Music Companies Bemoan New High-Cap Portables 347
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports: 'The music industry this week condemned the launch of two recording systems that will let people copy between 30 and 100 hours of music onto a single disc.'" The Sony system is supposed to use "ultra-efficient data compression system used in MiniDiscs" to fit "30 hours of MP3 music" on a CD-R. (I thought MD used ATRAC rather than MP3, and that ATRAC's standard bitrate was 285.3 Kbps -- can some MD gurus bring us up to speed?) Philips' system skips CDs, and instead uses a DVD burner, with the resulting disks playable in a to-be-released portable player. I wonder what kind of DRM features the companies will use to cripple each system.
so.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an expert! (Score:3, Insightful)
Read: "ultra-efficient data compression system" == ATARC. They're just saying MP3 because it makes people go "OOOOoooo!" and buy it.
dvd eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly than DRM is how much will this cost? DRM is important, don't get me wrong, but no matter how little copyright protection is on the thing, if the DVD audio player costs $250 in addition to the rest of the audio system, not many people are going to buy it unless it sounds better than all else.
Sony is Schizophrenic (Score:5, Insightful)
My favorite quote from the article speaks for itself:
Mike Tsurumi, a president of Sony Consumer Electronics in Berlin, insists that the move makes sense. "The music companies need to change their business model, he says.
This is an executive within Sony talking, mind you. Fucking amazing. Is there any centralized coordination? Isn't there a CEO of Sony corporate who keeps his divisions in line with the goals (i.e. bottom line interests) of the company as a whole?
As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony had an interesting stance. (Score:4, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a trend, Innovators just saying no to hollywoods ancien regime. Or, if its just a one off fluke.
Crash
It's a no-brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
"Further, we believe that people that listen to their music too much are also depriving the artists of revenue. If you listen to an album more than 10 or 12 times, you're morally obligated to go buy another copy. Anything else is stealing food from the mouths of starving artists."
When asked whether artists were deliberately kept starving, the spokesman refused comment.
See, the problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mike Tsurumi, a president of Sony Consumer Electronics in Berlin, insists that the move makes sense. "The music companies need to change their business model," he says.
Seriously, if the industry hasn't gotten the hint at this point, I doubt it ever will...
Face it, sail-makers: (Score:5, Insightful)
You can keep building your clipper ships; we'll admire that intersection of form and function for years to come, to be sure.
Ultimately, smart money will evacuate the market before it is crushed by better technology.
Dumb money will stand around whining, or, worse still for all, attempt to prop up its impotence with lawsuits.
Easy for me to say; it's not my career.
Nevertheless, let common sense and long-term planning be your guide.
Three Posts for the Price of One (Score:3, Insightful)
The popular music industry uses a unique business model. Talented (and untalented) people create songs. They then hire a manager or promoter to get them shows and introduce them to and represent their interests with record labels. The manager takes the artist's(') songs and sells them to record labels. Record labels help the artists record these songs onto some form of salable, distributable media. Record labels hire big name producers to assist the recording and creation process. Record labels then enable the artist to receive exposure on television, radio, and whatever format du jour that looks good. This promotion enables artists to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their songs instead of just hundreds of copies. The money generated from these sales is divided three ways between the record label, the producer, the manager, and the artist(s). Why does the artist, who is creating the product, get the short end of the stick?
Answer: If an engineer creates a product for Company X, and Company X sells this product and makes millions off of the idea, the engineer will not see a large percentage of the money generated from his/her idea.
If an engineer came up with a brilliant product idea, but after one widget was sold, consumers could infinitely copy it... The engineer might be slightly upset if that began to happen.
If an engineer creates a widget that sells millions of copies, and this widget was copied because the original widget broke, the engineer might still be upset. If you broke your widget, then you should have to pay to replace your widget. If you need a backup widget, you should just buy two. If you can't use your widget, then why did you buy it? Remember that if there is enough demand for alternatives to widgets, then someone else could create a wadget and sell to this new market.
The music industry does not like this new technology because now it is not possible for an artist to sell a CD that is full. Have you noticed that some store bought audio tapes can hold up to 90 minutes of music? CDs are a bit of a step backwards. And, even though people recognize the superior audio capabilities of several audio formats, they are not being used or widely sold. Admittedly, that could be due to format wars. But, I would love to go to the store and buy a CD with every single song ever recorded by an artist. This is easily possible with MP3s. I might even be willing to pay more than $20, especially for prolific artists. I could live with the lower sound quality because of the quantity provided. This is not happening. I hate the music industry, which is determined to suicide by means of terrible public relations.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
The poster is just saying that it's non-news, just a new/different/updated way to store music.
"Insightful" may be overstating it, but possibly more accurate than informative or interesting.
But since when did moderation become an exact science?
You could compare this (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd imagine anyone who was using vynil when they made the push to CDs knows what I'm talking about.
Dirt Nap (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the Billboard Top 100 Singles by year on a single disc. As a huge fan of 80's music, I would rather drop $50 for each disc to get the hits from '84, '85, and '86 rather than several hundred dollars on individual discs or crappy compilations that are 80% filler anyway.
How about releasing a band's entire back catalog on one of these discs, complete with liner notes, lyrics and videos for $100. The Complete Pink Floyd. The Complete Led Zepellin. The Complete Iron Maiden (no snickering).
How about releasing The Essential Tour Compilation. Take the top 25 live shows from a band's previous tour and add travel diaries, interviews, and massive picture galleries. I'd drop a c note on that.
The best part is that this will fit seemlessly into how I already use my music. I curse those stacks and stacks of CDs that take up space in my closet, no longer used because I prefer the freedom a 24x CD-RW drive, dual 100GB hard drives, and a RioVolt that plays MP3 CDs give me.
The music industry has had its collective head up its collective arse for way too long. The technology is there just begging to be used in new and interesting ways, but they're still crunching the numbers with an abacus! Give me a fair price, flush the DRM bullshit and stop calling me a fucking "pirate" and maybe I'll help save your pathetic industry.
Re:As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of people might want to have massive orgies, too. If you can look at only the upsides of something, and not the consequences, lots of things can come off as quite attractive.
I don't know how the numbers wind up. I don't know whether it's actually the case that record companies supporting this would be good or bad for them. However, I do know that saying that CD companies would make money doing something just because people want it doesn't mean that it's a good idea, if it puts people in a game-theoretic position where music is a public good -- and stealing it is better for any individual, though it screws everyone over long run.
So you can't claim that "people want it" is a good reason for a company to do something (particularly as people don't have perfect information, and tend to be short-sighted about the consequences of this). Think about the article that was run on Slashdot a while ago about what happened to the Chinese music industry because of mass piracy. It's not dead, no, but it's nowhere near as productive as the US industry, either.
Heck, if people didn't want to do things that were stupid ideas, you wouldn't see people doping up.
Re:ATRAC3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Before MDLP, minidiscs just used ATRAC, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is a psychoacoustic encoding with a compression ratio of around 7:1. At this point an Minidisc, with a capacity of around 120MB, can store as much audio as a CD.
With the advent of portable MP3 players, Sony realized that minidisc would be drastically outmoded if MD could not store more. They came out with a considerably more lossy codec which extended ATRAC and called it MDLP. This codec was a lot more like MP3, as Sony presumed (correctly) that people would be willing to deal with the quality loss, since MP3 is not a hugely high quality codec. At the lowest quality setting its passable only for Audio Books, but it sounds pretty good (in my personal experience) at higher settings.
This MDLP technology is what Sony is using to make up the statistics on this machine. I also bet they're quoting stats at the lowest, hugely crappy setting.
--
Phil
30 hours on a CD around 58~62kbps (Score:5, Insightful)
30 hours means 1800 minutes, divide 1800 with 74, and you get 24.324324324, so that means 24x times compression. Divide 1411.2kbps by 24.324324324 and you get around 58kbps.
One more try, divide 1800 with 80, get 22.5, divide 1411.2 by 22.5, get 62kbps.
So basically, they use they're saying they're using approx. 58~62kbps ATRAC3 on a CD. Doesn't sound all that nice to me.
Re:Ultra-efficient ATRAC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stereophile refuses to perform double-blind testing and have been taken in by hoax after hoax. They swore that coloring the edge of a CD green (with a product called "CD Stoplight") improved the sound. I used to subscribe but got sick of the $400 speaker cables, magic line cords, and other unscientific "tweaks."
If Stereophile's reviewers go into a listening session and are told that they are hearing audio that has been subjected to a type of lossy compression, they have a preconceived notion that it will sound inferior. They want, desperately, to hear a difference to prove to themselves, their colleagues, and their readers that they posess both superior hearing and exquisite audio equipment. It's no way to do science and should be rejected as a methodology.
The article is simplistic and un-enlightening (Score:3, Insightful)
--CTH
Re:Ultra-efficient ATRAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The real problem is you can't protect against one without restricting the other. Record companies don't really care about backup copies. They're more concerned with downloading 100 songs from Kazaa and burning them, rather than buying the music.
Re:It's a no-brainer (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not the problem.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't seem to get it. The RIAA doesn't acknowledge the _existence_ of legal MP3 files (or any other type of files - divx, etc.). To do so would make people see the gaping hole in their 'proof' that file-trading is the same as stealing a CD. Don't _ever_ expect the RIAA to 'get it'. They get it - and they're lying their asses off (and likely PAYING off) hoping the legislators WON'T get it.
Yes, they could make shitloads more money by making use of new technology - that's not the point. The RIAA know this. Their big thing is CONTROL over the entertainment products (and the artists that create them). This is all about control, not the initial revenue. AFTER they have grabbed total control, THEN they can choke the money out of everyone. It's just like MS - they'll take a massive monetary hit in initial revenue to take over a market and destroy their competition. Yes, Xbox, I'm talking about you.
Re:Dirt Nap (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, yes - that may be, but I'm sure the RIAA would much rather you plunk down several hundred dollars on individual discs, than $50 on one disc.
Re:As usual (Score:3, Insightful)
Productive? In what way? In the sense of generating more forgettable junk than anybody else? There is good music in the US, but, if anything, the US seems to produce less of that relative to its size than other places. And the people who produce good stuff in the US benefit hardly at all from the current system.
Ah, the music industry... (Score:1, Insightful)
Only one of those bullies is SONY who is also one of the world's biggest music companies. But, I know, I know, just because two departments are in the same megacorp doesn't mean that they still do not compete.
But the ole dinosaur of the old totalitarian music industry is dying. Let it be buried and it's body rot and evole into oil. Time for the next wave!
First, we will duplicate and distribute all information for next to nothing.
Next, we will duplicate and distribute all goods (replicators) for next to nothing.
And finally, we will duplicate and distribute all services for next to nothing (robots).
Money is doomed. Paradise is coming.
Re:Mincing words.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As usual (Score:4, Insightful)
Music? Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
They serve plates with ten things on it.
You get no choice on what food goes on which plate. If you want fries, you get nine more food items as well, whether you want them or not, and pay full price for all.
So you want a burger, fries, and a coke. That's three plates. Fries come on one, the other has a burger on it, and a coke comes with a third. You get a shitload of asparagus, beans, corn, some sort of goo claimed to be edible, along with other unwanted items.
Tell me, honestly, would you eat there?
Re:ATRAC3 (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with sony's codecs is that they're not "open." I'm not one of those zealots here, but ATRAC3 and MDLP have a significant amount of DRM associated with them. The NetMD software absolutely blows. Why? Because you have to "check out" your MP3s. You can only have a song "checked out" twice, then you have to check it in (delete it from an MD) to use it on another MD. There are ways to get around this (use Nero to burn MP3s to an image, mount the image then NetMD treats it like a legit CD) but it's largely a pain in the ass that accomplishes nothing.
Also, there will probably never be a program that will put songs on an MD that's not written by Sony. ATRAC3 and MDLP belong to Sony, and you're almost assured to get sued if you release another program that doesn't allow them to use DRM to protect Columbia records (a Sony holding.) If it weren't such a royal pain in the ass, NetMD would probably own the market, but as it is, it's a bit too cumbersome for most people.
Re:Ultra-efficient ATRAC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. High End audio types are hysterical. "Oxygen-free copper cables", indeed.
Now there are even "high end" RJ11 cables for dial-up modems. [monstercable.com] Like the five feet from the wall jack to the computer will be where noise gets in, as opposed to the miles of unshielded wire from the jack to the central office.
Re:As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
But they are willing to take away your right to backup in order to keep you from using Kazaa. Thats the problem. No matter what they spend, they can not stop it. If they make it impossible to record from disk, then people will make very high quality analog verisons, then digitize. It will still be good enough. But now you have pissed off your customers, who will delight in sticking it to you.
Another problem: Much of the new music coming out on major labels is not much better than private label stuff out of some home studios, and freely available. They can't control that either.
Until they realize that they can't put the toothpaste back into the tube and change their business model, they will have this problem. Someone here pointed me to emusic.com, which has a great model IMHO. Just not the absolute newest stuff. $10 a month for unlimited music.
Re:It's a no-brainer (Score:2, Insightful)
Laugh. It's Funny.
Re:Unofficial poll (Score:4, Insightful)
These three do pretty well terrorising the US.
If you're a Republican, hit Alt-F4 to reply.
MP3 is not high quality on comsumer electronics (Score:5, Insightful)
But you're missing the point. You are talking about Sony, a big consumer electronics company, not about esoteric command line parameters.
On a regular Minidisc deck, you don't get to manage the ATRAC compression parameters and bitrate, and you get a very good quality and a real "guarantee" that if you are using all-Sony equipment, your recorded Minidiscs are going to sound just great. This is simple, and users love it.
Now, MP3 is a format that almost nobody but experienced people understands. As you said: "MP3s encoded at 128kbps CBR (constant bit rate) using an encoder such as Xing WILL result in poor-quality mp3s". Want to bet how many people sharing their MP3s collections on P2P know that? Popular MP3s on the 'Net are of average quality, at best. Most of them are real crap (well, some songs may not deserve any better).
ATRAC is a format users DON'T NEED to understand. Minidisc is a user-end oriented product, and a really good one at that. ATRAC even has full forward and backward compatibility, meaning you don't need to know which versions of encoded discs and decoder players you have for them to work perfectly.
Now, as other
MDLP and NetMD are there for a reason, it's comparable to the quality Kaaza lusers are used to from their crappy MP3s, while keeping the simplicity of the Minidisc format.
Re:Ultra-efficient ATRAC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Very right, but hell, I'll prove it with science before the audiophiles get here.
A little math using our good old friend Ohm's law into an 8-Ohm speaker. To do this we need a table [bu.edu] of accepted wire resistances or one hell of an ohm-meter.
IMHO, 18 gauge wire is overkill for 150 watts. Let's see if it is, though!
Assuming your speaker is 10 feet away from the stereo (your room isn't a concert hall, is it?) we calculate loss as such:
6.6 Ohms / 1000 feet = 0.0066 Ohms per foot = 0.066 Ohms in 10 feet.
To push 150 watts through an 8 Ohm load (speaker) we need:
I = (150 / 8) (sqrt) = 4.33 Amps.
Now, to calculate the loss to heat caused by the resistance of the cable:
P = 4.33^2 * 0.066 = 1.24 watts.
Which likely couldn't even muster a measly 1 or 2 degrees temperature change in an 18 AWG 10 ft. heatsink.
Therefore, by using the crappiest SPT-2 [meci.com] lamp cord you can find, you can have a fire-resistant, UL approved sound system that pumps delivers a full 99% of it's power to speakers at 150 watts. And any normal person will find 150 watts of RMS power total overkill for anything but a sub.
BTW: Don't waste your money on gold plated junk unless you live in an area that gets a lot of corrosion. Gold is a poorer conductor than copper, and therefore is a detriment to efficiency.
Personally, though, I try to use 16 gauge cable. 18 gauge tends to be too thin to be durable enough for me. Oh, and I happily push over 250 watts RMS through 16 gauge wire without even the slightest tinge of warmth on the cable.
By the way, lamp cord is usually a lot more flexible and easier to route than that horrible, unapproved crap they call "speaker cable". Which is why it usually costs a little more than the bargain basement stuff, but heck, it's worth it in reduced effort!
One day I'll print this out really nicely and stick it up next to the stereos at Best Buy/FutureShop.
So did you do a double-blind test? (Score:4, Insightful)
And those studies say a good mp3 encoding (192k/s VBR / 256k/s CBR) is as good as the CD. Worked on a couple of friends of mine at least... was shitting mp3, but they couldn't tell them apart when I encoded to mp3, decoded to wav and burned in random pairs (original/mp3 pair) on CD.
Also as for b), blaming the PC equipment is very much redundant, as any serious half-audiophile will use the digital out to connect to a much better sound system than a PC audio card. Just don't start talking to me about gold plated radiation shielded bubblewrapped digital sound cables, please?
Kjella
Where I listen it doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
While walking outside, there's so much background noise and my headphones (either the earbuds or my Koss Porta-Pro juniors) just aren't good enough to be able to tell a "really good" MP3 from an OK one. I have a ton encoded with the Xing encoder (most were done with VBR), and I couldn't tell you which ones were which, they sound fine to me. I can tell *damaged* MP3s (those with skips, bad warble) but not "bad" ones.
It's even more true in my car. My car CDs are audio CDs but made from MP3 files. The car is such a noisy environment, that I don't see how you could tell a "good" MP3 from a "bad" one (again, damaged is another category).
I think you'd have to do some serious, high-quality headphone listening in a really quiet environment to be able to tell the difference. I think the vast majority of people might be able to tell the difference in some places with A/B listening when coached, but if you just put the MP3 on and played it they'd never say "that sounds off, is it a 128k xing?"
Re:It actually is (Score:2, Insightful)