[moved]

1. Yahoo wants to sell music to the iPod market. It can't do that with its own DRM.

2. Yahoo would use Apple's DRM if Apple would license it to them, but Apple won't.

3. The only other way for Yahoo to sell to the iPod market is to sell non-DRM MP3 files.

4. However, they are going to watermark the MP3s so that they can trace the origins of any copy found on a filesharing network.

5. Yahoo's current offering appears to be ONE song sold for twice the price of an iTunes download.

How lame can you get, Yahoo?

Meanwhile, great sites like Magnatune
http://magnatune.com/
sell legal non-DRM, non-watermarked MP3s that you can listen to for free before you buy. The 128k MP3s are Creative Commons licensed (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). You can share them with anyone you like, and derivative works are explicitly allowed. In some cases you also get lyrics, scores, MIDI files, samples etc that you can rework and improve if you like. You can use the music royalty-free in your podcasts (even commercial ones).

This is how music should be! Higher quality formats can also be purchased, and commercial licensing is available in case you want to sell CD compilations or somesuch.

The "big labels" won't allow Magnatune to sell their stuff, of course, but that doesn't matter. The best music is found on the small labels – but you have to look for it yourself instead of just soaking up the big-label marketing. Magnatune is picky about which music they will stock, so the quality is pretty high.

The company slogan is "We Are Not Evil" and they pay the artists 50% of all revenue (compared to a tiny pittance that a "big label" would pay).

Ethical music retailing.

Does the watermark survive fair use sharing (of short clips taken from the MP3)?

<< Yahoo's current offering appears to be ONE song sold for twice the price of an iTunes download.

Not true. Jessica Simpson's song costs $1.99 because you can put your own name in it, In the song.

"though $1.99 is a premium price because of the PERSONALIZATION, not the DRM, the right price for MP3s is somewhere between $0.99 and there, IMHO"

from Yahoo blog

While I hope places like magnatune.com win out eventually, you can get a much larger number of artists (including some you've actually heard of – Coldplay, Jethro Tull, They Might Be Giants, etc.) in non-DRM MP3 format at emusic.com.

I've never liked emusic.com enough to keep a suscription for more than a couple months at a time, but I've purchased hundreds of songs there and have been very pleased overall.

Philipp: I don't know which watermarking technology Yahoo is using, but ALL modern audio watermarking schemes are distributed across the file and survive even in short clips.

Ionut: The personalization is a marketing gimmick, but it's not like it explains the cost. Everyone who orders the "Jenny" personalization will get the same file. If Yahoo wants a part of this market they are going to have to match iTunes pricing.

I'm just speculating here, but I guess the choice of a personalized song for this "toe in the water" is also to reduce casual file-sharing by people who don't know about the watermarking technology.

In the above post, where I said "everyone who orders the 'Jenny' personalization will get the same file" I meant that they will get the same audio file. Presumably the watermarking is applied uniquely at the time of sale.

Sorry for any confusion.

I think we should listen to Roger.

This doc seems interesting:
http://72.14.221.104/search?q=cache:GA6z01xD5gIJ:www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs588-fall2001/projects/presentations/team10.ppt+digital+watermarking+mp3&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=firefox-a

> I think we should listen to Roger.

Sorry, you can't. Magnatune refused to accept the MP3 of me singing in the shower.

I have to insist: Download music for free, legally and support the artist by doing that. The more copied and well known they are the more concerts they are asked to play the more they earn.

Choose netaudio! Support all artists, not just ugly millionaires like Metallica or Madonna that would sue or insult you for listening to their music.

I've heard that Moby doesn't mind if we download his music illegally. He even said he feels flattered.

my thoughts on file-sharing?
well, as i've said before i'm happy and flattered if anyone makes the effort to listen to my music, regardless of the medium by which it's delivered.
i'm glad that the apple i-store exists, because that seems like a potentially healthy way of dealing with this situation, by offering downloads for a fairly reasonable price.
and in general i do not support the efforts of the riaa regarding file-sharing.
i didn't support them when they cracked down on internet radio (which really wasn't even their stated domain). and i don't support them now that they're cracking down on people who've engaged in file-sharing.
i know for a fact that a lot of people first heard my music by downloading it from napster or kazaa. and for this reason i'll always be glad that napster and kazaa have existed.
i'm sure that this is not a very popular thing for me to say, but it's the truth. i believe that we're moving towards some sort of resolution, though.
and i hope for happy endings for all involved: record companies, musicians, music lovers, record stores, file-sharing sites, etc. everyone just needs to bend a little bit and the situation will be remedied (i.e-supporting your local record store, supporting things like apple's i-store, charging less for cd's, recognizing that file-sharing has served a great promotional value for record companies, musicians not expecting to get rich from selling music, etc).
and the riaa certainly shouldn't prosecute people for listening to music. i can understand prosecuting people who copy and sell cd's, but i can't understand prosecuting someone because they love music and have a few illegally downloaded songs on their hard-drive.
thanks,
moby

So Björk is not superstitious then?
“You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up.” Björk gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. “God bless the internet,” she adds.

And what about you, then?
“I'll still be there, waving a pirate flag.”

http://unit.bjork.com/specials/albums/medulla/pirate/index.htm

"The cool thing about Napster is that it encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do." – Thom Yorke (Radiohead)

"Napster is the future, in my opinion. That's the way music is going to be communicated around the world. The most important thing now is to embrace it" – Dave Matthews

- from 2000
http://www.mavericktimes.com/survival1.html

I wish Apple would sell CRAP (DRM) free music, and also release a utility to retroactively remove DRM from past songs you've purchased. I'd be ecstatic to get DRM free songs, but with a hidden watermark. I don't plan on 'sharing' the songs, I just don't want the hassle and restrictions of DRM.

Copyright laws could disappear tomorrow, and iTunes would still be profitable. Many people will pay 99 cents for a no-hassle way to get the music they want.

It's the same with water. You can get water from a tap essentially for free, yet supermarkets still make plenty of money selling water in plastic bottles.