iTunes Music Store DRM Summary

[arn]

Originally posted by suneun
Does the computer have to be connected to the internet to have iTunes 4 authorize the song? If not (and it seems more likely that it has to), then how does it confirm the password? Maybe each song has a degenerate form of your password against which it checks a crunched form of your password? But that really doesn't sound very Secure.

My thoughts:

[probably wrong... after further consideration, my system wouldn't work ]

Here's a possible way. your username/password and "computer id" is encoded into an AAC file. It can hold 3 computer id's. When iTunes authorizes a song, it incorporates your computer it and the above into it in an encoded form. This is relatively secure. Unix passwords worked like this for years.

This can be confirmedif the AAC files change when you authorize or deauthorize a song. The advantage of keeping the computer id into the AAC file is that you don't need to be connected to the internet to authorize or deauthorize.

I don't know if that is the case

If you have to be connected to the internet, then Apple has to authorize you online... not sure if this is the case. The above is just one scenario.

Why (technically) can't these aac files be played on non-iTunes/apple-branded-programs?

DRM is only secure as the software that plays it. Remember, the iPod doesn't care that your music is "Purchased". So if it is encoded, only "trusted" devices can decode them - much like DVD's CSS.

In order to create software/hardware to play AAC files, you need to buy a license from the MPEG4 organization. I presume, part of the official spec is strictly abiding by the DRM.

These are just my brainstorming on the topic... not any known info.

arn

 

[arn]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly
" Unlimited CD Burning of Protected AACs"

Does this mean conventional audio CDs are the result, or AAC CDs? That is, can they be played in an ordinary CD player, like in a car?

yes

 

[cbond]

Are the files from applemusic.com encoded with your information?

One thing that has me a bit scared for Apple's future is whether or not Apple's "iMusic" service encodes on the music file you have paid for your name, street address, how you paid for it and so on.

I can just imagine that someone is paying for all the titles and then just serving them up on a peer-to-peer networking service. And then, the record execs would be against Apple once again...

But, if someone's name is all over said file, then it would be insane to get upset at Apple. If someone offers up that file they paid 99 cents for, the record execs should be pissed at that user, as they track him or her down.

After all, that is what this "iMusic" service is supposed to eliminate. The unauthorized practice of sharing such files. Maybe even finding a legal way to take those down that did stuff like ripping mp3 files from a cd and posting it online years ago...

Heck, I must admit, doing business like this, though, is brilliant. All I can say is "Go Apple!" And I also wonder what Apple's direct competitors (Dell, Microsoft) are thinking...

 

[Wonder Boy]

I have NO problems with any of this!

 

[suneun]

Why? You can use iTunes 4 without even messing with the Music Store stuff. It works just like iTunes 3 did and even better.

Well I had a variety of questions. Whether or not encoding from audio to mp3 was still available, whether or not encoding to aac would incorporate drm. Whether or not it would futz with current preferences, tags, or anything to do with mp3's i currently have. Most of my questions have been answered (except the ones I posted in the previous post).

But mainly, it might be buggy. It's quite an upgrade with a huge number of additions. The only new thing that I'd use in the immediate future is the preview-songs. But I know that the songs I want to preview are unlikely to be there (currently I want to preview songs by Distain and Wolfsheim). So, I'm willing to wait until the thorough reviews come in.

Aside: I think the BEST and most AWESOME thing about the MusicStore will (cross fingers) be the addition of independent artists. These musicians will be able to get their music to reach the masses without selling their soul (except to Apple, which isn't nearly as bad.).

 

[evoluzione]

in all honesty, i can't think of any negative points to this new service/file format/etc etc. it builds on the already awesome iTunes, and is by far the best solution for everyone. downloading music is obviously here to stay, but, it's nowhere near as good as it could/should be, apple's new service makes it a darn sight better. limewire sucks, the quality and effort of searching and downloading is way too much for me to want to even think about bothering with it. the music store is so easy and painless, and damn good value (for the most part) too. my only worry is that the record companies don't start making just the full albums available, but keep a top selection of individual songs too.

arn has pre-emptively answered a lot of questions here (thanks very much) and every question i have thought of, has had the answer i was hoping for. for the average user, the copy protection (or DRM) is going to be pretty much invisible. it's designed to deter the illegal sharing on a large scale. "they" realise that friends lend their cd's to each other etc, and this is still possible with this new service (in a slightly different way mind). it also has the potential for selling music on a much more grandiose scale than just cds. with all the server sharing that has gone on with just this site today, people are going to find music that they really like, that they may never have noticed before. that is going to increase sales big time.

it's quite possibly the revolution we've been wondering about, first it was vinyl, then cassettes, then cds (which were never able to work with oil and honey and stuff all over them like was originally advertised ) and now, downloadable music, done right.

i'm dead happy, my credit card may not be, but i am

 

[tYNS]

iMusic Quality is questionable

Okay, I have done a lot of comparing of sound quality of CD's I actually own with the ones on Apple Music. Namely songs like Stone Temple Pilots - Big Bang Baby...

I don't know.. the Apple Music AAC file STILL HAS that crappy high end compression sound on the guitars.. I for one have doubts with the quality of the Songs being compressed on Apple Music. This is not acceptable.

Doubts = I am not going to buy online music. I still am going to purchase music at the stores. I prefer the CD and cover art. Being in Canada I don't have access to the service yet to buy. But judging from the prices of the songs and cd's I can get half of the CD's on Apple Music at my local CD store for considerably cheaper.

Apple Music service is a good start, but they REALLY need to pay attention to the quality of the compressed music..

When I hear that word compressed, I still get that bad vision in my mind of degeneration of quality (which it is).

I really do not want to pay top dollar for the risk of sub standard quality.

 

[tYNS]

just to add

In addition..

The song in question (Stone Temple Pilots) Big Bang Baby. I have done futher tests. I ran my purchased CD through the AAC compressor in iTunes. It sounds EXCELLENT when I compress my CD to my iTunes library with AAC at 128Kb/s. Literally CD quality. I must admit indistiguishable

Just the version on Apple Music is terrible! it sounds like a degenerated version. listen to it.. you can here the typical high frequency guitar compression wavers. TERRIBLE.. my ear picks this up instantly and it annoys me.

Apple (or the record company) needs to REALLY monitor this.

 

[cbond]

Re: iMusic Quality is questionable

Originally posted by tYNS
When I hear that word compressed, I still get that bad vision in my mind of degeneration of quality (which it is).

On the other hand... the proliferation of artists and the addiction of hearing something new or different for "free" is worth the weight of 99 pennies in gold. Or maybe it's just me.

I mean, come on! I'm serious, in a way! Anyone who says that their music library cannot be improved with one more song or cd is lying! I seriously think there is at least one single or cd that someone has (or had) an eye on sometime.

This is something that can broaden horizons! And even if the preview audio sounds off (the guitar chords or whatever) from compression, jot down the album and artist.

And then, look around on Google with the information. Create an image in your mind from the reviews. Would you like this music, if you had the CD?

Someday, we will point to this point in history and say "This is the day the music didn't die. It grew." Okay, it's progressive and maybe it will be a few days (or weeks) before we see a change. But sometime the recording execs say "Thank you" to Apple and where Apple says "Thank you" to all of the fanatical users out there... It may be subtle, but it will be there.

As for me, I would say, "No sweat. All in a day's work."

 

[mania]

Re: just to add

Originally posted by tYNS
In addition..

Just the version on Apple Music is terrible! it sounds like a degenerated version. listen to it.. you can here the typical high frequency guitar compression wavers. TERRIBLE.. my ear picks this up instantly and it annoys me.

Did you actually buy and download it or just play the streaming over the net? Of course it will sound worse if the latter.

 

[ozubahn]

The idea of authorizing a song on three machines is interesting. Assuming Arn is right, and all the information is stored in the song file itself, then you should just be able to copy an ACC file that is authorized on one machine. You now have two independent files that don't know about each other, and can each be authorized on two additional machines, for five total authorized computers. And of course, you can copy it n times instead of once. This obvious workaround leads me to suspect that Apple must be authorizing each machine with a central server, to keep the total at three for any given original file. I hope I'm wrong. Does anyone know for sure?

 

[arn]

Originally posted by ozubahn
This obvious workaround leads me to suspect that Apple must be authorizing each machine with a central server, to keep the total at three for any given original file. I hope I'm wrong. Does anyone know for sure?

true... I'm probably wrong... I was just thinking of it as I wrote.

Apple does keep track on central server... so you may have to be connected to the net.

arn

 

[ozubahn]

Originally posted by arn

Apple does keep track on central server... so you may have to be connected to the net.

Ahh, too bad. I was hoping that I could just create a clean archive copy of any songs I buy (authorized on at most one machine) to fall back on in an emergency. I am worried about what happens if my mac dies or is stolen (while the files are authorized). Bam, just like that all my music has one strike against it. And if the critical key that identifies the machine is nothing more than a file on disk that iTunes generates, then even a disk crash could be enough. Of course, if that were the case, then the key file itself could be copied freely. This suggests that it involves a hash of hardware serial numbers and so forth, and all of a sudden we arrive at the WinXP activation madness... Hmm. Best wait and see on this one.

 

[Kamu-San]

Suddenly a realisation dawned. If this works with music, then the next thing we can expect is on-line film buying! Not DVD-quality & encoding, but DivX.

I'm so happy that I have broadband ;-) But even then it will take days to dl a DVD...

 

[Dave Marsh]

Authorization/Deauthorization

After thinking about this some more and trashing a few rewrites, couldn't it work something like this:

When you first purchase a song, the Apple Music server creates an encrypted authorization key and downloads it to your computer. This is the first part of the DRM process. This key includes both your Apple ID and something unique about the Mac, such as a serial number embedded in firmware somewhere in your Mac. Next, the song itself has some special AAC-DRM code that assures the song will ONLY play in iTunes or on the iPod.

Then, when you want to play the song, iTunes first checks the song for DRM encoding. If it finds it, it then searches for the Apple Music authorization key. If it finds one, it then decrypts the key and assures the unique Mac identifier (e.g., the Mac's serial number) found matches that of the Mac containing it. If it does, it plays the song. If not, it pops up a dialog box to ask the user to get an authorization code before proceeding.

This approach would work for streaming the AAC-DRM encoded song as well. Since the Apple central Music server keeps track of the number of authorized Macs for that user ID, and since you must deauthorize a Mac from within iTunes on the Mac you no longer want to use to play these songs, you're prevented from simply copying keys to additional Macs...they're deleted when the Mac is deauthorized. If something happens to your Mac, Apple's going to have to give its Customer Support people some authority to correct your account, or you'll lose one authorization...

The only other loose end I see here appears to involve multiple users. MacOS X is a multiple user system. So, if the user logged in starts up iTunes and purchases a song, the Apple Music server downloads the encrypted key for that user and buries it somewhere in that user's Library directory. When another logged in user does the same, another encrypted key gets buried in that user's Library directory. If the songs purchased include the local user's ID, you could potentially purchase a song twice and be able to stream the song twice concurrently to four other Macs (since the source Mac counts as one of three authorized). This might actually be possible if MacOS 10.3 Panther permits multiple concurrent remote logins to the source Mac.

My eyes are beginning to glaze over. It may just be that Apple's approach just creates ONE key per Mac to avoid this complication, so that any user logged in can play the songs. If that's the case, we need to assure family members don't purchase multiple copies of songs for that Mac. Perhaps the Apple Music server will have some controls to prevent this from happening...

I guess we'll have to wait to see how this works from users posting their experiences on these forums.

 

[dekator]

Toast ?

Does anybody know whether Toast can burn AAC files to a standard audio disk, as of now ?

Once AAC gains greater currency, it would be a shame if iTunes couldn't play it.

 

[quasan]

iTunes will only play AAC files that are created by iTunes or downloaded from the Music Store. "Other AAC files that you find on the Internet or elsewhere will not play in iTunes.

that's not right

I encoded several aac's on my pc, copied them to my ibook and itunes playes them with no probs.

 

[foniks2020]

Re: Re: just to add

Originally posted by mania
Did you actually buy and download it or just play the streaming over the net? Of course it will sound worse if the latter.

Sounds to me like the guy CAN'T buy from the store and so must have listened to the PREVIEW.

Not to be rude but you can't judge a book by it's cover, netiher can you judge the song or it's compression quality by a 15 second-howeverlong preview. Those are probably encoded at an extremely low, relative, quality for streaming... apparently so you can verify that what you are buying is the song you heard on the radio earlier that day...

I think 128 AAC is hi-fi enough for 99% of use. If you need to eek out that extra 1%, ie: people are paying you for it... then you need a different solution.

128 AAC should be equivalent to 192 or higher MP3 which is the standard hi-fi for that format.

I've downloaded one album and a single and am quite happy with the service. Several songs timed out during download and I just went in a checked for 'purchased music' and they all resumed perfectly, no probs. I use wireless at home so some timeouts occur when I move around the house while downloading large amounts of data.

Haven't tried any burns yet but it sounds like I'll be able to play them in the car just fine.

I'm just looking forward to an expanded catalog... Jobs did us good. Thank you Steve.

This is in spite of a long standing, since 1999, personal opinion that genre catalog subscription services were the way to go.. I wrote a letter to RIAA long ago describing such a service, where you pay $10 per month for unlimited listening of a genre but no burning, etc. just listen where ever you are.

Apple has iPod so that would not work to sell hardware, understandable. Also it would have been hard to get a large catalog made available over multiple labels....

anyways it may not be the right timing but still it is a good model, gauranteed payments whether people listen or not while they get instant access to the latest music, streaming, from where ever they happen to be, as well as all the oldies they listen to randomly. It's like a cell phone subscription or cable modem... instant on gauranteed monthly payment.

rant finished... good times, Apple, good times.

 

[Perceptes]

This new service is a good attempt, but to be totally honest, I'm still going to continue using MP3 as I have. The fact that there are any limitations on music that you download makes this service not worth it to me. And even if AAC is better quality, I won't rip my own CD's to it until it becomes the common format between Macs and PC's. It's not going to take off if only iTunes and iPod can play them, even if both products exist for Windows.

 

[Kamu-San]

Perceptes, limitations do apply on MP3s. You're only allowed to rip your own CDs and use the resulting MP3s for yourself. You're *not* allowed to trade them with others.

Even if noone is watching you in a shop doesn't mean you're allowed to steal.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Re: just to add

Originally posted by tYNS
Just the version on Apple Music is terrible!

You must be comparing your AAC to the streaming preview that the Music Store provides. Some of the previews sound better than others. I'm not sure why. I don't know if some previews were encoded at a lower bit rate than others, or if the server adaptively throttles the previews in response to overall system load. You should try going back and listening to that same preview at different times of the day and seeing if it ever sounds different.

I've bought a handful of songs so far-- 7 or 8-- and they all sound uniformly excellent. I'm also a third of the way through re-ripping my 4000+ song library to AAC. I'm sold on the new format, big time.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by ozubahn
Assuming Arn is right, and all the information is stored in the song file itself, then you should just be able to copy an ACC file that is authorized on one machine.

No, it doesn't work like that. When you buy a song, that song is associated with your Apple ID. (If you're UNIX-savvy, go to the terminal and do a "strings" on an .m4p file. you'll find a lot of garbage, but in there you'll find your full name and your Apple ID.)

A computer is either authorized to play songs associated with a given Apple ID, or it's not. A computer can be authorized to play songs associated with more than one Apple ID. For example, my girlfriend has an iBook and I have a G4. We each have our own music libraries, but we often trade computers. Her laptop is authorized to play both her songs and mine, and my G4 is authorized to play both my songs and hers.

The long and short of it is this: the first time you try to play somebody else's music on your computer, you'll be asked for the password that goes along with that person's Apple ID. Once that password has been entered, you can play any song that that person has bought.

It's actually an incredibly slick system. Today I was at a friend's office and I wanted to show him how it worked. I used the "Connect to Shared Music" command to connect to my G4 at home over the Internet, at which point he could see and stream any song in my music library. I double-clicked on one of the songs in my "Purchased Music" playlist and up popped a dialog asking for my Apple ID password. I entered it, and the song played. When I was done, I just de-registered his computer.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by ozubahn
I was hoping that I could just create a clean archive copy of any songs I buy (authorized on at most one machine) to fall back on in an emergency.

A reasonable concern. The solution: burn your .m4p files to CD. Audio CD, I mean, not data CD. Then they can be re-ripped in the future.

I have a CD with a scratch on it. I can read all the tracks off of it just fine except for one. So I ripped 1-8 and 10-12, then went to the Music Store and bought #9. I had 1-8, 10-12 as .m4a files, and 9 as an .m4p file. I made a playlist and burned them to a blank CD. The result was an audio CD that was essentially a "fixed" copy of my scratched disc.

Just to see if I could, I then ripped the new "fixed" CD to AAC. It worked, and sounded fine. I couldn't tell the original .m4p from the new .m4a I made. It wasn't convenient, though, so in future I don't think I'll bother with the re-ripping. I'll just burn my .m4p files to audio CD and put that disc someplace safe, just like I would with any CD I buy.

God bless you, Apple. You've come up with a system for distributing digital music that works.

 

[arn]

Authorization/Deauthorization appears to be based on a central server model... as Apple claims that "Initializing the drive will not deauthorize the computer. If you will be initializing the drive, deauthorize the computer first, then initialize the drive.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Perceptes
The fact that there are any limitations on music that you download makes this service not worth it to me. And even if AAC is better quality, I won't rip my own CD's to it until it becomes the common format between Macs and PC's. It's not going to take off if only iTunes and iPod can play them, even if both products exist for Windows.

One: speaking from 1-1/2 days' experience using the new service, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the protection built into the system doesn't prevent you from doing anything that you're legally allowed to do. Well, there's one grey area. When you rip a CD into iTunes and share your library, anybody on your LAN can connect to your machine and listen to your music. (You can specify a password if you like.) But only computers that are authorized can play your .m4p files. That doesn't seem right to me. I would prefer that any computer be able to stream .m4p's, but only authorized computers be able to play them off of locally attached or network-mounted disks. But that's a nitpick. The workaround is trivial: burn the .m4p file to CD, then rip the CD to .m4a, and share and share alike.

(Note well that I'm talking about sharing in the Rendezvous sense here, where one machine streams another's music library over the network. Copying files from friends is a no-no.)

Other than that nitpick, I can say that the protection doesn't interfere in any way with legal and fair use of the songs you buy. You can burn .m4p files to audio CD and play them in your car. You can back them up to DVD. You can use them in your iMovies, which you can also burn to DVD with iDVD to make a video Christmas letter or whatever the kids are doing these days. You can do anything that a reasonable person would want to do, and in a case where you've got a legitimate reason to want to bypass the .m4p protection (although I can't think of one at the moment) you can turn an .m4p into an .m4a by sacrificing a negligible amount of quality.

So the protection is not a problem. Now let's look at the other side of the coin: the benefits. I won't go on at length about these, but suffice it to say that the iTunes Music Store is faster, more reliable, and easier to use than P2P or Usenet or FTP or any of the other ways of illegally obtaining music, and it's nearly as inexpensive. Anybody can handle a buck a song.

I'll give you a real-world example. I was sitting here at my desk today minding my own business when that song "Mais Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes popped into my head. (You've heard it, even though you may not recognize the name. It's a popular tune.) I toggled over to iTunes, clicked "Music Store," typed "Sergio Mendes" in the search box, scrolled down to find the song, clicked "Buy Song," typed my password, and clicked "Buy" one more time to confirm. About a minute later, the song was in my "Purchased Music" playlist waiting for me. It cost me a dollar and took about ninety seconds of my time.

If I'd wanted the whole album, it would have cost $10, and taken no more of my time, although I would have had to wait for the songs to download.

Two more clicks and a blank CD means I now have in my hands a permanent, unrestricted copy of what I bought. If Apple goes out of business tomorrow (Heaven forbid), that CD will be as good as it is right now.

That is how music should be distributed.

Finally (sorry for the lengthy post), AAC support is built in to WinAmp. Yes, it's a little bit inconvenient to have to go out and download a program to play .m4a files on a PC, but that was true in the early days of MP3's as well and people did it anyway. So you can move an .m4a from your Mac to a PC and play it without much trouble at all. And besides, we all know that iTunes for Windows is coming soon, so that won't be an issue much longer.

You really should jump on the bandwagon on this one. First, because it's really cool and it works well, and second because this business model will succeed or fail based on how many users adopt it and how enthusiastically.