12-07-2002, 04:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Liquid Audio To Evaporate
I know this isn't Pocket PC related, but the ability to play music on our devices is a key reason for owning them for many people and where and how we get our music is of interest. Liquid Audio decided to close up shop and pay out their remaining cash, approximately $57 million, to existing shareholders and call it a day.
"Liquid produces software that prevents digital song files from being distributed illegally. Although the company was lauded by the recording industry for its copy protection technology, it could not compete with free file-swapping software such as Kazaa, Morpheus and the now-defunct Napster. Liquid also was unable to offer enough songs for people to purchase due to the recording industry's slower pace of releasing digitally encoded versions of their copyrighted songs."
Oh well. Another digital library with a small selection that required most of your music to be played on the device that downloaded it down the tubes. At some point these people are going to figure out that what draws a lot of people to the file swapping services is not the free music but the ease with which you can put the music on your PC, a CD or your portable music player. I know that a lot of the people are on the peer-to-peer networks for the free music, and that is a shame. They will find a way to keep getting the music free. Meanwhile, the rest of us will have handcuffs put on us by the music industry while we are chained to our PCs listening to their time limited tracks.
Oh, if you liked Liquid Audio's DRM, don't fret. "In September, Liquid sold its digital encoding patents to Microsoft for $7 million." :?
One more thing. Those of you that have Liquid Audio tracks on your PC. What do you do now? As long as you keep your existing PC and operating system, you are OK. Get a new PC or upgrade to a new OS that the Liquid Audio player is not compatible with, I guess you lose your music. This is another reason that I won't bother with any solution that requires a proprietary player. Certainly not that Sony garbage. Not that I think Sony is going under anytime soon, but they will eventually drop support for Label Gate in favor of something else and your music will again be gone.
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12-07-2002, 04:30 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 194
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digital music for ppc2002
What do you think of PressPlay? I haven't tried it yet.
Thank you
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12-07-2002, 07:15 PM
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Magi
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 2,386
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(giggle... giggle...)
So Ed... how do you really feel about digital music protection!?!?
I agree though... all these copy protection schemes and proprietary set-ups are lamer than lame...
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12-07-2002, 07:18 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 105
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Wandering here a bit, but what happened to MP3PRO it seems such a cool idea but haven't seen any players for it or any PRO encoded mp3 files.
If you don't know it, it's from the makers of mp3, better quality smaller files that still play on an old mp3 player.
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12-07-2002, 08:09 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 20
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by krisbrown
Wandering here a bit, but what happened to MP3PRO it seems such a cool idea but haven't seen any players for it or any PRO encoded mp3 files.
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Actually, Musicmatch supports it. I don't use it, since my MP3 player in my car as well as a portable doesn't support it. I would really like to use it, but like you said, it just isn't out there....yet.
BTW, if you have never tried Musicmatch's Radio MX, it is awesome! I pipe it through my entire house - very cool and just over $3 per month.
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12-07-2002, 08:11 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 338
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Ed, your post really says it all with regard to DRM.
The supplier goes out of business (which the consumer really has no control over) and poof... there goes your music, your e-book, or whatever the case may be!
And then let's not even talk about what's going to happen in 5 years, when the OS takes a radical change or something, and vendors say... well you'll need to buy your DRM stuff all over again, because "the old format just doesn't meet the benefits of the newer technologies" etc.
I won't buy any music protected in this fashion for the points you bring up.. I've got 4 personal computers, and a Pocket PC, and I need to be able to freely move my resources around to meet my needs at any moment.
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12-07-2002, 08:59 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 725
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by ekkie
So Ed... how do you really feel about digital music protection!?!?
I agree though... all these copy protection schemes and proprietary set-ups are lamer than lame...
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I don't really think DRM is the problem as much as greedy companies trying to make THEIR PROPRIETARY solution the de facto standard. I think Ed hit it on the head when he said that it wasn't that Sony was going to go out of business but that they would eventually drop support.
What the entertainment industry really needs is to agree on an Open, industry wide standard and then support it. Because the longer they let non-protected formats remain the defacto industry wide standard the idea that "music should be free" will persist and it will be all that much harder to collect any money for digital music in the coming years!
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12-07-2002, 11:37 PM
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Magi
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 2,386
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by ThomasC22
What the entertainment industry really needs is to agree on an Open, industry wide standard and then support it. Because the longer they let non-protected formats remain the defacto industry wide standard the idea that "music should be free" will persist and it will be all that much harder to collect any money for digital music in the coming years!
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While a universal standard would be better than a proprietary one, any standard that would prevent your CD from being played on a computer or prevents you from making your own digital copy for your own use is completely unacceptable in my opinion.
This is also the first I've heard of the idea that some people believe "music should be free" (unless that's a veiled reference to all the people who swap music online). The argument I normally hear (and the one I support) from those against these swapping music is that the price of a CD is too high to justify the demand for 1 or 2 good songs, not that "music should be free".
Instead of focusing on how to collect money from all of those believing "music should be free", the RIAA should IMO focus on finding better ways to make these songs available to us to purchase on an individual basis, especially the older music that is no longer available in stores. People paying $15 for a CD containing only one song that they like may have worked before (after all how can a store stock it's shelves with individual songs and albums... it's just not practical...), but in this age where digital formats make it possible to sell music in all types of packages, the legacy model of music sales is no longer accepted.
It's my hope that the music industry will at some point realize this and provide more options as opposed to trying to restrict the current options.
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12-07-2002, 11:52 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 332
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I agree with that, a lot of people that wouldn't otherwise will look at file sharing networks are because of proprietary DRM solutions and overly restrictive licensing. Once companies get together and work out a more reasonable and equitable system then they might get people on board.
Daniel
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12-08-2002, 12:06 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 105
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MP3 PRO can get an average of 300 songs on a cd, even better quality than a 128kb normal mp3, soon that'll be 1500 on a DVD when everyone gets DVDR, then it'll be the new 20gb double side dvd, in less than 5 years it is conceivable for an affordable data storage device to be able to store every song ever made.
When people start swopping these and copying them, then music sales will be of little consequence.
We are seeing the beginning of the end for the people with the most to lose, the record companies.
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Linear Mode
