live a few yards from a massive shopping complex – it is even a nice tree lined walk. There is a HMV, Virgin Mega Store, Tower Records and CD Bargin Bin shop. Still I find myself in need of a musical fix, like when you hear an advert on TV and you just gotta have that one song. So for singles the iTMS makes sense, I’m not gonna pay a 3/4 dollars for a single nowerdays just for the plastic bit – however for albums I like to have the whole package, although I did have to think about my last purchase of the chili peppers album since there was so much extra content online.
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Just a question for the unitiated; someone mentioned the de-authorization, will that help me not to have to deal with the 5 computers problem? I’m in the same class as other nerds out there, with a semi-regular reinstallation of windows every couple of months, and I’d like to avoid losing my music. Any ideas?
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Well, you’re right in saying that finding music on iTunes is easy. Searching for a song by “other means” can be very tiresome. But iTunes’ library, especially in stores other than the US Store, is far from complete and I wouldn’t buy a CD from the stores just for one or two songs.
I used to do just that, buying CDs just for those few songs. I remember rejoicing when greatest hits or compilation albums came out, those would save me quite a bit of cash. I’m not advocating piracy but in the era of digital downloads, the record companies are still trying to fleece us customers.
They’re limiting the options available to us and using the law to intimidate. That’s not what you do to paying customers. And very little money from online sales goes to the artistes, especially the lesser-known ones. But I guess one day the law of economics will work in our favour, I can foresee the day when they remove DRM and drop prices drastically, just like CDs did. They’re just trying to milk us dry while they can.
Having said all that, I do enjoy the iTunes experience immensely. I’ve discovered quite a few great songs by downloading their free singles of the week. The PDF digital booklets are a nice complement when you buy albums and I’m really digging the way digital album art is being integrated into many music apps on the Mac.
By the way Paul, I noticed you’ve got 187 purchased songs. That’s got to be a miniscule proportion of your total song count! I’m assuming all the other songs came from CDs :)
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By the way, you can email iTunes Music Store support to get your authorised computers count reset, I always email them saying my computer crashed and they reply saying they don’t normally reset the count but they’ll do it for me.
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@weisheng – that’s on this computer, I have a bit more in other folders from previous, dead partitions that I’ve managed to save.. which puts me at about 500 purchased songs. But that is a small portion compared to my other songs from CDs or what have you.
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I’ve bought a good deal of music, either on CD or via the iTMS. But as I don’t live in the US nor reside at a college campus I don’t have anyone bugging me about piracy, so often when I can’t find a certain artist on iTMS, am too lazy to visit a record store, too impatient to mail order or I just don’t have any money (usually the latter) I rent at my local BitTorrent.
BTW. Simply go to Purchased folder in iTunes, select all, then go to Advanced>Deauthorise Computer and you’re set for a reinstall!
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If you mainly buy music in iTunes to support the artist then I have bad news for you: artists make even less money from iTunes than from CDs and the like.
http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/14/weird-al-yankovic-says-digital-is-a-raw-deal-for-some-artists/
In my opinion, the best option would be downloading songs for free, and them sending money directly to the artists. Even $2 for an album would be more than they recieve from the label records. Of course this is not easy at all nowadays.
In iTunes there is a way to get past the 5 computer authorization issue. If you aren’t using a computer anymore you can deauthorize it. The idea is only 5 operating computers. Details at http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/musicstore/authorization/
My only iTunes complaint is there are a lot of artists not in there. In those times I go Amazon and buy the cd. If you aren’t with a major label the process to get in iTunes can take some time.
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@josh
In itunes goto the store, login to your account, and towards the bottom of the Apple Account Information page you should see a button to reset your machine count. If you have less than 5 machines authorized you will not see the button.
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Sorry; slight clairification: it’s at the bottom of the top box beneath my address and country info. The button is labelled “Deauthorize All”
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Why i don’t buy music
1. RIAA says i should
2. I wouldn’t know where to start
3. Most of my favourite bands have broken up so the money wouldn’t help them to make new records
4. I live in pirate heaven
5. According to the Piracy Calculator the music on my pc is worth $9319.41 and i’d rather buy a litre of milk for my little brother then one track.
6. Most of the music i have is lossless and i do admit it’s taken me at least a year day and night to get it at it’s present state (FLAC or more than 192kbps MP3 with the frequency cutoff (if any) at higher than 19KHz)
A Win-Win Solution:
http://www.emusic.com/
1. ~20cents/track
2. works in iTUNES (AND non-iTunes programs)
3. No need for backup-downloads available forever
4. No licensing restrictions-can make copies for all your friends
The (theoretical) catch(es):
1. The latest billboard hits not available (no Britney, Nellie, etc.), though many of iTunes tracks are available at emusic for 1/5 the price
2. Subscription service starting at 40tracks/month – use it or lose it. I worried about this a lot for about the first year. I don’t anymore.
BUT-this has led me to explore mind blowing music I would never even know existed-well worth the 20cents/track!!
(I supplement with iTunes which comprises ~5% of my collection)
Personally I like having a physical CD for a variety of reasons. For one the artist often earns more from my purchase than a comparable online order (just ask Weird Al). Secondly, I’ve had lots of problems playing CDRs of music in my car mainly because the player gets too hot (poorly designed Mazda Protege) for the cheap media I buy. Thirdly, I’m not limited to silly DRM restrictions – if I want I can play it at work, in the car or at home in one of three different music playback devices (including computers), and I’m not being told otherwise nor do I have to enable playback through some stupid website. Lastly, like yourself I reinstall fairly frequently so I’m not limited to only being able to do so X times before I have to buy another copy, which itself is a dumb restriction (sorry, you changed the oil too many times in your car, you have to buy a new one). What annoys me is family members saying “Damien can find it” when talking about music, when I repeatedly tell them that I don’t do that stuff. The only thing I’ll touch is unreleased live recordings of bands that don’t play anywhere near I live, and that’s only if they haven’t released them on CD already.
Interesting take on this subject Paul.
I take a pretty strong stance against the DRM “protected”, low-quality, artist-ripping-off emusic stores, myself. For various reasons. But aside from those – I use my Xbox 360 to access my music collection from my living room, and if I used anything with DRM I wouldn’t be able to do that.
I’ve got around 500 albums on my PC, most of which are ripped from my physical collection. But a good chunk have been downloaded. Since I stopped buying CDs about a year ago, I will definitely fork out the change to purchase a digital album if a) there’s no DRM b) it’s at least 192kbps and c) is no more than $12/US. I buy most of my digital music from DownloadPunk these days. I’m not sure what their deal is with paying out to artists, but judging by their about page, I think it’s probably decent.
(This comment will most definitely get caught up in your spam filter. Hopefully you find it.)
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Forgot one point – If I find myself at a show where I have downloaded music (without paying) from the band I’m there to see, I’ll just toss them whatever they’re charging for their album and walk away. I’ve recently started doing this and it feels good giving my cash directly to the band.
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If you want to know how much illegal file-sharing will cost look to the insurance market. Rumor has it that a Swedish firm will fully insure you against a suit by the RIAA (i.e. they’ll pay all your costs AND give you a free t-shirt). (Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/28/p2p_insurer_will_pay.html) While I can’t speak to the accuracy of this claim, the going rate is apparently about $19/year.
If the math is right and you download 20 songs or more each year, you might want to consider that it could cost you LESS (exected value) just to pirate the music.
(Depending on your risk-aversion, etc . . .blah blah blah.)
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I would never buy music from iTunes, but I am sympathetic to your wish to support artists. The iTMS is not the solution, as most artists will hardly see anything. Matt Brett’s give-it-straight-to-the-band idea is sound. But there’s still the porblem of the RIAA (or the BPI in the UK where I am). I have had a stab at figuring out a solution:
In short, remove copyright from all unrestricted formats (DRMed files can carry on with the silly charade if they like) and instead set up a filesharer’s license fee, proceeds to go directly to the composers and performers. The details are in an article I wrote at http://p2pnet.net/story/9435
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If you want to support the artist the best way buy their album. Itunes model screws them out of alot of money in royalties. I agree the piracy when caught will get you fined to the point where its not worth doing, but saying that Online Music downloading is better for artist is crazy. Online music downloading is good for the end-user where its convient and affordable because you can get songs ala carte.
I used my net savvy a few years ago to setup a WASTE network between me and my friends. Now we only share music (or whatever) between each other. It’s all encrypted (end to end), everybody knows everybody else on the network, no chance of getting “caught”, and frankly it’s probably not even illegal if we did, since they cannot possibly claim mass copyright infringement out of it.
As for “Supporting the Artist”, I have a better solution than buying music legally:
1. Copy the music from whatever source you like.
2. If you like the artist enough to support them, get online and find their fan club or something to that effect.
3. Look for a mailing address, or some other way to get a note to the band. I’ve always been able to find some way to do it.
4. Write a note saying that you downloaded their music but don’t like the labels and middle men getting all their well deserved profits.
5. Wrap it around a $10 bill, stick it in an envelope, mail it to the band.
That $10 is about quadruple what even the most well paid band in the world would get from the sale of a single album. Might want to mention that in your letter to the band as well.
In the future, perhaps artists will be able to sell to the customer directly and avoid the middle men. Then we won’t have to pay outrageous prices like $18 for a CD or $1 for a lossy, somewhat crappy sounding rendition of their work, while also only having about 5% of the money actually going to the artists.
The iTunes Music Store supports the labels and the existing system, therefore I do not purchase from it.
Has everybody forgotten the big elephant in the house? or whatever the saying you want to use
it’s allofmp3.com –> all legal :)
I always prefer to buy the CD. Altruistic artist recognition/payment issues aside: I can play full quality audio on my home stereo, rip mp3 at the quality level I choose, avoid DRM issues, etc. With the exception of new release CD’s that I absolutley “must” have, I am able to buy most of the CD’s I want used and in mint condition from Amazon or half.com for $5 – $10 shipped. Not instant gratification, but less than .99 cents per tune and no compromise in quality or flexibility.
I am all for supporting the artists but I think that now a days so many artists make cd’s with one single that will get radio play and the rest of it sucks. I am more than disappointed when I go to best buy and buy a cd and get in my car and skip around and realize that I only like one song. During college I d/l alot of music from kazaa and Morpehus type apps. I dont any more but when I only want one song I dont want to purchase the whole cd. Bare in mind I was in the dorms like 6 yrs ago, so there was no itunes store. Now enter itunes. Great I buy music and I can only listen to it on a computer with itunes or an ipod. If I buy the music I should be able to do what I please with it, short of reselling it. I know there are work arounds to moving itunes music but that is not what they intend you to do with it. I think Apple should make it easier to work with what I purchased. I know they have cornered a bit of a market with Ipod and ITunes but in the long term people will get turned off by this. Dont get me wrong I have an ipod but if I were to do it again, i wouldnt get one.
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Lots of comments here, didn’t read them all. If it’s not been said, buying RIAA music doesn’t help or support the artist. You know labels still charge vinyl breakage rates (normally it’s assumed 8-10% of vinyl album will break on shipping) to the artist for downloads? Google around for what an artist makes from an iTunes sale, it’s about a nickle. While there, google for the tale of TLC – best girl group album of all time and they were broke after the label took it’s cut (not even a chance for them to blow the money themselves like in the good old days of rock stars).
The only music I buy now I get straight from the artist. Most main stream stuff i’m not into anyway, and I already bought over 400 CD’s so I’m not paying for a format conversion to a lower quality than I have now.
At this point, buying music from the RIAA is hurting the artist by keeping them in power (and the power is used to shut down people who have a better way). You can get by without stealing too – you don’t *have* to buy every song that comes out.
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Problem with giving to the band directly is a) going to the show and b) not being able to know where to send the money.
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So every band should have PayPal on their site.
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Paul, I also attend GT and according to the incoming freshman class Ruckus is official. The people at FASET are telling the incoming freshmen that it is at least. Sadly, the DRMs for Ruckus can be hacked by an application called tunebite(or so I have heard). While Apple’s opinions on what constraints the DRM’s should have are not exactly convenient, I believe they are necessary with the way the music industry is working. Overall, I definitely agree with you on why paying for music is better. How many people actually got a subpeona from the RIAA in the 04 – 05 school year?
@Andy, I think 3 people in my dorm building and 10 or so on campus. I *think*. Or maybe it was just 5 on the entire campus.
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Why I don’t buy from iTunes:
iTunes forces a form of draconian DRM not unlike some of the college services that have popped up. iTMS songs are famous for the many stories of people being unable to de-authorize a computer and forced to re-purchase a song simply because of a hard drive failure – backups rendered useless.
I *DO* buy music. from eMusic.com and allofMP3.com. I know the artist won’t get royalties from allofMP3.com, but at least I can get the music in a format I can actually play (being on linux, AAC support is shoddy at best, and without iTunes, I have no means of playing DRMed music)! At least eMusic.com has it right and offers un-encumbered MP3s and pay the artists!
I say screw the RIAA and screw iTMS. Give me my music (in Ogg -q9-10 or FLAC) and let me play it how I want, when I want, where I want.
I too generally buy music. But CDs only, both because I like to have the physical CD with the notes and case, and because of the quality and DRM issues.
I do also have copied CDs, but those are a small percentage of my (rather large) collection. And are limited to two cases:
1. Discs I don’t like enough to actually buy. So it solves any moral problem I may have, because nobody lost a sale (Heh, Pareto-efficient copyright infringement?).
2. Discs which I can’t buy. Though I admit to being a bit flexible on the definition of “can’t” here. Being able to buy a used copy at a very high price on places like eBay doesn’t count. And the same for CDs only sold with some of those copy protection schemes that make them far less useful for me (I do want to keep a copy of my own CDs, which I was willing to purchase, on the HD as FLAC or high quality MP3 files. And to make a copy for the car since it’s not a safe environment for a purchased single-copy CD).
But basically, if nobody makes it extremely hard for it to get the music I want legally, I don’t at all mind paying and getting it legally.
I also try to prefer, when just browsing for style and not looking for specific artists (and when buying US music) indie labels and such instead of RIAA. They set a bad precedent for everyone. Statistically a lot of my CDs come through CDBaby, which do pay the artist more per-disc than usual.
But boycotting the RIAA completely is just silly. If I like the artist, there’s no need to punish them for making a bad label choice, and they should get compensated, even if only the paltry amount they get from the CD sale.
BTW, regarding the idea of sending the artists money directly in an envelope… That’s a big problem. Just think of all the tax hassles. The artists do have to report these few $ of cash as income… If an artist/band doesn’t set in place a more orderly procedure, they probably don’t want this. Yeah, it sounds funny and absurd, but it really isn’t, think about it.
Well, to be honest I actually don’t buy music and the reason is that the music I listen to is not from the US it’s Japanese. Also I’m not really into music these days because most of the music found today is bad quality. Besides the US music I like is like 20 or 30 years old and I prefer to own the CD to rip myself.
Anyways, I really did see the reason people find iTunes great. It can allow you to buy music online which isn’t a bad thing. But I have several reasons why I don’t like iTunes. 1) More features than I need i.e. its bloated. 2) I don’t like the fact that it can only play a few file formats. 3) I like my music in Vorbis Ogg format 4) You can’t buy music on iTunes in any format you want and it doesn’t offer lossless format that I can convert to something else. 5) I can’t play my music in another player if i wanted to (not really sure about this one) 6) iTunes doesn’t offer backups you know computers are not always stable and running smoothly 6) It uses too much processor resources on my laptop I like something small and unnoticable.
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D’oh I used 6 twice sorry. And one thing I forgot to say that I not tried the Mac version of iTunes just the Windows version. It probably runs better on a Mac but I don’t know.
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scottfrye, I understand that you can buy a lossless AAC version of some things from the iTMS, presumably at a premium. (Never browsed their catalogue, since you have to download their beast of a player to do it.) These could be converted to a hq compressed file in the format of your choice (OGG in your case) whatever the DRM, couldn’t they?
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Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever see DRMed lossless music without serious CD-burning restrictions (read: no burning whatsoever). Once you get into the lossless realm, burning/ripping to/from CD doesn’t cause any degradation like it does with lossy formats, so it would be trivial to strip the DRM from a lossless file at the cost of a CD-R (and maybe not even that if you want to get fancy with disk images and such).
So while I do think we might get incremental upgrades in quality from iTunes et al (a small bump to 192kbps), we won’t see lossless from them because lossless = DRM-free.
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Paul I am totally with you. I still buy my music, whether it’s used CD’s, or new stuff from emusic or itunes. In no other part of consumer life do I think it’s okay to distinguish between who gets what money and who I think should not get it, and what laws I think are okay to break and what I need to abide to, so I don’t do it with my media either. It also helps to have friends on Capitol records who do appreciate people buying their albums, even if we think they don’t get that much from their record company they seem to appreciate the sales.
Anyways I am glad you wrote this post.
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pirating is fun though…even when napster was big they just lowered the speeds of the ports through packet shaping. and to fight a suspension is rather easy, just get a new ip address. they are all dynamic anyways. it prolly does help i am very friendly with root and besides people shared their music folders. and pirating software is fun too.
and yes this is sarcasm at its worst…
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http://www.lala.com
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Paul, I’m not sure if anybody else noticed the language you used (I didn’t read all the many comments):
“Paying for music can keep me safe from such persecution and is literally a small price to pay compared to possible legal/other fees if persecuted.” (emphasis mine)
Did you mean prosecution and prosecuted? This is either an interesting slip of the metaphorical tongue or a well-placed, purposeful use of the terms which subtly reveals your true feelings about the RIAA.
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@Chris Spinks – thanks for the catch. Definitely nothing more than a spelling error, I can assure you. =)
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Martin Gordon, just confirmed that I will never use iTunes. Well, not until I get the option of converting my music to any file format that I want.
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I just wanted to chime in and agree with all of you about the RIAA. I used to buy CD’s all the time. I have over 300. I downloaded music for a while too. But now I don’t, Its not worth the risk. On the flip side, I don’t buy CD’s either. I am not supporting an organization like the RIAA which is simply trying to stop innovation to protect their old business model. I refuse to buy anything with DRM, for many reasons, most of which have already been listed here.
And a comment in response to C.Wess Daniels. You said:
“In no other part of consumer life do I think it’s okay to distinguish between who gets what money and who I think should not get it, and what laws I think are okay to break and what I need to abide to”
I have two points. One, its no different than a boycott. I am boycotting labels associated with the RIAA. Two, chosing what laws to break and so forth is simply civil disobedience. Its what formed the core of Women’s Suffrage and Civil Rights. I see this as no different. Honestly.
Another great music site that has flexible payments and DRM Free high quality music is magnatunes.com. I love them
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Nice argument – you’ve provided both the negative and positive aspects of piracy. The college smorgasboard of music is news to me, how exactly can they stop a song from playing based upon when you graduate. It would seem feasible to stop playback after say 4 years, but this makes little sense when you realize that some people may take more than 4 years to complete their degree. Even more confusing, is the situation of drop outs – they theoretically don’t finish university/college and does that mean they get to keep the music forever?
But back on topic, if you put the music on a device or external drive that has no access to the Internet (assuming it checks an online database of graduates) wouldn’t that beat the DRM graduate protection?
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John Q – there is some process where you need to reauthorize your songs every month to play them, something like that.
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I will say I have/will download music, but I also buy it. The way it works for me is:
Download > Do I really like it? Yes = Buy No = Scrap.
Now I think this is fair, I am still stealing yes, but I am supporting the artist where it’s due.
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I cannot believe you pay for music on the internet.The price they charge is outrageous for the quality you receive.I can get flac files and ape files for free from newsgroups and various p2p apps which are vastly superior to what you are paying for.the music industry continues to rip off its customers and artists alike as it has through its entire history.the copyright laws are a joke as well as being paid for by the record and movie industry. songs and movies from thirty forty and fifty years ago should be in public domain.
See, I am all for suporting the artists and all. But when you go to download music from these companies, they have all of this DRM crap. With Itunes, you cant go and put it on your IRiver, or Dell Jukebox. No, you have to go out and buy an ipod if you want your music to be portable $$. There are ways around that (exporting, importing different format). But when you are talking about doing that with a collection of over 2000 songs, that is just impossible. I am buying the music, I should be able to have the right to do whatever I want with it. I shouldnt be limited with a DRM. They have the DRM to stop from people transfering back and forth between peers. I can see how that helps piracy. I want to do whatever I want. I payed for it. But limiting on what portable players and such it can play on .. thats just total crap.
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I use the ITMS because it’s fast and by far the most convient way to get music if iTunes is your main music player. I go the p2p rout when something isn’t available in the US.
As a general rule of thumb, bands who are signed to record labels see very little or none of money from record sales themselves. However, these bands benefit from the SoundScan numbers generated by legal downloads. These are the numbers that booking agents live and die by in the big music scene. If your SoundScan sucks, you don’t get the big shows. And the big shows are where the band makes nearly all of their money.
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I didn’t read all the comments, but tried to skim them for relevant info. If georgia tech is going to offer some music service, how do we get login info for it?
To answer a few other questions: I think there were 24 people at GT that had their IP’s released, I only personally knew 2 or 3 that actually had to pay the RIAA. I think that the RIAA’s standard payoff fee is $3750 and I don’t think that depends on how many songs you have shared.
I just tried signing on to ruckus with my gatech email address. It says I get a free account, so I guess GT did make a deal with them. I haven’t played around with it yet, but if you have a gatech.edu email address you can supposedly get a free account.
Hi, I am happy I found this. I have been paying for my downloads. I do not want to risk being prosecuted for downloading music. Also I agree with supporting a band, some are just starting out, and I get a lot out of listening to music I love. I wasn’t sure if I was still legal even though I was paying for downloads. I use URGE and ITunes. I am coming accross songs that I buy that say they have no burn rights. Can anyone help me with this? I feel that at 99 cents a song, it is mine, as much as if I went to the store. I want to put them on my IPOD or make a mix for my car cd player. Thanks
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Provide me with the graduate drm protected song and I bet I can find a way to crack it..
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Hello Paul,
I write you from France with my “little” english !
Sorry for mistakes.
I buy music on Internet too.
Why do I buy music ?
Because I don’t steal my bread, I don’t steal my shoes, I don’t steal the electricity for my house, I don’t steal the gas for my car, so why do I would steal my music ?
It is not because music is not “physiquement palpable, comme du pain, mais virtuelle parce que numérique” that we can share it and steal it.
It is not my fault, it is the “societé de consommation” who wants that.
I’m a good guy, I respect the laws as often as possible (nobody is perfect !).
With pleasure to read you.
Pierre
I’m with you on this one. Just a few days ago I bought my first song on iTunes. Why have I waited this long? Simple. I’m a sound technician and what comes with that is a need for high quality. For a long time I would buy cds and just import them to iTunes so I could listen to them on my iPod. A few weeks ago I also realized I have way too many CDs and I need to cut down, so this started the iTunes movement for me. While yes, I have in my past, downloaded music illegaly, I now am part of the iTunes society. I am happy to pay for music because I listen to music all day long, it keeps me alive.
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A lot of the time, I do both. I download music, listen to it, and if I really like the band like the album, i’ll go out and buy it. Why waste my money buying a shitty album when it can easily be avoided? If more than approximately, $1.00 canadian ( i belive it is ) went to the artist, then yeah. I would be more concerned and more apt to perchace an album right off the bat. Someone made a comment about going to the band’s concerts, because that’s where they make they money… I agree. Go to a show. See them live. Much better than a CD or a ripped file, anyway.
I enjoyed reading this lovely little… editorial, if you will and all the comments to follow.
P.S. Taking Back Sunday IS a well known band and doing just fine despite pirating music.
So I’d like to apologize for my poor typing in my first comment. Sorry. Thank you.
Music is more than simply music for me. It’s life.
I have collected over 3,000 CDs and countless crates of vinyl.
Being both a musician who writes and performs music as well as being a music lover I appreciated this article to no end.
Danke!
However, my only quam with iTunes is the crappy 128kbps AAC file you get. I’d like it to be around 256 or perhaps lossless – I’d even pay an extra quarter for it. Once you have iTunes hooked up to a stereo with a real power amp and decent loudspeakers it sounds like a crappy Aiwa boombox.
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What if I can’t afford to buy music? Does that mean I should not listen to music?
Why can’t my friends lend me their music? Have you never ever borrowed a CD/tape from your friend/cousin?
Frankly the high prices are not justified. Discographies and entire albums on torrents are better than DRMed files.
http://www.jamendo.com and http://www.magnatune.com are also an option for discovering music.
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Pranav – I hope this will amuse you:
http://thepeer.blogspot.com/2006/01/thank-god-for-itunes.html
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i propose to establish a fund whereby donations are made to the artist every time one downloads a pirated track. music companies don’t make music, artists do, and if the case against piracy really revolves around the artists’ due, then lets give it to them directly.
Why I steal music?
Because you purchase these CD’s for $15 – $20 bucks and many of them are now copy protected that you can’t download the music from the cd you just purchased to itunes. Now why do I want to pay 99cents for songs that I already have?
In these instances, I do use http://www.mynofeemusic.com to get the music & movies I deserve!!!
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I’m among the converted as well.
About 6 months ago, I started buying all my music on iTunes. It’s easy, fast, and too good to be true. Finding related music is easy and fun to do.
iTunes is cheap(er than other competing CD sales programs) and there really is no good alternative to it.
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ru sure there is no pay??? if not cool
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I would rather buy a CD from a store, borrow a CD from a library or friend or download pirated music than download from a legit music site like the iTunes store. There’s a real fear factor for me connected to creating an account from a music download site. I feel like my privacy will somehow be violated. I never give away my real info on line or connect an actual name or email address to anyplace on line that asks for one and neither should you! If the likes of Microsoft or Apple aren’t trying to gain control of of your machine, Malware keylogging apps are. Opt for Linux as a first OS choice, Mac OSX as a 2nd and only resort to Windows as distant third if you plan on downloading anything from the net. Never give away any sensitive info and regularly clean out cookies, cache, and log files from your system. Believe me big Brother is certainly watching if you let him!
You pay for music because you have been brainwashed by the fascist marketing skills the RIAA uses on everyone. You believe everything everyone tells you on TV & fail to investigate the story or situation further; in other words, YOUR A DINOSAUR! Here are what they don’t want you to know:
1. P2P file sharing programs have existed since 1992. With that being said, it was good for entertainment industries.
2. In 2001, record sales dropped, but not because of P2P. They dropped because not as many singles were released that year. Taking away the singles & white labels resulted in albums with only 1 or 2 good songs (3 if your lucky). By subtracting singles, you are selling much less records & CDs. Do the Math: Albums – Singles = Less CDs in stores; Less CDs = Less Money for Labels.
3. iTunes never did want to make DRMs encryptions on their music. They never even wanted to charge users 99 cents for buying a song. Why? Because they knew less consumers would actually buy music. Sales dropped about 10% once they started chraging their users for downloading. The DRMs only made matters worse. DRMs made record sales dropped by 15% more. When you add the statistics up, the music has dropped 25% below the national average.
4. Only 2% of the profits Labels get from selling music goes to the artist/s. Sometimes they don’t give music to the artists! The majority of profit artists make are not from Labels, instead its from advertisements, merchandise, & concerts. So when you buy a song from iTunes, where all the money going? Surprisingly you’ll be surprise to find out NONE of it goes to the artist. The reality is when you buy a song, your paying the label. The Labels hardly give a dime to the artists, ever! Instead, they give that money to the RIAA which uses that money to sue innocent people, like single-moms, dead people, old ladies, & even 12 years olds. And as a result, the artists aren’t getting paid a dime. Even in some cases, the labels loss profit because of the RIAA’s tactics.
Its obvious Napster was actually increasing record sales. Little by little, it was making for the loss in selling singles. However, the RIAA had different plans? Why? Because music was being advertised in a way they were not used to. They are a traditional monopoly, meaning they want to sell music the traditional way. This means they want to go to your local record store & buy the music there instead of actually buying the album online or hears 2-3 songs by a artist who’s music your interested in buying. Its all a big scam & you fell for it!
What happened as a result of the RIAA’s monopolistic fascist marketing skills & bad mathematics:
1. DMCA was passed in 2003; record sales dropped much futher.
2. In 2006 – record sales fell 25% below the national average.
3. Canada legalized P2P file sharing programs; their sales increased by 20% after realizing the RIAA’s marketing skills were bad for business.
4. More & more consumers are starting to see that paying for music is a stupid idea. “What next? Will I have to pay just to download Adobe Flash Player? Or will I have to pay $1.00 everytime I open my browser?” <<– Do you see what the entertainment industry is planning? Also, More & more people are now downloading music & not paying a single dime because of they have realize that that the Labels don’t care for the consumers. They don’t even care about how consumers feel about DRMs & now look at them! They’re literally dying!
Now they are blaming Internet/Satellite radio for piracy, & it gets worse. They’re also planning on suing USB hard drive manufacteurs! Notice a pattern?:
First it was P2P,
Then it was Internet Radio,
Now its USB manufacteurs.
Its clear the RIAA blaming everyone but themselves for low record sales. If they succeed, Internet radio will not be as multicultural as it is now.
I took college economics, so you have to trust me on all the information I provided. A lot of people are switching to the P2P systems & are sticking with them, besides, you have more important things to spend your on. Period!
iTunes is now DRM-Free! this puts this discussion to the hole.
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