BOC/BRAIN: more iCowbell

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 07/04/2005 15:16, John Swartz wrote:
> As for the DRM, there's a fairly easy way to be able to address that -
> the AAC files you get from the iTMS can be burned to CD using iTunes as
> audio (AIFF) files.  You can then do as you will with those files -
> including ripping them to MP3s (ironicly, also using iTunes).

Yeah, but I really hate the idea of convert a lossy AAC to a WAV (on CD)
and then back to a freshly lossy MP3!  But hey -- I figure it's not like
Apple would be tricking me if I bought iTMS downlaods.  I mean, it's not
a secret that what you can do with the files is limited, so if one
doesn't like it, it's not like one is forced to buy it at gunpoint ;)

I think, here, the market will ultimately prevail.  If enough people get
steamed over losing their rights to make backups and stuff of music they
bought, then the labels will allow it.

But eventually I think it will be up to the artist.  I mean, iTMS could
practically be a label.  The artist would be like a reseller on Amazon:
iTMS would be the point of contact between seller and buyer; they'd take
a cut of any sale (or have some fee structure for bandwidth/discspace or
whatever) and the artist would decide what to put there and what DRM
restrictions it would have.  Ta da.  I mean, I'm sure there will always
be "labels" doing heavy promotion of pap to the masses, but I've never
been interested in those products anyway.  iTMS should just tell artists
"upload us your song in lossless and choose your DRM/pricing and
download-format options".  Like, if no one ever buys your song, you can
still go try to prostitute yourself to a label an convince them to
promote you, right?  It's a free(ish) world, after all.

Well, that's my uninformed pontification, anyway :)

Cheers,
Carl