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Get that "writer" a pacifier.

PUHLEASE, why did they say "Apple has opted to keep iPod proprietary" and not "Consumers have a choice of Apple, Sony, or MS formats, and should know what the are buying" Unless the majors let us buy non-DRM music online, then this "problem" will exist. Until then, why wont my Gillette razor work with my Bic blades, or my Gamecube play PS 2 games?

Back in the day of the first cd players, people were not going to by 3 players 4 three different formats. But a computer you can run as many music programs as you wish. As far as players go, iPod kicks but, and the people have decided they want the best.

17"iMac G5, 12" Powerbook G4, and lovin it.

Sony's Hesse and EMI's Cohen say that they may need to lean on the retailers to make their services more interoperable. 'I think we need to make significant strides in 2005 to improve that situation,' Hesse said

Yes. And the first step was to stop selling your music devices. The next step is to kill Sony Connect. Please feel free.

...The tires I bought for a Ford Explorer won't fit on my Toyota Prius. What's up with that? Why all these proprietary tire formats??

And I can't ride my skateboard down the ski slope? Why is that snow incompatible with my skateboard wheels?

This is unacceptable.

What I'm really upset about is all those proprietary players that don't conform to the iPod/iTunes standard. How dare they!

I have developed what I call "fuel" by combining raw sewage and toenail clippings, but everybody keeps buying this "gasoline" stuff. I think that they are "stupid," so I will call them that in public while also whining and moaning to receptive hack writers that people "don't have a choice" of energy sources for their vehicles. I think that's a sound business strategy.

Steve Jobs must be laughing his ass off right about now.

The Edison Co.'s cylindrical phonograph is infinitely superior to the low-grade "record discs" sold by RCA-Victor. The consumer is foolish to want a so-called "standard format."

"Sony's Hesse and EMI's Cohen say that they may need to lean on the retailers to make their services more interoperable."


Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha .... right. So did anyone "lean" on Sony when it tried to push its "proprietry" ATRAC3 format down everyones neck? No, of course not because it was a total flop and still is.

"In a perfect world it would all be interoperable, and everybody would make money..."

in a perfect world there would be no windows, no big music houses that want to jack up prices for no appearant reason than making more money, blahblahblah.

sorry, but apple is not a meal-ticket for those who are incapable of offering quality hardware and a business model that 'just works'. everybody should have the same chance to excell? that smells awefully foul of socialism; and asides from being economical idiocy, it is proven time and again that it does not work.

i would like for winblows or napster to succeed, only for the reason of competition (brings out the best in us;) however, apple has shown that it can do quite well without.

Minidisk

'Nuff said.

Isn't Microsoft's media format and DRM proprietary? What about Sony's or RealNetwork's? And isn't AAC an open format? It's just the FairPlay DRM that is the "proprietary" part that they have choosen to be very particular about who to license to and for what purpose, right? (ie: cell phones)

"Beta is forever. It's our word of honor. The word of Sony.''

-- Quoted from a full page December 30, 1988 advertisement in "La Estrella de Panama''

Concerns over compatibility among the various players and digital formats -- known as 'interoperability' -- seem to be increasing.

You know, I bought a shitload of music on 8-tracks back in the 70's and not a damn one of them will play on my CD players today. Can I buy an 8-track player today? Or in the last 15-20 years for that matter? No.

You don't hear me whining about it. Life is tough. Get a helmet.

Whiners.

so far I've been paying about $20 a month for my ipod. I've bought some music from itunes. My ipod won't last forever. Assuming I want to keep my music mobile (and I don't burn and re-rip this music), i'll have to keep buying ipods. Right now they maybe be the best, but probably not forever. Do I want to be forced to always buy an ipod to play the music that I bought?
This will eventually be a concern. So why not start thinking about it now. You guys sound like windows users.

Old Dude, if your 8-track player breaks, and you replace that Foreigner tape with a cd, who does that benefit? Not you, the record company. As consumers, we should hope for a standard as soon as possible.

These other companies should be innovating instead of belittling their competition and whining and complaining.

Apple has been quietly innovating their butts off the past few years with new products appearing very regularly, and it's starting to pay off in a big way. Hopefully the momentum will continue. Of course, they're also making lots of money in the interim, so who knows what developments are being held back.

It's funny, but one of their "innovations" was to make an MP3 player which stored lots of music and operate in a simple way.

Can't the competition do that?

Oh the humanity!... God, what a bunch of whiners.

Doens't reals system only work on like 3 models of all the MP3/WMA players out there.

Talk about choice. The real (pun intended) is to take away our tunes and make you have to pay to play, forever and ever. It's not about choice.

Let real die a natural death. The threat to the iTunes/iPod/purchase songs model isn't competition, but regulation and these people are setting the stage to force "interopability", probably at the detriment to Apples sensible approach.

A couple of more lawsuits by "damaged" consumers tricked into buying iTunes songs and then forced to buy an iPod, backed by M$ money and homeland security will do the trick.

It's not iTunes that is not compatable it's the rest of them. iTunes supports Mac and Windows users. The rest of them only support Windows users. Maybe that's why Apple is dominating the market. Not to mention having the best MP3 player and easyist to use without a doubt.
And I prefer to buy my music not rent it like what Napster is doing.

Why don't Apple rebrand the iPodas the MP4 player? AAC looks proprietary, but really it isn't.

most (but not all) of the analogies given here are quite pointless because they aren't even comparing the same thing, and so shouldn't even be called analogies. Snow and skateboard wheels, 8-track and Cd player? Those don't really have anything in common with the situation discussed here. You might as well ask why you can't use your printer to make phone calls.

Imagine if you bought a CD and when you tried to play it on your Sony CD player found out that it only works on Panasonic. Or if you bought a DVD and found out that if you wanted to play it you had to copy it to your computer first and convert it to a format that your DVD player will understand before you can view it. Interoperability IS for the benefit of the consumer. iTunes doesn't and won't ever have all the music in the world. Eventually, when CD's become outdated, what do you do if you want to purchase an album that iTunes doesn't have? It is very important to have a standard that is not limited to only one company.

It's not like Apple is making money on selling songs. They should eventually license out Fairplay so that other stores will not be forced to side with Microsoft. And I don't think it would have an impact on iPod sales.

Hey b,
who said: "Do I want to be forced to always buy an ipod to play the music that I bought? "

Burn your iTunes bought tracks to a music disk. As opposed to AAC files on disk. Takes up more disks, but you now have those tunes to do with as you please twenty years from now. Do one a day and you're good to go.

Artisticulated,
I was assuming that "I don't burn and re-rip this music". but to play the devil's advocate, who says I'll be able to buy a cd player in 20 years. In all seriousness, I doubt that in 20 years computers will have a cd or dvd player. Even now it seems that the size of a cd is limiting a the smallness of the mac mini.

Signs of a dirty tricks campaign?

Downloads chart debut delayed

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/69907/downloads-chart-debut-delayed.html

Does anyone trust Apple with a monopoly on the portable music player market, or the music download market?

Why cant they all just f'ing put support for every format into every player? I think in this case, the consumer would win. It pisses me off that I can buy an album off of itunes or MSNMusic and have to Burn then rip to get them onto a player of my choosing. (I have a G2 iPod and a Creative Zen Micro.) It really is a pain in the ass. (Not really) but still.

king_alvarez, you left out the PlayStation vs. XBox analogy that was made, and it's dead on to what the article is about.

There are games that Playstation owners will never be able to play on Playstation and vice-versa. But it's a fair business model and consumers are left with a choice. I don't see anyone complaining to much about that.

I'm sure someday fairplay is going to be licensed, but my bet it's not going to be with anything that is competing with the iPod. it doesn't make good business sense.

Funny how much whining there is when Apple's minority situation is reversed. There's a lot to learn from this situation, not just how well Mac fans have dealt with being in a minority position in the past compared to how others are dealing with it now that Apple's in the lead, but also how Apple and it's fan base is reacting to being in the lead. Not that different from Microsoft and its asoorted fanbois. That's too bad - I thought we Mac users had more class.

Personally, it doesn't matter to me what format the ITMS delivers it's music in. Far as I know, AAC is an open standard, and there's nothing stopping Napster from delivering its files in that format. Or developing its own iTunes-compatible software. The real problem is they can't create anything anywhere near the quality of the ITMS/iTunes/iPod combination, so they're trying to spread some FUD around. No biggie - the cool kids already know the best choice, and unless Apple drops the ball in a major way, you'll still look like a dork walking around your high school with an iRiver.

"Right now they maybe be the best, but probably not forever. Do I want to be forced to always buy an ipod to play the music that I bought?"

I'm not sure where this falls under the license for iTMS songs, but we all know that you can burn a CD of songs purchased on iTMS and those can be ripped into any format. True, it is degraded in sound quality.

CD/DVD analogy: You address this, but in this case, the issue isn't interoperability, it's convenience. I can't deny that it's still an issue, but the pragmatic issue is that there is a solution. I do side with you, for largely the same reasons, that Fairplay should eventually be licensed. It's still pretty early in the game for that, but 2-3 years from now, it shouldn't be an issue.

Another issue this raises is copyright law in this area and how it may need to be tweaked. The issue with burning iTMS tracks to CD, then shifting them probably does violate the license, but it should fall under fair use. The rights holders want to keep this in place for several reasons, only one of which is related to protecting their copyright (piracy). I understand the reason to use DRM to stop piracy (even though circumvention methods will always exist) - it's their ability to use it as leverage to charge you multiple times that doesn't seem like the desired result of the intellectual property laws.

Bob,
You are right. The Playstation analogy is a good one and that's why I said "most (but not all)". I just thought some of the other analogies were pretty ridiculous. And in the case of Apple and music, technically what they are doing is "fair" and it makes sense for them from a business standpoint, but it hurts the consumer. I'm not really complaining too much about it because I buy all my songs either from iTunes or physical CD's, but it would be much easier if there was just one standard. It would be nice if there was just one standard where no one had to worry about paying for licensing or worry about supporting different formats just so that someone can listen to some music. Everyone wants to make money from the music that artists create and DRM is just another way for companies to make even more money, and that's pretty sad. And in this case, I think Apple is clearly looking out for themself instead of the consumer.

Ok, i guess i may have sounded a little harsh in implying that Apple is fueled by greed instead of concern for the consumer, but I do think they need to eventually change their stance on Fairplay. Regardless of who's selling the music, people are still going to buy the iPod and probably still use iTunes, so Apple has little to worry about in terms of sales and profit. It would just be a good move for Apple to allow other choices even if people don't choose them. That way it would show that Apple wants what's best for the consumer, even if it doesn't mean their product.

Most of the replies to this article seem to overlook one essential fact of life in the music business. ... The RIAA (boo - hiss) actually has an interest in keeping interoperability to a minimum. From the music industry perspective, anything that makes it easier to transfer music from one piece of hardware to another - or from one medium to another - means less profit.

It isn't just that Apple has opted to keep the iPod and iTunes proprietary ( not to mention Sony's equally proprietary format ) - The music industry has tried feverishly to squelch the consumer's ability to copy music since the first audiocassette. Cassettes were first marketed in the late sixties for voice recording only. When high quality cassettes emerged the music industry introduced the non recordable 8-track tape as an alternative for selling music on the premise that cassettes would be less appealing due to the convenience of 8-tracks for playing specific songs with less fast forward or rewinding.

Likewise - DAT (digital audio tape) was kept off the market as a consumer product before CDs. What we are seeing now is the ongoing battles between and within the computer industry and the music industry to control competing markets for the same product.

It really isn't up to one company.

I wouldn't be surprised if part of Apples success with the iTunes Music Store is due to deals with record companies to ensure that iTunes will remain proprietary.

"The company that did the most to get legal downloading off the ground may also be the lead weight on a market whose consumers like to shift among different players and services, taking their libraries with them,' McGuire writes.

MacDailyNews Take: "Consumers like to shift among different players and services?" What percentage of consumers? Again, we'd like some actual proof of this, please. We can just as easily write that consumers like quality players that come in a wide range of sizes and prices that work seamlessly with an online music service that offers a large library with consistent prices. At least we'd have iPod+iTunes market share and unit sales to back us up.

At least in this point, he's right. But you can't move and shift players if you are locked into a DRM (unless it's M$'s version...). For the moment, the iPod/iTMS combo has the hearts, minds, and wallets of the fickle consumer. But as "hmmm" said above, the game is early and isn't likely to be an issue - yet.

concerns?

Music companies are only concerned about their profits and controlling content.

Apple's competitors are concerned that they can't compete and they are right.Napster RIP

Concern for consumers? Yea, all the lawyers are concerned for consumers. They want to file lawsuits so they can win millions and get consumers "a coupon".

This article is propaganda, pure & simple.The market is working, consumers are making choices, there are winners & loosers. That's how it works.

Uhm.. are you for real?

MS is on the losing end of the music market, and you want APple to keep them afloat?

Put the pipe down..

The issue of compatability between different music media formats is far less of an issue from a legal standpoint as is the issue of OS interoperability. Music is considered a luxury. The ability to share music files is not protected by any legal right. If anything - it is restricted by the laws that do exist.

In order for companies like Napster, Real, and even Microsoft (ironically) to make the case for interoperability, they will have to demonstrate that the consumers interest in sharing music across platforms outweighs the recording industry and copyright holders' interest. This will never happen as long as people are free to chose between more than a few available platforms.

It may be inconvenient to rip an Mp3 file to audio in order to transfer it from one player format to another - but there's never going to be a legal basis to require anyone to make the different formats any more interoperable than they are now.

The reason Apple is able to continue holding on to its virtual Mp3 player monopoly is that it is not illegal. Sony knows this. Microsoft knows this and so does every other player in the game. Otherwise they's all be filing suit against Apple. But they can't.

The record companies don't want interoperability and they would certainly be on Apple's side if it ever did become a legal issue.

I have always been of the viewpoint that at some point Apple should license out Fairplay and sew up the market for the long term. It is a question of when. Right now they are riding the wave of profit from being a first mover and that is just what they should be doing. I just hope that Apple doesn't enjoy riding the wave so much they forget to think long term.

MDN's take deserves a couple of clicks on its ads.

MW: "music" to my ears.

It has been said before but it must be said again, the de facto standard for digital online music files is MP3 files. It was MP3 at the start of the digital music revolution and it will be MP3 files for the foreseeable future.

Well said Buffy!

HEY, stop your bickering you guys sound like old hags!

Once Apple wipes out the main competition (Real, Sony, Microsucks) then they will start to license DRM. Right now its a heated competition to wipe each other out. Well, okay, its really no competition at all. iTunes+iPod is kicking the socks off all the other offers. But yea, in the future it will be in the interest of Apple to license DRM. Just not right now. You have to look at this from a business perspective. Conusmer issues only matter if it affects sales, and maybe a few other factors like market share. Thus, now is not the time to license DRM because the consumers are happy with the iTunes+iPod combo.

You guys need to lighten up, these posts get too serious and bickering way too fast!

Lets clear the air. Unless the record companies will allow lossless downloads without DRM, this will continue forever. Give the consumer the ability to download music in lossless format without DRM and then all problems will go away.

WMV, RM, AAC, Altrac, and MP3 are all proprietary formats. You can argue that AAC is open, but is it really? A country club might be open to anyone but if its priced beyond most peoples reach, its hardly open. That is how I view AAC. Sorry, I can't afford to make music software that supports AAC because I don't have $25K for the license.

Start selling music in FLAC format. Otherwise, I'll continue to buy used CD's to get my music onto my iPod.

It seems that these whiners are actually give people reasons why they shouldn't use their products. After all, if compatibility is a concern, isn't just easier to stick with the biggest dog in the yard?

Oops... I meant "giving."

This has nothing to do with the thread of the article I just thought it should be read by all, on how race legend Sterling Moss switched to an ibook.
http://racelegends.typepad.com/pressing_on/2005/01/sir_stirling_mo.html