I recently went to try out some free online music — not my first time, as you might know already. And although these songs are "free", they're still in .wma format, and worse, they're DRM protected. That seems awkward, the first time I wanted to play these tracks, they tried to get a "license". Worse, ever after I got that license, they still won't play on all players I throw them at. There seems to be a few glitches in the sound too, though I'm not sure that's actually caused by the DRM. I wouldn't be surprised if it was indeed the case.
Anyway, it seems to be too much hassle for "free" tracks. I'm thinking of just getting rid of them, and simply forget I ever heard them.
There's no chance in hell I'd ever actually buy music online that is "protected" in a similar manner. No way.
On a similar note, I just bought the new album from The Chemical Brothers. It is very prominently announced on the album that it is "copy controlled". I have experience with this particular kind of "copy control". Nero Media Player has no trouble with it. Exact Audio Copy has no trouble with it. CDex has no trouble with it. If DRM did work as intended, I wouldn't even have bought the album.
I mostly listen to my music on the computer. I'm planning on extracting the tracks and separate them more cleanly with Audacity. If you won't allow me, I won't buy it, it's that simple. I'd just have gotten the few tracks I'm most interested in from P2P, and that would have been it.
Let me repeat it, slowly: DRM hurts CD sales. If DRM on this CD did work as intended, I simply wouldn't have bought the CD.
I buy up to several CDs a month. You really don't want to lose customers like me. Trust me.
You're supposed to make customers feel special, you have to spoil them. Instead, you're trying out how far you can go with this without annoying them too much. Well, it's too much already. People don't like that. They just feel used. And that's no way to generate loyalty.
DRM is a real pain, it's no problems to the professional counterfeiter, but can be a pain for real users. I don't see why the music companies bother, it's a waste of time and money, and has no effect on crime....
Re:DRM = speed bump
schwern on 2005-03-17T19:11:40
Software companies spent 20 years and billions of dollars trying to develop copy protection for software only to have each one blown through by a few teenagers on a BBS. Ahh, the old days of two 1541 drives and the latest copy of Nibbler grinding away. In the end they calculated its just not worth the cost.
In the end, if I can run the program / play the music I can copy it. We can call that a fundamental axiom of software.
Those who do not learn from history... well, they try to get laws passed in their favor.:) Re:DRM = speed bump
ajt on 2005-03-19T16:40:08
I know what you mean. They may be able to stop "Autie Matilda" from copying her latest CD and distributing it around her knitting circle, but that's about it. For the genuine users it's a real pain when the DRMed disk doesn't play in the car stereo, or the DVD player you bought to replace the CD player. Yet, you can still buy a counterfeight disk down the market before it comes out in the shops, it costs a fraction of the price, and best of all it plays properly every where.
I don't endorse ileagal duplication, but annoying your customers is not the best way to treat them if you want them to come back...
