Reactions to the Apple / EMI Announcement

bryanc said:
I don't know if this was Steve's plan (it would be very interesting to know what stage the negotiations with EMI were at when Job's posted his open letter on DRM), but this is a stroke of genius: the removal of DRM from music purchased through iTunes solves the legal problems in Europe, drives a nail into the coffin of competing download services, shuts the anti-DRM detractors up, pulls the rug out from under WMA, and further enhances Apple's image as a consumer-friendly good-guy.

I think we'll look back on this event as the beginning of the end for WMA, and the masterstroke that cemented Apple's dominance of the digital music distribution market.

Cheers
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Exactly my thoughts as well. I think this will turn out to be a very historic move for Apple. It certainly takes the wind out of the subscription based system's sails and insulates Apple from alot of potential anti-competitive critisism.
 
iTunes

I have a feeling that DRM-free tracks will have a little symbol next to those songs, like the Explicit Lyrics tag. iTunes may even have an EMI section which would list all the albums and artists that are with EMI.

As with already-purchased music, I have a feeling that another iTunes update will come out soon to address DRM-free tracks. There might me a similar option like the "show duplicate songs" option where if you click on it, iTunes will fliter out all the songs that you can upgrade to premium and choose which ones to.
 
makes sense

People for YEARS have been 'tape recording' the radio and ripping CDs and giving mp3s or copies of the CD to friends. I don't believe this has been what hurt the music industry. What hurt the music industry was the gamble in signing all terrible bands and making bad choices for 'terrible alternative' bands. All the artists that were signed that were talented have still done very well.

I also believe that american idol is hurting the industry. American Idol floods the media with new averagely talented singers. Everyone tries to sign all the worst singers and also anyone who's in the top 15 or sometimes more. American Idol is powerful, but it's distracting the public from real viable artists that major labels have been dumping money into. Instead of listening and purchasing albums with real talent, the public is getting suckered into the flood of mildly talented singers on american idol. If these people were to release an album without all the hype from american idol, the public would reject it immediately. Kelly Clarkson & Carrie Underwood have been great finds. But come on, two valuable artists in how many years?? I'm sure someone is going to rip into me saying others were great too, but honestly, so far those are the two gems they've come across. The rest is pretty washed up already.
 
pacohaas said:
If you're listening while jogging using the included earbuds, you're not likely to notice the difference between 96kbps AAC and 320kbps AAC, so why not store more songs at the lower level? But say you have your ipod hooked up to that fancy new iPod Hi-Fi, you're probably gonna want that 256kbps version, or at least 192, right?
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I thought the shuffle had the option to "downgrade" the Kbs-rate while putting the songs onto the player. Why not extend this option to other players?

Do I stand correct?
 
Tymmz said:
I thought the shuffle had the option to "downgrade" the Kbs-rate while putting the songs onto the player. Why not extend this option to other players?

Do I stand correct?
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I think this is an iTunes-wide option and not just for Shuffle. But either way, anyone can just downconvert the files to a suitable size, format, whatever since... hello... there's no DRM!

So if the non-DRM alone is reason enough to buy, then you pay your 30 cents difference, get the file, make a 128kbps copy to pop on your ipod and keep the original 256 for whatever else... AppleTV perhaps.

You'll have to pardon me... I just find it oddly amusing that people have known that non-DRM digital music files are not tangibly-fixed product and yet people seem to be thinking that what they're getting for $1.29 is somehow a fixed product that they can't themselves modify.

You'd think it were obvious, but wasn't the entire point of removing DRM to allow you to do whatever you wanted to your copy of the file?

:)
 
ryanw said:
People for YEARS have been 'tape recording' the radio and ripping CDs and giving mp3s or copies of the CD to friends. I don't believe this has been what hurt the music industry. What hurt the music industry was the gamble in signing all terrible bands and making bad choices for 'terrible alternative' bands. All the artists that were signed that were talented have still done very well.
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I agree with you only partially. The thing with tape trading back in my youth was that it was only as fast and effective as the "sneaker net" would allow it to be, meaning I could only trade tapes and CDs with friends I could reach on foot (so to speak.) That was a limited and slow network. With the Internet, I can rip a CD, upload it somewhere and distribute it to potentially thousands of anonymous downloaders in a matter of minutes. I think it's fair for the music industry to be careful about how they handle this. I don't begrudge them their conservative approach to the new technology (although I despise the RIAA and its use of my legal system as its personal collection agency.) Lots of people's livelihoods--including artists, producers and laborers all along the production line--depend on a wise approach to this.

However, I fully agree with the fact that the bad quality of music produced nowadays contributes far more to the decline in music sales than file trading ever will. In the last 5 years, I've bought maybe a half-dozen albums (my old stand-bys like David Gilmour, Rush and Audioslave) because the rest sounds like mass-produced, corporate sludge to me.

The same thing happened back in 1990. Things like heavy metal glam rock, Milli Vanilli-type synth pop and Michael Jackson were the big thing and nobody was buying it because it was all uninspired trash. I remember reading articles claiming that the music industry was dead and rock music was over. There were rumblings from the music industry that people were pirating music (yes, prior to the Internet being a household word, the music industry was whining about widespread piracy being the source of their woes.) And yet, Nirvana and the grunge scene hit the big time and music sales went through the freakin' roof overnight. Suddenly, nobody was predicting the demise of rock music or the music industry. I remember this happening right in front of my eyes while in college and marvelling at how fickle the opinions of the music industry seemed to be. The whole landscape of the music industry shifted in a massive way and suddenly, everyone forgot what they were saying just the month before, and now it was all peachy again.

Same thing now. I see very little quality in the music being produced now. The music industry should be more concerned about that than any file sharing that might be going on. Hell, I know many people who discover bands via file sharing and then go on to legitimately buy up the stuff they discover and like (just like I did back in the tape trading days. A friend introduced me to Rush with a ton of tapes and I've since gone out and bought up everything I can find.) The argument has never made sense and never will.

Whew... didn't expect a rant, did you? :D
 
pacohaas said:
Ultra-ideally, this $0.30 premium should get you an Apple Lossless copy to do with what you please, I mean, it's DRM-free so converting it to whatever format you want(even *gasp* wma for a zune) should be well within your rights as the buyer, and there's no reason you should suffer a loss of quality through re-encoding. This is exciting news to be sure, but I still don't see myself purchasing until it's equivalent to purchasing a CD(i.e. lossless and DRM free), consumers want flexibility(not just a choice between 2 options).
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That would be perfect. But for me lossless isn't as important as DRM free. Most of my current collection is 256 MP3 (though I'm ripping newer stuff at 256 AAC now that Amarok supports it), the CDs are in a closet in the basement, and it's sounds just fine coming out of a decent Hi-Fi system. Now I will definitly look to itunes for DRM free music before buying another CD.

What would be awesome is the ability to convert files to 128 or even 96 when transferring them to an ipod

Edited to add:
While I was posting someone added a post stating the itunes could already downgrade music transferred to an ipod. Would you care to elaborate? I’ve been using itunes for a while but just bought my first ipod a few weeks ago. --Thanks
 
Tymmz said:
I thought the shuffle had the option to "downgrade" the Kbs-rate while putting the songs onto the player. Why not extend this option to other players?
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I would like to see that option used in conjunction with apple lossless. That option is NOT available to ipods or nanos last I checked, only cell phones and the shuffle. That way you could keep your entire collection in lossless and have it auto-convert(to a specified bitrate, not just 128 would be nice) while it's transferring to the iPod.

The problem with converting a 256kbps file(or any lossy format) is that there are extra artifacts introduced that are unnecessary if you had purchased the original CD and made a 128kbps file from that. Like i said, it's great that there's no DRM, but forcing a lossy re-encode to get a file the size you're used to dealing with is a big no-no. See any audio forums like hydrogenaudio.org, they will always encode from the original(CD or lossless file) rather than re-encoding a lossy file and introducing more artifacts.
 
apollo8fan said:
Now that EMI has ventured into this, let's reward their effort by not posting the songs on P2P.
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THANK YOU.

This is why I don't pirate. Not because of any moral or legal argument... but because if internet music distribution is going to stand a chance as a legitimate competitor to the industry's aging distro monopoly, and thus level the playing field between independents and majors, we as consumers have to prove that it's a commercially viable medium.

Pirating the likes of Britney Spears does only two things:

1. It reinforces the idea that there is, all else being equal, a demand for such mediocre music.

2. It helps RIAA lobby Congress to pass stupid legsilation that surreptitously hampers internet distribution entirely, thus cleverly installing a barrier to entry in the marketplace that benefits major labels.

More importantly, when major label marketing machines are on a level playing field with Joe Q. Garageband, the sheer volume of choices tends to reduce the visibility of mediocre artists propped up by marketing machines and simultaneouly increase the visibility of otherwise talented artists who might have trouble finding a market with the idiots at Warner Bros. A&R at the steering wheel (thus becoming one of the 90% of artists to end up as a loss and a tax writeoff for the record labels).

This is precisely what the record companies are afraid of and why they've been fighting (albeit uphill) against internet distribution since the 1990's... because they know that the inevitable reality is that with a more level playing field they will be outgunned 10 to 1 by smaller, more agile entities who aren't pinned down by having become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. A&R executives, the robber barons of the industry, will have to either get more creative and find better talent (much more difficult than using marketing to push artists like darts at a dartboard to see which ones stick), or sell their Mercedes and get a real job.

How do we voice our discontent with the conventional model and simultaneously prove the internet distribution model is feasible, and even profitable, for independent artists?

Purchase music (especially more diverse and independent music) from outlets like iTunes Music Store. The more data you provide Apple in this transition period backing out of DRM, the more you reinforce the idea that non-DRM is profitable and eventually the major labels will fall into line.

Piracy while seemingly convenient in the short term helps to eliminate consumer options in the long term.
 
I think Apple has actually factored in piracy when they raised the price..

In the past, 40 people buy a DRM-ed song from iTS - iTS gets ~$40 ($39.6).

Now, 31 people buy a DRM-less song from iTS - iTS gets ~$40 ($39.99). Even if there are 9 copies sent to others, Apple still earns the same.

If you do the math, you will see that, as long as the figure for piracy is low enough, the new business model with the new price can ensure same profit as the past without DRM, which probably costs millions of dollars to develop, and eventually will be breached by people.

Now Apple saves R&D money, earns better publicity, and others have less reasons to sue Apple for dominating the market. That's why it makes perfect sense for Apple to drop (or try to drop) DRM.
 
Main reason it isn't lossless on iTunes is the simple fact that hard drive space hasn't reached what lossless needs for the average computer user. Plus there is the bandwidth costs.

I bet within the next 5 years, iTunes will have lossless music though. Bandwidth and hard drive capacities should reach the point that people can store lossless and lossy copies side-by-side on the same hard drive.
 
pacohaas said:
The problem with converting a 256kbps file(or any lossy format) is that there are extra artifacts introduced that are unnecessary if you had purchased the original CD and made a 128kbps file from that. Like i said, it's great that there's no DRM, but forcing a lossy re-encode to get a file the size you're used to dealing with is a big no-no. See any audio forums like hydrogenaudio.org, they will always encode from the original(CD or lossless file) rather than re-encoding a lossy file and introducing more artifacts.
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Depends on how it's done... in order for a compressed file to actually play back, decompression and decoding have to occur. Advanced step-down transcoding involves re-sampling the decompressed output which is basically what video and audio rendering (e.g. "bounce to disk") does in professional mastering on a computer workstation.

Because 128Kbps AAC in playback is perceptibly indistinguishable from 16-bit Linear PCM, one should be able to reproduce the spectrum and amplitude characteristics of Linear PCM without perceptible loss if the latter is reconstructed through resampling.

But the folks at hydrogenaudio won't tell you this because, fundamentally, I don't think many audiophiles understand the fundamentals of digital audio encoding systems on anything more than a superficial level.

Not one that I have encountered has ever read Ken Pohlmann's Principles of Digital Audio (the bible of digital audio encoding fundamentals and system design)... and it shows when they reveal their total ignorance about the purpose of things like 20kHz low pass filtering, internal reclocking of a digital signal, the exact nature and causes of quantization noise, etc.
 
Honestly, I wish there were other rumors to discuss, this stuff is boring.

Can someone create some false documents about new designs and the secret leopard features and leak them to MR or another apple rumors site?

PLEASE....!!!
 
chrisgeleven said:
...people can store lossless and lossy copies side-by-side on the same hard drive.
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That's what I do now since the "re-encode to 128kbps" option is not available on all iPods and isn't as flexible as it could be: "re-encode to X kbps for X ipod" would be great. That way I would only have to store the lossless copy of my cd's and could have separate bitrate settings for my shuffle/phone and iPod with no loss of quality due to re-encoding.

I agree about the bandwidth though, as it stands today, most people aren't going to want to wait for a 1000kbps lossless album to download, and apple isn't going to want to pay for that bandwidth either, which is why users paying $1.29/song should just have a choice of bitrate to download. If a shuffle ownder wanted 128 no DRM, they should be entitled to it direct from apple and not required to re-encode a 256kbps file.
 
Avatar74 said:
Because 128Kbps AAC in playback is perceptibly indistinguishable from 16-bit Linear PCM
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This is entirely subjective and some people(with lesser hearing abilities) could say the same about 96kbps or even 64kbps on some songs. That doesn't make it true though, and even so, the type of resampling that you're talking about doesn't' exist within iTunes and even if it did, no amount of resampling can ever bring you back to the original lossless file and what you end up with is an amplification of compression artifacts.

Remember the washy sound in crappy mp3's back in the day? Those kind of artifacts still exist in AAC, only to a lesser degree as many advances have been made in mpeg4 over mpeg3 addressing these issues. But the fact remains that when you take a lossy file (AAC or MP3), and re-encode it again to AAC or MP3, the encoder will attempt to do it's job in preserving the perceived sound in the source file. And in the case of artifacts, the encoder will attempt to preserve those as well since it can't make a distinction between an artifact and a "good" sound sample. That's where you get the artifact amplification. If you don't believe me, encode a file at 96kbps(even 128 or 256), then do it again, and again, etc. You will be able to tell a difference after enough iterations, and some can tell after just one re-encode.
 
pacohaas said:
I would like to see that option used in conjunction with apple lossless. That option is NOT available to ipods or nanos last I checked, only cell phones and the shuffle...

...Like i said, it's great that there's no DRM, but forcing a lossy re-encode to get a file the size you're used to dealing with is a big no-no. See any audio forums like hydrogenaudio.org, they will always encode from the original(CD or lossless file) rather than re-encoding a lossy file and introducing more artifacts.
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Like you said, while jogging you wouldn't notice the difference, even if you down-sample a 256 Kbs file. But you are absolutely correct, the consumer would be better off having a lossless format.

But I could imagine the 256 Kbs is the sweet spot at the moment for the "digital-consumer".

People who are not so familiar with all the Kbs-rate stuff will be fine and don't mind nor know about lossless formats. They probably would be even more confused when they see that a song takes about 10 or 20 MB (correct???) off their iPod/HDD.

I'm glad that the whole DRM-thing is on it's way out of our life.

I guess it will take a very long time, if ever, till EVERYONE is satisfied.

Apple is on a good way to find the balance between simplicity and freedom, that's what it's all about. I'm not saying it because I praise Steve Jobs, because that's what I believe.

I really hope Apple doesn't turn their back on the consumer at one point in the future. I'm really happy with them at moment.
 
Tymmz said:
Like you said, while jogging you wouldn't notice the difference, even if you down-sample a 256 Kbs file.
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true enough.

People who are not so familiar with all the Kbs-rate stuff will be fine and don't mind nor know about lossless formats. They probably would be even more confused when they see that a song takes about 10 or 20 MB (correct???) off their iPod/HDD.
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Agreed, the best option(until lossless is viable) would be a bitrate setting for non-DRM purchases(almost freedom :)). Apple could default this at 256kbps so the regular consumer wouldn't need to worry about it.

I'm glad that the whole DRM-thing is on it's way out of our life.
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AMEN!
 
pacohaas said:
Remember the washy sound in crappy mp3's back in the day? Those kind of artifacts still exist in AAC, only to a lesser degree as many advances have been made in mpeg4 over mpeg3 addressing these issues. But the fact remains that when you take a lossy file (AAC or MP3), and re-encode it again to AAC or MP3, the encoder will attempt to do it's job in preserving the perceived sound in the source file. And in the case of artifacts, the encoder will attempt to preserve those as well since it can't make a distinction between an artifact and a "good" sound sample. That's where you get the artifact amplification. If you don't believe me, encode a file at 96kbps(even 128 or 256), then do it again, then do it again. You will be able to tell a difference after enough iterations, and some can tell after just one re-encode.
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There is a threshold below which AAC is noticeably distinguishable from 16-bit Linear PCM. But at 128Kbps, the Audio Engineering Society found it is sufficiently perceptually transparent and only a few individuals can really pick apart the artifaction.

What's funny is that few if any of the actual artifaction or symptoms of artifaction that should arise from such perceptual encoding are the ones ever mentioned by audiophiles. People will bring up things like cymbals sounding weird because of limited frequency response at the high end. The answer is, they have no freaking idea what they're talking about. Cymbal sounds lack coherent phase characteristics, and this makes it difficult for even PCM encoding to properly represent their amplitude characteristics at any given quantization interval. But quantization error is typically shaped by dithering on all but the highest resolution PCM streams so you're still getting an improper representation even at 16-bit Linear PCM (CD audio, in other words). Frequency response is not the problem, amplitude resolution is.

AAC is a perceptual coding schema and PCM is not. At certain bit depths, AAC can faithfully reconstruct a PCM stream from fewer bits of data per sample just like ADPCM could back in the day. I've already explained elsewhere some of the basic concepts that drive such reductions without noticeable loss (such as using difference values instead of absolute values to represent amplitude at each quantization interval) but the bottom line is that resampling a 256Kbps AAC bitstream with a decent transcoder should not introduce more artifacts than there already were. Transcoding errors are greatest when sample & hold buffers do not hold each value long enough but this is less and less of a problem with offline transcoding in digital audio workstations which are not tethered to linear feeds and can instead hold the value as long as necessary until encoded correctly.

What you need to understand is that the sample & hold buffer in an A/D, D/A or transcoder is the most critical element in terms of the accuracy of encoding and the mitigation of artifacts. The actual encoding algorithm itself in AAC is quite capable of producing a narrower discrete time sampled bitstream from which the values of the original analogue or digital source can be accurately reproduced... but if the sample & hold times in an encoding algorithm are insufficient, there arises the possibility of artifaction being introduced in the process of transcoding itself.

You can cite all the anecdotal evidence in the world, but because the fundamentals of sound perception depend on the propagation of soundwaves, one must first demonstrate that there is actually a difference between the analogue soundwaves propagated between 128Kbps AAC and 16-bit Linear PCM... and no audiophile has ever been able to demonstrate this. Some will argue "but the difference is one of perception"... Well, I agree... If upon playback the reconstructed analog soundwaves are fundamentally the same and you insist that you're still hearing differences, then it is indeed your perception and NOT the files that are flawed.
 
MacVault said:
I wonder if the DRM-free song files will be "watermarked" at all.. like with one's Apple ID.
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I wouldn't mind this approach, actually. Stamp the file with some metadata in an odd spot in the file with a hash of some kind with the purchase ID + user. It won't affect the playback of the music, but it will give the legal hounds a place to start when trying to figure out who broke the license.
 
I think it's safe to say all digital music carries some form of compromise but the fact is the needle keeps jumping off the records everytime I press the throttle, brake or go round a corner - and so a solution had to be found. Let's never forget Apple were the ones that really made it work!

AND...a precident has been set by Apple for the 'upgrading' of songs bought from iTunes in one format to a 'better rate'.

20 years from now when Apple is selling the 'all new' 600 channel 5 terabit AAF files its reassuring to know your going to be able to 'upgrade' them from your 'crappy old' 100 channel 2 terabit AAE files :)
 
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