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BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM
Posted by
michael
on Fri Mar 26, 2004 12:22 PM
from the back-seat-driving dept.
from the back-seat-driving dept.
hype7 writes "BusinessWeek is running a very interesting story on Apple's foray into music, with a different bent to everyone else's. BW suggests that, instead of opening the iPod up to the world, Apple should instead license its DRM - 'Fairplay' - to anyone who wants to start up a music store. The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous; Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold); and, it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format. As the iTunes Music Store isn't running at a profit (or forecast to make a big one), having the Music Store clones eat into Apple's existing market share wouldn't be a problem; all these stores would be doing is building a bigger potential market for the iPod."
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AAC (Score:5, Informative)
AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia--companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital). The AAC codec in QuickTime 6 builds upon new, state-of-the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime.
Re:AAC (Score:5, Insightful)
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RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
http://64.244.235.240/explained_contentprovider.a
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Re:RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:AAC (Score:4, Insightful)
However, does anyone else think it might be too late in the game for this? Why weren't they licensing their DRM tech to Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, etc?
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Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
What, are you waiting for a store to come out with *effective* protection which gives you even less of what you want? "Federal take-it-up-the-@$$" protection?
Apple has to put some kind of protection on their downloads to reassure the labels. You claim that it is only a token effort. Isn't that the best you can hope for? Sounds like Apple is slying doing you a favor, as opposed to the draconian measures they could be taking.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
this is actually a point Steve Jobs made to the music industry execs (according to an interview with Jobs online somewhere, I forget where). He told them that any DRM is basically useless, anything that can be encoded can be cracked. they told him to piss off, a year or so later he came back when all their drm schemes were cracked and he said "See?!" Then they listened.
so apple put in a bare minimum protection scheme, but more importantly made the terms so loose that nobody really wants to or needs to crack it. the restrictions are pretty insignificant (can't burn the same playlist more than 10x.... but change it slightly and keep going. But who's going to burn the same playlist that many times anyway?). the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks.
the real protection here is the easy terms that don't stop you from doing what you want to. iTMS is excellent competition to Kazaa & crew: faster, better, more reliable, decently tagged, good catalog, cheap. Apple got tired of waiting for the industry to figure out how to do it right, and did it for them.
so what exactly is your problem with iTunes?
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Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
"the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks."
More to the point, DRM is like a "club" for your car's steering wheel, or copy protection on PC software. It won't stop the people who are really determined to pirate music or software, or steal your car, but it stops the casual folks. If it can reduce much of the piracy, but not all of it, it's still worthwhile. The music industry's lawsuits have the same aim: if they can scare the masses away from piracy, they're better off even though the Slashdot crowd is simply moving to transfer mediums that are off the RIAA's radar or otherwise untouchable.
As an aside, I think Apple's DRM is fine. I can burn extra CDs for my friends and move tracks from PC to PC. It would not let me simply copy the tracks to my Kazaa share directory, which is fine, as that would be illegal anyway. The "artists have too many rights" crowd who see any sort of DRM as an affront to everything that is good and true and right in the world should check themselves.
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Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
A deadbolt protects your house by making it physically difficult for the bad guys to break in. That's true.
But a "beware of dog" sign also protects your house. How? By deterring those who would otherwise walk right in and take your stuff. It doesn't do anything to stop a determined thief... but how many determined thieves are there out there, compared to the number of "thieves of opportunity?"
Fairplay protects music because it deters "thieves of opportunity." Because it's inconvenient to pirate Fairplay-protected music, paired with the fact that it's so darned easy to get it legally, Fairplay effectively protects music.
It's not a fig leaf. It's real.
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Re:AAC (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not generally a fan of Salkever, but I think he makes a pretty good point. The only thing that I would add is that Apple should re-negotiate their contracts with the labels and get themselves a better deal, so that iTMS could actually generate some profits for them. Right now, they're the Walmart (**shudder**) of the music download world, they should flex some muscle as the market leader to get a lower wholesale price. And if they really wanted to change the world and actually support the music creators, their contract would include a better cut for the performers and writers (I would think a 40% Apple, 25% label, 20% performer, 15% writer/composer cut would be about right).
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AAC is already gaining ground (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, Apple is too bullheaded... (Score:5, Insightful)
However,.......based on Steve's stubborness and protectiveness of Apple, I am not going to hold my breath on this one. Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.
Here's to hoping.....
Re:Unfortunately, Apple is too bullheaded... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Unfortunately, Apple is too bullheaded... (Score:5, Informative)
There is precedent for Apple successfully licensing something of this nature: Firewire.
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And the MPEG-4 file format (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Unfortunately, Apple is too bullheaded... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is no longer true. There used to be a $0.50 per-port charge for using the name FireWire - which is why you see IEEE 1394 all the time instead. A couple years ago, Apple dropped the fee. Unfortunatly, I think the 1394 name is probably going to stick at this point. (Sony calls it iLink, I think, but its still the same thing.)
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It's all about control: BannedMusic.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Every fumbling attempt the record companies make to control and restrict music blows up in their face. Case in point, the new, bannedmusic.org [bannedmusic.org] which is using a BitTorrent installer packaged with a specific torrent to spread music that's run afoul of the current copyright regime. They could have made money licensing this stuff, but now there ain't nothin they can do about it.
Re:It's all about control: BannedMusic.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Then again, I would much prefer no DRM at all, and, ironically, the more draconian the DRM, the more likely people will refuse to use such products, and the more likely it is that we won't have to put up with it at all...
I may be a tad overly optimistic, but I think we all know that DRM is futile so long as we have full control over our own computers. The problem is in the corrollary of that is that the DRM folks have to control our computers to make their schemes work. I don't find that to be a pleasant thought at all... Effectively unenforceable laws tend to get applied in discriminatory manners, after all...
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While this wouldn't hurt (Score:5, Interesting)
The obvious problem is that what incentive is there for someone to open a music store with encrypted songs that are only playable on the iPod?
Musicians already have ways of submitting their music to the iTMS.
Any large conglomerate opening a music store online is generally stupid or on the "music store" bandwagon, or both. Apple pretty clearly does it because it's a selling point for iPods, and with their early appearance on the scene, they have a good chance to dominate the market until such time as it does become profitable.
So what earthly good does licensing FairPlay do for anyone?
Would'nt opening the ipod be THE way to go (Score:3, Insightful)
These will ultimately result in the iPod becoming more popular
An apple a day keeps MS away
Apple's Dual Paths (Score:5, Insightful)
Option 1: Stay Alone
This basically has the iPod and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) working only together. So far, this situation has proven to be the case, and it's working pretty well: the iPod is the #1 selling MP3 player out there, it's making Apple a butt load of cash (and when you try to carry money in your butt you'll know what I mean), and iTMS is the #1 online music sales system by far - 50 million songs sold compared to Roxio's 5 million. Even comaring apples to , er, apples, just within the 6 months since Napster has been out Apple has made 5 to 1 sales.
If this continues, then eventually Jobs can force out all of the "for profit" music shops out there, and boil it down to just the "for advertising" places, like Wal-Mart, Coke, and Microsoft (which would really be looking to make Windows Media Audio the default standard).
From this, Apple makes AAC the next MP3, and their DRM becomes the "de facto standard" - even though nobody else can use it. Apple makes all the money, and they like it.
This will only come true, however, if Apple keeps a huge lead. What happens when Microsoft (MS) unveals their own online music store (didn't originally they tell folks like Napster that they wouldn't? Well, nevermind that....), sells songs for $0.50 each, takes a hit on profits, and basically acts like they did with Internet Explorer. (Ignoring any antitrust issues - not that Microsoft ever has had to in the past.)
So that goes to Option 2: License the DRM
I have the feeling that Jobs will release this if and only if iTMS and iPod sales start taking a dive. It's his "ace in the hole" to keep iPod sales alive. All it will take is him going to the other stores, making an offer, and then everybody can use the iPod with any service. Sure, it could hurt iTMS removing the one thing that makes it different from everybody else - but Apple is about the hardware.
But what happens if someone like Dell or Gateway come out with their own MP3 player that starts to make the iPod look like yesterday's bulky cell phone? That's when option 3 kicks in:
Option 3: License WMV for the iPod
This one only happens when things are dire and Apple feels they finally have to put in their chips.
The question is, how likely is either option to be? I can see Option 2 and 3 as "someday, maybe" futures. But as of right now, iTMS and the iPod rules the roost, and as long as Apple keeps that up for another 12-24 months, everybody else just in it to "make money selling music" will be so marginalized it won't matter. We're more likely to see Pepsi style promotions than anything else - though Apple had already keep an eye on possible cracks in their popularity: McDonald's may have dumped a iTMS deal in favor of a Sony Online Music one already, though of course nothing is official yet.
2 years I think the dust will be settled. Until then, I'll keep saving up to buy my wife an iPod mini. Hey, if nothing else, they're cute. And she still buys lots of CD's.
A Guess (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, (outside of Apple being Apple), why wouldn't they have done it already?
Or... You Could Just Get The Non-DRM MP3s (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some legal (in Russia!) MP3 download sites - most flat fee:
allofmp3.com [allofmp3.com]
This site is locally legit and songs can be downloaded for as little as $0.01 per MB. That's around 3 cents per song.
DELit [delit.net]
Unusual emphasis on hard rock and metal acts (east European and Russian youth apparently worship metal acts)
3MP3.ru [3mp3.ru]
$4.55 per month for unlimited downloads.
And you are not stuck with the typical iTMS low-quality 128Kbit file. Most of the Russian sites let you choose your quality and give you the option to do "online encoding" where you can select the settings you want. When the pop up screen shows up you can hit switch to advanced mode toward the bottm and you get the following options:
You can choose between the LAME or BLADE codec and 128, 160, 192, 256, and 320 kbps for each (constant bitrate). Or you can choose LAME variable bitrate at 128, 160, 192, or 256.
If you enjoy these services, 3MP3 should be your first stop to see if you can find what you are looking for at the lowest price. Then I'd move to allofmp3, followed by clubmp3.ru, and then DELit.
Cue the "In SOVIET RUSSIA" trolls now...
Re:Or... You Could Just Get The Non-DRM MP3s (Score:5, Informative)
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Favortie quote from the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Otherwise he never would have said this:
AAC, FairPlay, and Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Sell more iPods & Xserves (Score:4, Interesting)
Make it so an Indy music producer just has to copy songs to a "publisher" program which encodes and makes available on-line.
They could spec a Xserve Music Server that an Indy music producer could buy (Xserve RAID etc) all pre-configured and easily managed (even sell remote management support so Apple supports the thing). They customize the variety of e-Commerce templates and copy music to a program that will encode it and add it to the library.
Now Apple can support Indys AND keep their own music library "clean".
There's one thing everyone's forgetting (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't want just any joe schmoe with a smelly t-shirt selling songs for the iPod because Apple wants to maintain a level of quality with the entire user experience, from the purchase of songs on iTMS to the browsing of their songs on iTunes to the uploading and management to the seamless integration between the store and iTunes.
Re: Apple DRM? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, Microsoft's WMA is proprietary no matter how you slice it.
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Re: Apple DRM? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. How about you let me handle this:
Note1: as you can see, Alex Salkelver at Business Week clearly didn't do his homework before writing that article.
Note2: the folks at Veridisc are astonishingly incompetent at e-business: they own neither veridisc.com (unrenewed, squatted, not work-safe) nor fairplay.com (unowned, parked)
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Re:If apple want's to win with AAC they have to .. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:If apple want's to win with AAC they have to .. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess this is why AAC was just recently chosen by the DVD consortium [theregister.co.uk] to be the standard for audio in the ROM portion of DVD-Audio disks. (That's been one of my major gripes with DVD-Audio -- you can't rip the songs to your computer currently, because there's no software out there designed to do this.)
Yeah, right, AAC is dead. Never mind that the latest iTunes rips into AAC by default. (You have to go into preferences to switch audio import to use MP3 instead.) Never mind that the iTunes Music Store outperforms all other legitimate digital music distribution methods, and their format of choice is AAC with FairPlay.
I guess that's why Quicktime is doing just fine? Seriously, talk about a reality distortion field -- yours seems to be worse than Steve Jobs'. Xvid and DiVX are still the purview of the 133t, although there are more DVD players on the market now that will play videos encoded in these formats. So they are gaining traction and mainstream acceptance; but most players that support these formats are cheapies from China, where video piracy is rampant, and the build quality leaves something to be desired.
Incidentally, AAC and Quicktime are linked inextricably with MPEG4, which is a current and future video standard. DiVX/Xvid leverage the MPEG4 standard.
Quicktime is not just a niche format. It's everywhere. Most sites that serve up movie trailers do so in Quicktime format. Quicktime is almost always offered as an option for sites that support multiple video formats. And AAC wasn't "created" by Apple -- it's an open standard that they adopted.
So what you're saying is that your entire post is really just an excuse to slam Jobs and Apple, and has nothing to do with anything else. Obviously. Since real facts don't bear your arguments out.
Funny, you sound like the Troll in this case. Pity I used up my moderator points a couple days ago.
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Re:It would be nice, but (Score:5, Informative)
You're a little defensive about your manliness there buddy, I don't have to choose a certain electronics device to reassure myself that people will think I'm straight.
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Re:It would be nice, but (Score:5, Funny)
Poor talentless underdogs, my heart bleeds. If they can't afford DRM, they either shouldn't use it or they should start sucking less so they actually turn a profit. The iPod plays DRM-FREE MP3 files just fine.
Then again, why bother with DRM at all? My Dell Jukebox cost me less per GB, has a longer battery life, doesn't have any DRM, at least none that I'm aware of,
So it can play WMA but has no DRM support? That's like Satanism without the evil, it's totally pointless.
I don't get my sexuality questioned every time someone sees me use it.
Haven't had that problem... Considering the iPod has the majority of the portable audio marketshare, I highly doubt it comes into play as a factor in determining someone's sexuality. Now buying a pink mini and loading it with Ricky Martin's complete discography probably wouldn't help your case, but I digress.
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Re:Enjoy your more expensive same-thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? So you can boot your Windows machine off of your Dell DJ, and troubleshoot your computer? Can you also transfer music and charge it at the same time off of one cord?
But you know what the real beauty of the iPod design is? It anin't much bigger than a cassette. How much longer before someone comes out with a car stereo that accepts your iPod like a tape? They're gonna get my money.
(tig)
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Re:AAC is open source! (Score:4, Informative)
AAC is not "open source" You still have to pay to license it.
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Re:Funny how... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone with some cash and negotiating skills can create an online music store - and many companies have. There's no techological lock-in, exclusivity or leverage that Apple has that they can exploit, and most of the music they offer is also offered by others.
Microsoft, on the other hand, *can*, "*has* and likely *will continue to* leverage their OS monopoly to exclude others for playing in the media space. We'll see what happens when they open their music store.
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Re:While... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is why Apple has licensed the iPod to HP.
Which is why iTunes is also Windows software.
Which is why the iPod OS is designed and maintained by somebody other than Apple. Which is why USB, Firewire and other technologies are shared across the broad spectrum of platforms. yeah Apple goes it alone with such things as ATA, PCI
Apple goes it alone on these things:
Design (beautiful things work better see Donald Norman)
Usability (because if it's not brain dead simple I'll have to think about how to do stuff instead of just doing it.
Focus (whether in Digital lifestyle stuff like iTunes and iMovie or whether in bio-informatics, Apples hardware and software are tailored to getting things DONE)
Lifestyle (like the wearable computing fashion indicates, computers and devices are becoming embedded in our lives to such an extent that choosing these tools is a real factor in fashioning out lives)
And why Dell, Roxio, M$, and the others only sit and snipe.
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Re:While... (Score:4, Funny)
Do you own a powerbook? No? THEN SHUT UP
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Re:While... (Score:4, Informative)
You ask 'where are open standards when you need them?' The answer is, right where you're pointing.
AAC is
Now, admittedly, the DRM which Apple uses is
The reason some folks (including me) happen to like Apple is that they've been very supportive of open standards. Their nifty 'Rendezvous' discovery protocol is simply an implementation of the open 'zeroconf' protocol. Their iChat video and audio chat are based all on completely open standards which anyone can implement if they wish (though it does use AIM for the initial negotiation, alas). Etc.
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Re:While... (Score:4, Informative)
I've also written to the CEO of Veridisc, Gregory Halpern, with some questions about Fairplay. I'll post to slashdot if I get a reply.
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Re:Apple's DRM (Score:5, Informative)
Worked for me.
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Re:it doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Um, no. AAC is a lossy format. If you burn it to CD, then rip it and re-AAC it, you get something not quite as good as the original.
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The album myth lives! (Score:5, Interesting)
And as everyone has discovered who uses the service, iTMS isn't for buying albums. It's for buying singles. This way you get the one song you wanted on the album for $0.99 instead of $15, and that *is* a hell of a discount. Even if you find CD singles, they're much more than $0.99.
So for the majority of the world that (by definition) buys pop, iTMS makes sense. My wife just got 12 songs for $12 that would have cost over $100 in a store. I don't use it because I like older rock where 90% of an album didn't suck, but the service helps a large segment of the population.
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Re:DRM Online Music (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that you typically get price breaks on the iTunes Music Store for buying entire albums. Albums typically sell for $9.99 on the store, which is way cheaper than buying each track individually if there are more than 10 tracks on the album. Also, some tracks are not available for individual download; one might argue that this is a ploy to force customers to buy the album, but typically such tracks are either bonus material or songs that probably wouldn't sell individually.
The latest trend on the iTunes Music Store is to give price breaks on buying an entire EP as well. In those cases, the cost of the EP is even cheaper than a full album, and often cheaper than buying the songs individually off the EP.
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a (satisfied) iTunes Music Store customer. However, I buy most music on CD and rip it the traditional way still.
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Re:DRM Online Music (Score:5, Funny)
And really, 99c for a song isn't even that great of a deal. That makes a 15 song cd = $15.... Which essencially is the same price it was before. Not only that but you end up with an inflexible lossy-encoded file.
If by "sneak" you mean "implement because without it the major labels would never have agreed to let Apple distribute any of their songs" and "trick" you mean "tell you up front that their files are 'protected' by the weakest/most flexible DRM available from any online store that carries works from the major labels", and if by "$15 per cd" you mean "$9.99 for the majority of the albums", then yes, you're absolutely correct.
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