Thoughts, Raves & Outright Beatings

This morning’s Tech Dirt focused on the the British Phonographic Industry’s attempts to make the shut down of Russian music site AllofMP3.com a priority in the upcoming G8 discussions.

Let me repeat that:

This morning’s Tech Dirt focused on the the British Phonographic Industry’s attempts to make the shut down of Russian music site AllofMP3.com a priority in the upcoming G8 discussions.

I’m going to sit idly by right now while you all point and laugh.

Done?

Good.

Anyway, I’d totally diss BPI’s antics as well, if it weren’t for the discovery I made this morning, since AllofMP3.com was a passing fancy that I didn’t visit until I laughed at this article.

Let’s take, as an example, Thom Yorke’s new LP, “The Eraser”.

Here’s what the US ITunes store is charging for the album:

Here’s what AllofMP3.com is charging:

If I were a coked-up record exec, I’d be in a tizzy, myself.

Aside from the concept of artist compensation, no consideration is made by ANYONE purchasing these MP3s from “unauthorized” resources for salaries of persons who design the album artwork, the producers who worked on the album, the marketing department of the record company that’s providing the album, the off and online distributors of said CD, promoters of the concerts of the artist selling the CD, the mail rooms of said record companies handling the artist’s fan mail, the CD plants still pressing these things, the legal departments supposedly protecting the interests of the artist/record company releasing this product…along with supporting the drug habits of all the aforementioned cogs in the machinery, and so on and so forth.

You can go on about how “This guy’s so rich, he can afford to lose a few here and there…” “He recorded this thing on his laptop, ergo no recording costs involved, so why should I bother?”, “Why support an industry that treats it’s consumers like crap”, “Why pay for something that you can get for free”, ad nauseum. Fact of the matter is, it costs MONEY to make these things, people. Folks STILL book time in expensive, high-tech recording studios with super-proofed booths. Folks STILL pay for 4 color album art. Folks STILL pay high priced photographers to do publicity shots and album cover shots. Folks STILL pay through the nose to have super-duper guest star musicians, high class producers, and candy-eared engineers turning their shit into gold. And even on the internet, it STILL costs money to promote this stuff.

So, yes, there IS a reason why your CD prices are so high. Along with some of your MP3 albums from Itunes. Sites such as AllofMP3.com are not helping matters by providing the kind of prices they are providing. These albums apparently weren’t even authorized to be sold on this site. So a valid argument can be made that they truly are stealing music.

All that said…

Given the popularity of sites such as AllofMP3.com, a clue should be provided to the international recording industry as to what’s going through the minds of many a music consumer. And I’m not strictly talking about the price of commercially available music being too high, either.

A music file provided by Itunes is (sometimes poorly) encoded in 128 kbps, m4p/AAC-PROTECTED format. This means that, if you take the file as is, you can only play it on one computer, using a specific software (ITunes, of course), and if you wish to play these files off of your computer, you need to purchase something that is specifically designed to play these files…

uh, hello enforced IPOD market!!!

If you google for an alternative, you may be able to find an ITunes plugin for your Winamp, but it will shut off all of your other plugins. There are also programs that can rip m4p files to MP3. BUT you need a WAY older version of ITunes to make them work (Apple’s apparently been going into overdrive to close up the holes in their software technology).

Of course, you have the option of burning the songs to a CD, and re-encoding ‘em back into MP3s, which will degrade the file even further, but any back up is better than none, I suppose. What I do is play the m4p file, run audacity, pop the output from my 24 bit/96 khz soundcard into same soundcard’s input, record the song as a wave file, and save as an MP3 (or an ogg vorbis file). Same difference, but I’m not totally reliant on CD burners possibly screwing up.

You see where I’m going with this…I’ll continue, anyway.

Music files provided by AllofMP3.com are provided in 192 kbps, unprotected MP3 format. Not only does the higher encoding provide a better listening experience, but, your average mp3 player can take ‘em. And you can play them on all of your computers in your domicile. You can even play them at work! What a concept!

So, risking some “Duh” moments, here are some final consumer assumptions the BPI and the (US) RIAA should consider (which I’m sure they have, but anything to keep their lawyers happy, y’know):

1. People don’t like to be told what to do with their PURCHASED content.
2. People expect high-quality content for their money, not some poorly-encoded MP3 file that they can’t play anyplace else besides their home computer.
3. Not everyone can afford, or wishes to purchase, an Ipod - in any way, shape or form (I still don’t have one. Blah…).
4. Consumers can’t deal with not being trusted with content THEY purchased.
5. Kids coming of age during the internet revolution expect online content to be free. Finding examples to rap knuckles on in court is NOT going to change this. In fact, it’s going to embolden both providers and searchers of free content all the more.
6. Your average US consumer neither has the knowledge, the inclination, nor the time to go searching for ways to get around ITunes’ protection scheme. They’ll most likely go along and purchase an IPod (or a member of the IPod family) for playing their AAC-encoded tunes off their computer. However, if s/he can find some way to get the same music as on ITunes but in a higher quality file, and at a BETTER price, with the ability play these files elsewhere besides their home computer without jumping through hoops in order to do so, they WILL find one.

And you wonder why I haven’t been actively pursuing a recording contract …(wait, don’t answer that…)

Update: One of the nice commentators below linked this post to his forum, where it’s been put up for discussion. A poster there said that you CAN convert m4p files to MP3’s (circumventing the Apple-instilled DRM in the process) by downloading a program called MediaCoder. I installed, hoping to God I’d stand corrected. Alas, after three tries, I came to the sad realization MediaCoder works with every other codec algorithim BUT m4p.

Sorry, kiwibank, but that dog don’t hunt.

Sigh…

Update #2: To the Greek guy in the same forum: I think you missed my point.  I’m not advocating any sites to be shut down.  But whatevah…

D-Tags: Music, Musings, Politics