News

New Anti-Piracy Music CDs Sell Well Despite iPod Incompatibility

Friday, August 5th, 2005 at 3:30 PM - by Staff

Reuters is reporting that, despite backlash from some angry fans, recent music CDs with anti-piracy technology are selling well, despite the fact that they're incompatible with iPods. Among the new releases are albums from Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews Band.

Writer Sue Zeidler says that the anti-piracy protection on the CDs enables listeners to make three copies of them, as well as store the music on a computer in Windows Media format, which is incompatible with the iPod. (Ms. Zeidler writes: "But the copy-protection bars users from importing music onto iPods since Apple's Fairplay software is incompatible with Windows." This is inaccurate because Fairplay is the DRM (digital rights management) included with songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store, which is of course available to Windows and Mac users.)

Ms. Zeidler notes that approximately a third of the 252 Amazon.com customer reviews of the Foo Fighters' new album complain about the situation, with one pointing out that "the copy protection scheme makes it totally useless to 30 million iPod owners." However, the albums are available for purchase through the iTunes Music Store, which would enable iPod owners to load them on their devices.

The reporter also cites a statement from Sony BMG, which said that "users can get the music onto iPods by transferring files to a PC, burning them to a CD, ripping those and transferring them into iTunes."

The reporter quotes an anonymous record label executive who said that "it's up to Apple to flip the switch" and make sure the WMA format works with iPods. Apple declined to comment. Meanwhile, the Foo Fighters's "In Your Honor" has sold over 736,000 copies, including 23,000 online downloads, while Dave Matthews' "Stand Up" has registered 1.1 million sales, including 56,000 online purchases.

Those numbers don't seem to reflect lost sales. To back that up, Ms. Zeidler quotes Billboard's director of charts, Geoff Mayfield, who says: "I haven't noticed them selling off par with their past albums. In fact the Foo Fighters' first week was the best week they've ever had."

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 5:08 pm

Any Mac user that tires of this nonsense should check out Audio Hijack by Rogue Amoeba. It really does a remarkable job of converting ANY file to another format, sidestepping any encryption along the way (including Fairplay). And in a completely legal manner, mind you - it simply captures the analogue signal being fed to the audio out, much like recording live radio. I couldn't believe the quality of the conversion when I first tried it. It's much better than the old workaround of burning a disk and re-ripping it.

It's also useful for capturing other audio on your computer, like WMF audio streams, game sounds, DVD sountracks, etc.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 5:34 pm

There are still people buying CDs? Of what, Shakira?

Even if you didn't get involved with the free-for-all at Napster, there is more than enough available on iTMS and other services to put the music stores out of business, as it should be. The goddam studios with them.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 6:08 pm

The new Foo ripped just fine on my mac.

jr

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:24 pm

MAybe someone who likes these band should buy it off of iTunes then burn a bunch of CDs for their friends. How the studios think this will help them sell more rather than fewer CDs is beyond me.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:31 pm

I bought the Foo Fighters new album, stuck it in my Mac ripped the songs and put them on my iPod. I fail to see the problem. The CD said it had copy protection on it but it didn't seem to stop me.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:35 pm

Guest wrote:
There are still people buying CDs? Of what, Shakira?

Even if you didn't get involved with the free-for-all at Napster, there is more than enough available on iTMS and other services to put the music stores out of business, as it should be. The goddam studios with them.

You don't seem to understand that the music you buy on the iTMS store is inferior to a CD. I continue to buy CDs because I could rerip them at higher qualities as better encoding methods are found. With the iTMS songs you are stuck with the quality you bought.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:45 pm

Generally these "music discs" don't work well with Windows, but you can rip/mix/burn them just fine with iTunes on the Mac.

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Aug 05, 2005 8:12 pm

I always buy CD's. Do I even need to bring up Dual Discs again? I don't think I could get the full CD quality audio of the latest NIN album AND the DVD-quality 5.1 produced version of the album on iTMS for $13. If there's a flaw in my logic, I don't see it.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 8:15 pm

Yeah....this is bullsh*t...smoke and mirrors.

First off, a quick check of the Gnutella network shows no dearth of either of these records available for free, "illegal" downloading. So, if this protection is supposed to stop piracy, it's failed and can be discontinued.

Secondly, notice how they use two very popular bands as an example. Both bands have large, committed fanbases. Their fans will buy whatever CD they put out, even if gave you rabies just from touching it.

What this weasly statement doesn't talk about is what kid of problems this has caused to unsuspecting consumers, and furthermore, how many of them won't buy another CD with this encryption.

It also doesn't mention if any other (less popular) bands' discs had this DRM on them (I betcha there were), and how THEIR sales were impacted.

Lies, lies, and more lies.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 8:37 pm

As others have noted, none of this copy-protection stuff matters on a Mac, it's all Windows-based. The CD automatically installs software that "protects" the CD. That is how (almost) ALL copy-protection works. And thge other stuff would make the CDs outrageously expensive. Come on, when was the last time anybody made a Windows Media format file on a Mac... Wise up.

I realise this is "iPodObserver" not "MacObserver", but even CNET articles talking about CD protection mention that none of them matter on Macs. I'd expect better reporting from a spin-off of Mac-oriented site...

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:01 pm

Hold down shift when inserting the CD into the computer, or just disable auto run. That should circumvent most copy protection schemes on Windows. On a Mac, two discs should mount onto the desktop. One will have the Windows Media files and copy protection program--a data session. The other would be the digital audio session-- a regular audio CD.

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gslusher said:

member since 13 Nov 2002 with 2088 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Sat Aug 06, 2005 2:34 am

Guest wrote:
You don't seem to understand that the music you buy on the iTMS store is inferior to a CD. I continue to buy CDs because I could rerip them at higher qualities as better encoding methods are found. With the iTMS songs you are stuck with the quality you bought.

Given the nature of most current music, I'd be surprised if you could really tell the difference in a blinded test.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sat Aug 06, 2005 6:12 pm

Copy protected CDs?

Anything is rippable.

The music companies just make it annoying. I've had to copy perfectly good discs to get a disc that will play in my car stereo. And just because they had some ridiculous copy system that meant I had to go around the houses to rip the tracks to my iPod.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:01 pm

I use Windows 2000 (I know, I know, prospective switcher here), and was able to rip the new Foo Fighters cd after a little finagling. Apparently the cd install a driver as soon as it's inserted in to your computer, so that trying to listen to it garbles the sound (as previously mentioned). All you have to do, however, is remove the driver, and it works like a charm. My guess is that the sriver is only windows compatible, since most Mac users seem to not have a problem with them. As said before, it's more of an annoyance than anything.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:50 pm

Guest wrote:
You don't seem to understand that the music you buy on the iTMS store is inferior to a CD. I continue to buy CDs because I could rerip them at higher qualities as better encoding methods are found. With the iTMS songs you are stuck with the quality you bought.

I understand, but all of the music I did get from the free sites a few years ago, at 128kb/s, sounds fine on almost any player I have, especially in the car where I usually listen.

I have plenty of CDs I bought years ago, plus my wife's CDs, to round out my collection (I'll probably rip at 192k), but I don't want to buy CDs anymore and enrich the record execs, I'll just buy off of iTMS if I have to have something new.

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someToast said:

member since 11 Jun 2001 with 1448 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:31 pm

Anonymous wrote:
[...] but I don't want to buy CDs anymore and enrich the record execs, I'll just buy off of iTMS if I have to have something new.

True, because when you buy a track from the iTMS, no money goes to any record execs.

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