Jobs Says People Don't Want to 'Rent' Music 203
eldavojohn writes "PhysOrg is running a piece on a recent speech by Apple CEO Steve Jobs about DRM free music. While we know that Jobs is a self proclaimed proponent of DRM free music who's not all talk, he's now said that 'by the end of this year, over half of the songs we offer on iTunes we believe will be in DRM-free versions. I think we're going to achieve that.' Jobs pointed out what's obvious to us, the consumers, but isn't obvious to the music industry — 'People want to own their music.' He also dismissed subscription based music as a failure, and claimed a lot of other music labels are intrigued by the EMI deal."
Memo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Memo (Score:5, Funny)
My money is on the fact that Amazon has a patent on sensible sales models.
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He's Right (Score:3, Insightful)
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There is a reason why services like Netflix and Gametap are doing well. Some times people would prefer to have access to a wide ranger of products at a fixed monthly cost, then be forced to pick and choose products at a higher one time cost. I personally go through piles of Netflix DvDs each month but don't own a single DvD. It saves me a pile of money and leaves me only mildly irritated if I rant a bad movie.
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Most people don't want a movie more than once, music on the other hand (or software) gets listened to (used) over and over; often coming back to it months/years later.
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I'm glad someone gets it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, regarding DRM on bought music (Score:2)
But sure, if all the ways music was distributed in was copy protected and never broken it would work for them and suck for the consumers.
Renting in general (Score:5, Insightful)
In many cases, people must resort to renting because they can't afford to buy. This is hardly the case when it comes to music.
Like Jobs says, consumers want to own shit and do what they want with it. 'Renting' and 'subscription' are associated with control, red tape, limitations, etc. Buying a DRM-free song or album is a single transaction with no strings attached.
Re:Renting in general (Score:5, Insightful)
In most cases, buying a house is a better deal than renting a house. Hell, my mortgage payment is $300 less than renting the equivelent home (and that's before accounting for taxes). Buying is a no-brainer.
Music isn't as clear cut
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I suppose you could look at it that way, but what you are really doing in this case is hiring a service, just as you would any other deliveryman. I’m sure this is the way the cable company sees it, because that’s the way they describe the charges on my bill. I am neither buying nor renting the content, I am paying them to deliver “free” content.
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What if you end up a bit poorer? if you were buying music you'd just stop buying more and coast along with what you've got, if you were renting you'd lose your music collection completely until you subscribed again.
what if your provider cranks up prices and you see a better deal elsewhere but you really can't face the thought of re-finding and re-downloading your entire collection or you simply don't have the bandwidth to re-download it in a rea
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You sure?
See, I still physically own the first two CDs I've ever bought. I've "borrowed" and lost CDs since then, but back in 1989, I picked up "Mother's Milk" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and "Disintegration" by The Cure. Over the last eighteen years, I've listened to them, well, thousands of times. I've played them in my car(s), at home, on airplanes, while mowing the grass, riding my bike, and on and on and on. I've listened to those songs alone, sometimes with friends,
Re:Renting in general (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, but it's more complicated than that. I've been a Rhapsody subscriber since... oh... 2003. I went that route for a few reasons. 1.) I can always go find new music. If a friend says 'this song is good', I'm listening to it 20 seconds later. 2.) I'm near an internet-connected computer most of my waking life. I also work across 3 different machines. Work, home, laptop. Because I use a subscription service, I don't have to have gigs of backups or situations where I have some music on one computer and different music on another. I used to do that, and man it's a headache. Hard drive failures, for example, used to be rather stressful. 3.) I go through music. I have a few songs on my playlist that I had back in 03, but not many. I keep finding new stuff and listening to it. 4.) $10 a month is a lot less than I used to spend on music. 5.) I can still buy the music if I like. I've never done that, but even if I did, there's always iTunes. 6.) I rarely like a song the first time I hear it. I certainly don't find much use in hearing a 30 second clip. The subscription service allows me to plop a few songs in and see how I like them over time. I may not represent the majority, here, but I've found a number of songs that I had to 'get into'. Subscription makes perfect sense to me. I seriously doubt I'm in some minor niche, considering all the CableTV subscribers out there.
Frankly, I think Jobs is both right and wrong. I don't think many people care about subscription music. I also think that's because they haven't been exposed to it. If what I've seen from Slashdot postings is any indication, I don't think most people even get it. "But I don't own it!" Okay, fine, think of it is access to a huge database of music. Find what you want, go buy the copies you really want to keep. Paying a few bucks a month to listen to this music may turn some people off, but I don't think blindly buying music makes much more economic sense. Unless you've heard the song you're buying, you're basically just opening your mouth and closing your eyes. At least with a subscription model like Rhapsody's, you're getting the whole song along with access to thousands of others.
To each is own, but I completely agree with your comment about consumers wanting what gives them the best deal. The only thing I'd add to that is consumers need convincing. I don't think Jobs has tried the subscription service. I think that if he did, Apple could brainstorm a really interesting way to work that out. In other words, Apple could make it work, if they could just see past their own rationalizations. Heck, it was that sort of thinking that got iTunes off the ground despite the *AA's misgivings about it.
If you ask me, Jobs is being really short-sighted. Unfortunately we'll never know until Apple actually tries.
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That can be said of any business entering any market, including Apple in many cases.
"That makes him wise, not short-sighted."
It's not my intention to be argumentative here, but Apple is hardly a company that plays it safe.
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I think they do, if they sold 1 billion track and 100 million Ipods that means they sold 10 tracks per Ipod sold or about 1 CDs worth of music. So I would not consider Itunes store a success, the Ipod is a success.
That makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasons for subscription music services revolve largely around variety and choice. For $20 a month I can access MILLIONS, MILLIONS of songs. On top of that, your music "collection" is always up to date, new music being added all the time.
This is like saying "Nobody would want to SUBSCRIBE to cable television. You don't want to RENT your shows, you want to OWN them, JUST LIKE A HOUSE"
Let's not forget that Jobs has a vested interest here. He's not just speaking as a concerned observer. It just so happens that a subscription model is not terribly compatible with the iPod in its current incarnation.
For $20 a month, I can buy, what, 240 songs a year? Why is is a better deal to pay $240 for 240 songs when I can pay $240 for millions of songs, available to me via any internet connection, and easily sharable with trusted friends or family? If I cancel my subscription I don't have any songs. Who cares? For $20 more I can have access for another month to millions of songs again.
This isn't exactly a new model. If people were so concerned about "owning" content they wouldn't be going to libraries, they wouldn't be subscribing to Satellite Radio, and they wouldn't be subscribing to Cable TV.
Re:That makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I do. I have music that is 30+ years old. I don't want to be paying 20 dollars a month to listen to a few songs.
Besides that fact that you can't listen to a million songs, so having access to a million songs is really an illogical point.
How many unique songs will you listen to a year? That's the number you need to be using.
If you rent 1 song, you have to pay 20 a month just to hear the 1 song.
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The point is, people should be allowed as much choice as possible. Jobs has done a lot of cool things, but he's always given me the impression that he doesn't care too much for choice. The original Macintosh
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Another problem with subscription systems is the choice of music. If I'm paying for a monthly subcription, I want that subscription to cover ALL my music costs. The reason I would pay for a subscription would be so I wouldn't have to buy any CDs. The problem is, am I going to be able to find Tiger Army, Sick of it All, and Thelonious Monk songs that haven't been re-released on CD? Would I be able to listen to them in my car without some fussy adapter?
The reason I would buy non-DRM songs would be so I could
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Then you burn these to a CD and put them in a freaking drawer. Geesh.
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Once again, you chose to pick something that's totally unrelated in concept and you try to use it to justify your own v. rent opinion. This is just slightly better than suggesting that renting music is even a little similar to rentin
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The house is different. A house here costs avg. $100,000. Include into that homeowners insurance, taxes, interest, maintenance, water purification and other costs and over the c
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10 years at $1000 per month == $120,000 (taxes and mortgage about $90,000)
10 years at $1400 per month == $168,000 (taxes and mortgage about $100,000)
Likely rental cost after 30 years == $372,000:Equity = $0. (equity / value of home is probably about $300,000)
$700 seems really low- property taxes on a $100,000 house is about $3000 in texas.
Most people are playing $1,100 for $100,000 houses.
Houses are a good choice if you are staying in plac
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Given the choice, how many people would rent a home instead of buying it?
Rent, probably. I like the freedom to be able to move if I need it. I might invest in property as well, but I don't think combining investments and essentials is good economic sense. You don't buy canned that are on sale at a supermarket because the price might go up next week, and you can sell at a profit. If it's not sensible for food, why is it sensible for shelter?
Would you rather rent a TV from RaC or own it?
I used to own a TV, and it broke. I spent a lot getting it fixed. It broke again. I then didn't bother getting it fixed, because
10 Points for Stating the Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Well, duh (Score:5, Insightful)
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iTunes sold one BILLION songs; Stop repeating that RIAA FUD.
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Pretty much everything on iTunes can be got for free without much effort.
No, people don't mind paying for something they want, but that doesn't mean they will pay MORE then they feel they should.
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One can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
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Procedure[s] Properly Planned live forever!
It *is* obvious to the music industry (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's right. EMI is going to release as much of its back catalog as possible to the music services, inc. iTunes, without DRM.
I know, you'll believe it when you see it. But they've already released a few trax without DRM here and there.
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They are giving you no DRM--fewer unneccesary restrictions, and no more incentive to pirate simply to format-shift. They are (if you are right) giving you a higher quality format than Fairplay AAC or the DRMed WMPs. They are paying the composers of the work, and maybe will even pay the artists if the artists are lucky. They will do it on iTunes, with most of the artists they have. That should be worth something.
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Depends on Their Purpose (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I certainly wouldn't want to use the subscription service as my only source of music... primarily due to the limited selection, mediocre encoding quality and limitations of where I can listen. However, I'd say its worth its worth the $10 to be able to audition full albums of most stuff without trying to track them down on some p2p system.
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You can use free and legal services like Pandora for this.
Jobs' Perspective in Context (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, iTunes DRM is not designed for a subscription model. Re-engineering would be required, including firmware updates for older iPods, to enforce the subscriptions.
Moreover, not all songs are typically available via the subscription model. Jobs continues to make an issue about variable pricing for songs, with the DRM-free option being the one exception. Yet, consider how they are planning to implement this: by a preference in which the user selects which kind of music s/he prefers to buy.
Some have said a subscription model would require a whole new iTunes Store -- a separate store, with rentable tracks. This is not really true -- users could be presented with a "Buy Song" or "Rent Song" button where applicable.
A subscription service is "not out of the question," he says, but it doesn't look like it's in Apple's interests -- they would bear the price of increasing download costs, unlike the record companies.
DRM-free music, on the other hand, allows for seamlessness. Users can download music, copy it between iPods, computers, and friends' computers without a hassle. Rentable tracks would lend themselves to the opposite kind of experience.
Ownership (Score:2, Interesting)
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There is a difference between renting and getting crippleware. Buying a DRMed song or getting a Sony rootkit is cripple ware and I am completely against such things. On the other hand subscription services serve some people very well. I have Rhapsody and 3000+ songs from the subscription service. For me, it works well. I download what I want, load it into my MP3 player, and think nothing of it. To do th
I don't mind renting some music (Score:2, Insightful)
The radio statio
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Keep an eye on the terms of service, BTW. Apple's iTunes did allow songs to be directly converted from Fairplay AAC to stripped mp3 once. It no longer permits it so directly.
It's much more complicated that than. (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll have to work out a system probably based on who ever gets the most plays, which song is most popular, etc... And of course not all artists are worth the same, correct? You got songs many years old, competing against songs that are just released. Then how do you factor in the appreciation premiums? I'm sure a Antoni Bachelli is worth much more in the eyes of the people than a Britney Spears.
Then you'll get a system where the independent artists will get totally screwed. Their play percentage is much lower than the big record labels and of course they don't have the big wigs and high price lawyers on their side. At least with song purchase models it's easy to map where that 99 cents should go to.
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The portable music player keeps track of what songs you listen to. It reports this back to the Store. Once every month, the Store counts up all the songs listened to and how much the song was and sends off checks to the appropriate rights holders.
So if I listen to a Song/BMG song 100 times and listening to it costs 0.1 cents, I owe Sony/BMG 10 cents for that month.
Of course, that's tough to sell. So instead, t
Too expensive (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too expensive (Score:4, Informative)
There is still a distribution chain with iTunes. iTunes does not sign artists (yet), and it is not run by any labels. Therefore, it is distributing music from various labels, both major & indie. And the labels are themselves distribution mechanisms. We're not talking about music directly off some musician's webpage, unfortunately.
The major labels take a percentage of the price of an album or single. If they gouge at $0.99 and they gouge at $1.29, then they will gouge at $0.25. The less you pay at list, the less the artist will get paid. So we've a tricky economic problem here until someone stops the labels from gouging artists.
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The ultimate hypocrite? (Score:5, Insightful)
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emusic baby. (Score:2)
Please don't link to PhysOrg .. probable source (Score:2)
This appears to be the original article: at Ziff Davis' C|net [com.com].
Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us (Score:5, Insightful)
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When you *buy* software, you own a copy of it. Same with music.
Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike protected tunes, there is no way Apple can take away any of my "rights" for this music after I've bought it from them.
From my perspective, that sure as hell makes it look like I will own the DRM-free music I will purchase from iTunes.
Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because the license would be difficult to enforce doesn't mean you have a right to do what you want.
As an extreme example, If they wanted to, Apple and the record companies could introduce a subscription model without DRM, and as a subscriber you agree that if you stop paying that you will delete all the songs. Obviously it would be difficult for them to force you to do it. But that alone wouldn't give you the right to keep them.
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Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us (Score:5, Informative)
The First-sale doctrine [wikipedia.org], which is both case and codified law, says otherwise.
The first-sale doctrine has not been tested at the supreme court level in relation to downloaded music, but this is one case in which a conservative court is more likely to side against the record industry. The law says what it says; you'd have to be one of those so-called "activist" judges to read something into it other than what's on paper and side with the RIAA.
DRM-free purchased songs are "owned" under the law. Heck, so are DRM'd songs; you just can't legally break the DRM for resale purposes, making the first-sale doctrine moot.
Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us (Score:5, Insightful)
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The first-sale doctrine has not been tested at the supreme court level in relation to downloaded music, but this is one case in which a conservative court is more likely to side against the record industry. The law says what it says; you'd have to be one of those so-called "activist" judges to read something into it other than what's on paper and side with the RIAA.
Don't be fooled - those judges aren't "conservative" in the sense that they'd prefer not to overrule past decisions. They're just politically conservative. They'll happily read whatever they want into the law if it fits their ideology.
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I think with music with DRM the situation is similar to the situation when you bought wallpaper: You are allowed to resell it, but it is difficult once the wallpaper is on the wall, and the manufacturer doesn't need to help you.
Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us (Score:4, Informative)
No. People are just confused as to what the product is.
If I buy a CD, I own the CD. The actual CD. I can shred it, I can give it a friend (so long as I don't have any copies of it), I can sell it, etc. The same would apply to a downloaded song, though it is a bit of a harder stretch for some peoples' minds because of the difference between digital and physical goods.
In neither case did I buy the copyright. I don't control (re)distribution except of my own copy of the work, but I can transfer ownership so long as it is transfered in full.
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Anybody happen to know if the DRM-free AAC tracks will play on media players other than iPods (presuming they play AACs, of course)?
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That's great! Right now, I don't really buy much on iTunes because I haven't been terribly thrilled with the quality, and they won't play on my e200 without recompressing to a different format. If they improve the quality and remove the DRM, I'll probably buy quite a bit more there...
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And really, you never fully own a lot of things. Your computer, for instance. You own it, but do you own the idea that created it? The right to manufacture more?
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Jobs means "rent music" like we "rent beer" - we enjoy it for a little, then it's gone down the toilet and we have to buy more.
I'd rather have unfettered continuous access to any music I'd like to hear and not get permission from some higher authority on the Internet each time... especially one that wishes to charge me money over and over. What would you do - given the choices of (1) having a coin operated music player that does pay for play or (2) a music player that lets you buy a blanket license and pla
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Even when you "purchase" a song, you don't own it. "Renting" or not, you never really own anything other than a license.
Yes you do own it. You own an exact copy, and you can do anything with that copy you please... except copy it. The RIAA cannot come and confiscate your CD.
That's where copyRIGHT comes in. It is the right to make a copy, not the ability. It has nothing to do with ownership. You own it, but your rights are restricted. There are other restricted rights as well, such as the right to publi
You *do* own the music you buy (Score:2)
That's what the RIAA wants you to think.
When you purchase a song, you purchase either a piece of media on which the song is recorded, or the service of having that data sent to you. (Though actually, it's a little unclear to me what exactly you are purchasing when you purchase a "download"; maybe you're paying someone who is licensed to make copies, to make a copy to your disk?) Either way
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IP issues? Not anymore! (Score:2)
To put it another way, the Beatles lost. They got paid for losing, but they lost.
So, if Apple Inc. wants Apple Inc. Records bad enough, there can be an Apple Inc. Records!
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How close are they to 2.5 BN downloads.
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Re:Just a note: Jobs' RDF (Score:4, Informative)
eMusic is considered to be the #2 player in the online music business, and they're subscription based. You can argue how much of eMusic's #2-ness is because of DRM backlash, or favoring independent labels, or whatever, but eMusic is proof that subscriptions are not a deal-breaker, and certainly not failures. And before anyone confuses the subject, subscription != rental. Once a credit goes towards a track on eMusic (citing them as that's what I'm familiar with), you get to download that from wherever you want, as many times as you want, and you can do whatever you want with the file.
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I'm on the other side of the fence. I've stayed with easy to use formats such as MP3 and only use services that cater to the consumer instead of trying to herd people into a walled garden someplace. When I get a file, I expect to play it on my Linux PC, Living room DVD player (Plays MP3 CD's), Car Stereo (same as DVD player), as well as my off brand MP3 flash player (Non-DRM MP3 & WMA). Selling a limited func
Pssst (Score:2)
lets see,
It is a buck per track that you can listen to anytime.
so, How many unique tracks to you listen to that aren't available for free elsewhere?
where can you play the music?
what happens if the service is shut down?
how do you get napster in your car?
drm free music will be good for the consumer, no matter who offeres it.
of course, I don't buy 180 new tracks a year.
5000 dollars would mean about 350 hours a year in songs that you never
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In next week's lesson, Anonymous Coward learns about contradictions and hypocrisy.
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When the iTunes music store opened, it was announced that they'd be going back to the original masters to encode the AACs, instead of ripping from CDs. As I understand it, this means it's entirely possible for an AAC at 256kbps to be more faithful to the original signal than would be the equivalent Red Book-compliant CD.
It does seem that the AACs from the iTS are samp
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Sadly, the news is that someone is actually doing something about the self evident problem. Better yet they are someone in a position to actually fix the problem. Imagine if all of the obvious problems in the world had similarly empowered champions to tackle them.
Re:What we reallly want... (Score:5, Informative)
AAC as used by Apple is part of the MPEG-4 standard. [mp3-tech.org] Apple didn't invent it and doesn't own it.
All digital music, with the exception of purely synthesized stuff, has to pass through an analog-to-digital conversion process that throws away information (quantizing). So "uncompressed music" is still actually compressed -- and lossy-compressed at that -- if it's in digital form. The question has never been compressed vs. uncompressed, but rather what type and level of information loss you find acceptable.
I'm happy with a compression format that is not encumbered with lots of onerous license terms (i.e., that I could write and distribute an open-source player for if I felt like it) and that produces quality slightly better than the point at which I can hear the difference on a good stereo system. The "slightly better" simply so that if I get an even better stereo system later on, I still won't hear the difference. As long as that baseline is met, I want the format to take as few bytes per song as possible.
Does that make me not "people?"
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Re:What we reallly want... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if that's what you want (free, as in beer, music) come out and say it, and lets have a real debate over the underlying issue. But don't hide behind this BS "uncompressed music" argument. No commercially available completely uncompressed. Even most CD's are dynamically range compressed [wikipedia.org].
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