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August 16, 2007

music

Universal = company unclear on a concept

Posted Aug. 16, ’07, 8:55 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Music

universalunclear.jpgUniversal may be floating a trial of DRM-free music, but don’t think they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. As first revealed by Wired’s Listening Post blog and now confirmed by Universal itself, the record company will be embedding audio watermarks into the files they sell. Which, as you may recall, will not be sold through iTunes.

Sources suggest that watermarks will contain only information identifying the track, and not the user who purchased the song. The likelihood is that Universal will use this information to track whether or not the DRM-free music gets pirated, and not who is doing the pirating.

As Ars Technica’s Ken Fisher points out, however, that’s where the inanity begins:

The problem is that the results aren’t indicative of the risks of selling DRM-free music. Because digital music is, well, digital, it is possible to make endless numbers of copies from one original. Complicating matters, CDs are still the source of most music shared online. Since CDs can easily be purchased, encoded, and shared, the question becomes: so what if a DRM-free download has been leaked? One single “leak” of a track, from one single person, can result in a proliferation of shared copies on multiple networks among non-customers.
Basically, Universal will be gathering a bunch of data that essentially allows them to justify any decision they care to make down the road, whether it be “Oh, there was just too much piracy to make it worth our while” or “Hey, our tracks must have sold really well: look at all these copies floating around!”

At the end of the day, Universal’s like a picky little kid being asked “How do you know if you don’t like it? You’ve never even tried it.” Will the DRM-free music be traded? Yes. That’s all there is to it. There will always be people who steal music. However, the question Universal should be asking is how that affects their bottom line.


9 Comments

Fletcher said:

This is all consistent with the notion that they simply want to prove that non-DRM music is unworkable. They will do their test on these minor music stores and some of the tracks will be leaked into the P2P networks. Then they can say it was all a failure since they only sold a small number of songs and they were pirated. DRM-free music is both unpopular and dangerous.

If you threw iTunes into the mix then the test wouldn't work as well. EMI has shown that iTunes customers will buy DRM-free tracks in droves. The sheer volume of songs they'd sell at iTunes would dwarf what they can sell at all other stores combined. Also, it's possible that iTunes customers are less likely to put their music on a P2P network since they are more used to the notion of paying for music.

August 16, 2007 9:13 AM
George said:

SO WHY IS IT OKAY THAT APPLE DOES THE EXACT SAME BLOODY THING WITH THEIR DRM-FREE TRACKS YET WHEN UNIVERSAL DOES IT, IT SOMEHOW BECOMES AN ISSUE? APPLE'S VERSION EVEN HAS YOUR ITUNES STORE ID IMBEDDED IN IT.

(Overuse of the caps was intentional to illustrate my frustration with the double-standard being shown in this article/blog. I know the site is called "MacUser" but really, just a little shred of journalist integrity would be nice.)

August 16, 2007 9:16 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@George: We're talking about two separate issues here. If you'll reread the piece above, you'll notice that it doesn't once make any comment about the concern for privacy—clearly that would be unfounded, as there is—as far as we know—no personal information embedded in the watermark. We're talking merely about the statistical information that Universal will likely collect from this, and I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing—I'm just saying that it's not particularly useful.

I hope that constitutes a shred of journalistic integrity for you. And see how it was possible to have a discussion without shouting?

August 16, 2007 9:24 AM
Dave-O said:

@George, maybe if you stopped shouting, you would know what the piece was about.

August 16, 2007 9:36 AM
George said:

@Dan
I am missing the difference. EMI could do the exact same thing Universal is supposedly going to do using their iTunes DRM-free tracks. They don't need Apple's blessing to scour P2P networks for AAC files. Worse, unlike Universal's method that only identifies the track, iTunes tracks could be used to determine just how many people are actually sharing said file by looking at how many different iTunes Store ID's show up in the shared files.

Even beyond that, this could all be done with the files that are already on P2P networks by record labels. They could just pick a random sampling of tracks to monitor and get statistics on how many variations there were (formats, bit rates, file names, differences in metadata, etc.) and gather the same sorts of statistics Universal might be attempting to do.

The data Universal could already get is far more useful for gauging piracy then what they will get from their own experiment, so what's the issue? As both you and the Ars Technica article pointed out, all they'll know is that at least one person bought a DRM-free track and put it on a P2P network. Seems pretty harmless, and, as you said, useless.

And again my point stands that why is Universal painted in such a negative light for putting a watermark in their songs that merely identifies that particular track yet iTunes seems to get excused for putting in someone's iTS ID? If Universal really wanted to do a study on selling DRM-free tracks and piracy, they'd be better off using the EMI tracks from the iTS because of the added information it provides.

August 16, 2007 10:35 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@George: You make a number of good points, but unfortunately they're kind of tangential to what I was writing about. The post above has nothing to do with the ethical nature of embedding information inside the song files. Rather, it has to do with Universal's practice as a seller of music. This, after all, is the company that arranged for kickbacks on the Microsoft Zune on the basis that MP3 players are "repositories for stolen music." If I am painting them in a negative light, it's because they're reaping what they've sowed.

Might they surprise me and decide to continue with the DRM-free experiment? Sure. Maybe it will help their bottom line, but I don't think that they're going to be able to deduce anything useful from that stastical information. If Apple or EMI were doing the same thing, it would be just as worthless in my opinion—but they don't need to; they've already embraced DRM-free downloads, and so they'll have sales figures to look at. I presume Universal will do the same thing, so I guess I don't see the point of the watermarking which, unlike iTunes's metadata, is more difficult to remove.

Anyways, I appreciate your comments and I'm glad that we could have this discussion without resorting to the likes of all capitals.

August 16, 2007 11:32 AM
Donn said:

George, you ask what the issue is, yet you keep repeating it: if Universal wanted to do a proper study of DRM-free track piracy, they would be better off not doing what they are about to do. That's the point; they are clearly NOT intending to do a useful study, just apparently a straw-man study to allow them to shoot down DRM-free sales in the future.

This is conjecture, of course; we don't actually know what Universal is trying to do, but it's hard to discern anything intelligent from their stated intentions.

August 16, 2007 11:40 AM
John said:

Let's be honest. Nobody (not even Apple) is conducting tests to determine the value of DRM vs. non-DRM music. In order to do so, all other factors have to be equal: price, bitrate, etc., etc. Doing things any other way is doing nothing more than skewing results for a predetermined purpose.

But no one is doing this kind of testing because they all already know the answer. All other factors being equal, who would buy music with DRM?

No one.

So...we are now faced with a situation where certain companies are trying to market to consumers with the misguided (and absurdly erroneous) notion that a lack is a value. While others are engaging in all sorts of ridiculous PR "newspeak" to validate the conclusions they have already determined.

August 17, 2007 8:39 AM
Dave-O said:

It seems we're all missing an important point here. Apple has included extra metadata tags. Universal is using a watermark--extra information in the music. Without a sample, we won't know for sure, but my understanding is that all previous attempts at watermarking produced audible artifacts. I'm not talking subtle bitrate-type differences, studies were showing plainly audible distortions.

That would be my concern over the watermark.

In this piece, Dan is concerned that Universal is trying to make a case against DRM; but without the largest online distributor of digital music (iTunes), the argument is inherently flawed. Apple and EMI obviously aren't making that mistake (if they are trying to gather piracy information at all, it has been pointed out that that metadata has always been included).

August 17, 2007 1:30 PM

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