So, the new version of Amarok is out1. It’s an incremental release, so not so many new groundbreaking features. What is cool though is the addition of a music store. Now, Magnatune’s selection of music may not be too vast, but the store has a lot of things going for it:
For fans:
- No DRM. While not named so, this is the kind of digital music that deserves names like “PlaysForSure” or “FairPlay”.
- Offers lossless formats. Even to the extent of bandwidth-sapping WAV, which is sort of redundant since they offer my favorite (lossless) codec: FLAC
- You can listen to the complete albums in MP3 format before you buy
- 128k mp3s are distributed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, which allows sharing and derivative works, so things like sampling the songs or remixing them are perfectly legal, as long as it’s not for commercial benefit.
For the artists, it gets even better:
- 50/50 revenue split
- Non-exclusive relationship
I want Magnatunes to take off. I really do. And hopefully exposure through Amarok will get them more customers. Anything that provides a viable, free as in libre alternative to iTunes.
Warning: rant starts here
I hate the iPod/iTunes2. Its success has essentially proven that there is a huge market for music that is DRM encumbered. For music that is lossily compressed (true, this does not affect most popular music because they are engineered to sound good on the radio). For a device that can’t even play music gaplessly.
So the tactile feedback of the clickwheel is brilliant, the smooth exterior is very slick, the combination of iPiT creates an unparalleled user experience, yada yada. But you are talking about a digital audio player and a music store. The issues I point out about are flaws with what should be its core competency, its primary function.
Okay, truth be told, the iPiT hardware can handle gapless, as the Rockbox project proved. And if I am not wrong, iTunes 7 can finally do gapless playback. But all this just goes to show that the listening experience is not the main priority. But gee whiz, ya sure can choose the songs to listen to darn well, can’t ya?
Worse still, with the iPiT, artists find themselves making even less than before.
Check out other insider viewpoints on how the major labels work:
- The Problem With Music by Steve Albini (producer of In Utero)
- Courtney Love Does The Math. A stunningly eloquent speech. This is what she’s capable of when she’s lucid? I never would have guessed.
If growth in major label digital music sales continues to outstrip growth (if that) in CD sales, there will be a time in the not-so-far future when the Red Book audio standard may simply be phased out. While the weedy speech of EMI chairman Alain Levy is premature, it does describe a terrible future—one where music is neither DRM-free nor CD quality.
And that’s the direction the labels want to head. Selling digital music crippled with DRM is a wet dream for them now that they’ve overcome their initial technophobia. It is a product with no marginal physical cost of production that can be sold again and again (you have to buy the same song for each DRM platform you use if you switch, new firmware may not be backward-compatible, etc etc).
Every purchase of an iPod is a X-hundred dollar vote for DRM. Every purchase of a song through iTunes is a dollar vote for DRM. By casting your ballot this way, you are supporting the wrong side in our downhill battle.
The ever-increasing flood of dollar votes for DRM has to stop now before it is too late.
1 So I’m a couple days late with this, but give me a break – work is busy and I usually only get to catch up with news on weekends.
2 I will constantly refer to the hardware DAP and the store as a single entity. They go together like Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office go together, ie a symbiotic relationship of mediocre components.
