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Medialoper’s DRM-Free Holiday Shopping Guide

December 1, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

This may surprise some of you, but, DRM has been very good for Medialoper. While it’s true that the whole ‘Loper team is generally opposed to all things DRM, it just so happens that a huge segment of new readers arrive at Medialoper each day after searching Google for solutions to various DRM related problems. The sad truth is, DRM is what brought many of you to Medialoper in the first place.

While our DRM related search traffic is mostly constant throughout the year, we see a surge in traffic around the holidays. That surge peaks on Christmas day as consumers desperately search for ways break the shackles on various DRM crippled holiday gifts.

While it’s great that new readers are discovering Medialoper, we’d be happier if consumers weren’t being suckered into the DRM shell game that restricts fair use and offers no value in return.

And so, in the spirit of the holiday season, and despite our best interests, we’re happy to present Medialoper’s first annual DRM-free Holiday Shopping guide.

Digital Content in an Ownership Society

October 4, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

I’ve been collecting media in one form or another since I was old enough to recognize Beatles ’65 at the White Front department store in Fresno, California. That was around 1966. I was three, and it was a very bad day for my mother.

In the years since, I watched my LP and 45 collection explode, only to be replaced by CDs, and finally to be morphed into a vast field of bits on a relatively small network storage device. Bits that I dutifully back up, maintain, and curate.

I spend more time fixing faulty ID3 tags than I care to admit. And I’m constantly annoyed when album art mysteriously goes missing (am I the only person having this problem with iTunes?).

There’s a point where it might just be easier to chuck it all and consider subscribing to one of those all-you-can-eat music services. That’s certainly what the RIAA would like me to do.

Why I Won’t Miss iTunes

October 1, 2008 by Jim Connelly

So here’s the deal: The National Music Publisher’s Association has said that they want to increase the royalty rate for each legal download from $0.09 to $0.15 per song. Apple has responded by threatening to shut down iTunes.

I assume that “iTunes” means “iTunes Music Store,” and this has nothing to do the the TV Shows, Films and Applications that also go through iTunes, because, well, that would just be stupid.

I’m not here to argue the merits of what one side will say is only a six cent increase and the other side will say is a 66% increase, nor am I going to point out that this is Apple’s way of saying that if they don’t continue to get exactly what they want, they’re going to take their ball and go home.

But I will say this: if the iTunes Music Store went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t even be a blip on my radar.

The Sad State of Legal DRM-Free Music Services

March 27, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

Just six months after the launch of its mp3 music service, Amazon has emerged as the number two digital music retailer. While Apple still has a huge lead, that lead seems to be dwindling quickly.

The major labels may see this as some form of progress in their efforts to break Apple’s perceived monopoly in the digital music market, but the truth is they are very likely creating a new problem for their industry.

Despite the fact that the majors have begun licensing the rights to distribute DRM-free tracks to multiple retailers, Amazon seems to be the only company that has a clue about building a successful online marketplace. As a result, Amazon could quickly become something of a de facto monopoly for legal mp3 downloads. That’s astounding when you consider that the marketplace for unprotected music downloads should be wide open and highly competitive.

The formula for building a successful digital music marketplace seems relatively easy. Consumers want access to a wide selection of reasonably priced DRM-free music, presented in a well organized marketplace that supports all computing platforms. Retailers who expect to compete should offer decent search and discovery capabilities, and maybe even a few social features. This is 2008, after all.

5 Ways To Improve eMusic

July 17, 2007 by Jim Connelly

It’s no secret that our favorite music download service at ‘Loper HQ isn’t iTunes, but eMusic. Kirk discussed his reasons last year, and mine are pretty much the same: the wide variety of music, the great pricing, and the fact that I can do whatever I want with the music I’ve downloaded. No damn dirty DRM.

I’m not going to address the breadth and depth of the music itself, but rather the user experience. And to do that, I should very quickly explain how I use eMusic. It’s pretty simple actually: I pay $14.99 per month for 65 downloads (it’s a legacy plan), and every week, I login, go through the new music for that week, and save the things in which I’m interested in my “Saved For Later” page.

That way I don’t use up my downloads at the beginning of the month, and have to wait because something as awesome as The Hold Steady Live At Lollapalooza comes out the day after I used them up. (Of course, I could get a booster pack if that happens, but that’s not maximizing my music dollar.)

After doing it this way for the past couple of years, I’ve noticed some ways that eMusic could improve its user experience. Five ways, as it turns out, and here they are:

The Futility Of DRM

August 31, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

2006 will go down in history as the year the entertainment industry finally started to take digital content distribution seriously. So far this year we’ve seen television networks and film studios experiment with a surprisingly wide variety of new distribution models, while the recording industry has started to realize that there may be a future in downloadable music. If there’s a downside to the recent explosion of digital content it has to be the entertainment industry’s unhealthy obsession with digital rights management (DRM).

In the past entertainment companies have been hesitate to distribute content digitally due to piracy concerns. Those concerns have apparently been replaced by a complete and total faith in DRM. Or, at the very least, a belief that it will be possible to build viable new business models around DRM protected content.

There’s just one problem — DRM doesn’t work. It’s a futile exercise in artificial scarcity that punishes honest consumers while doing little to slow the tide of piracy.

[Read more…] about The Futility Of DRM

Will Spiral Frog Leap Into Our Music Collections?

August 30, 2006 by Jim Connelly

[Lopy notes: Spiral Frog finally launched, and we finally reviewed it]

Free legal downloads!! From a major label, no less. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? It’s supposed to be a reality, as a site called Spiral Frog has contracted with Universal Music to provide free downloads starting in December.

Of course, there is a catch — you are going to have to deal with advertising while you download. Here’s how they describe it:

Apple Calls the iTune

May 4, 2006 by Jim Connelly

We love our iPods and iTunes here at Medialoper, so here’s some team coverage on one of the bigger stories of the week. As you probably know by now, Apple won its latest round with the music industry by refusing to move from their flat-rate pricing model to a more tiered model where new releases are significantly more expensive than long tail catalog product.

And while yesterday Kirk had a real nice insight as to why the record companies backed down, I have a slightly different take.

That’s What I Like: eMusic

April 28, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

At the risk of sounding like an old timer I’m going to tell you some Internet trivia that you might find hard to believe: iTunes was not the first online music service to sell downloadable songs for 99 cents. Back in 1998 a site called Good Noise started selling a small catalog of songs for just under a dollar. The iPod hadn’t even been born yet. In fact, Apple had just barely launched the iMac product line. It was a different world back then.

Good Noise eventually became eMusic and dropped the per song pricing in favor of a subscription model. While the structure of eMusic’s subscription pricing has changed over the years, it is still arguably the best digital music service around.

I’ve been a paying eMusic subscriber for many years, and here’s why:

Why Google Music Won’t Matter

April 5, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Wall Street is buzzing again with rumors that Google will soon launch a digital music service to rival iTunes. While a showdown between Apple and Google would be the Wall Street equivalent of Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, analysts seem to be so caught up in their visions of “enhanced revenue streams” and $500 share prices, that they’ve missed one essential point. Google Music just won’t matter much. Here’s why: