“Call it the soft underbelly of the subscription music business model, something none of the major players seems to want to talk about: It’s very easy to turn stream-only services into download plans without changing a thing,” Eric Hellweg writes for Technology Review. “Replay Music, which retails for $50, will even append song, artist, and album information to the file in the background, with about a 90 percent accuracy rate.”
“None of the the major streaming services — Napster, Yahoo’s MusicMatch, RealNetwork’s Rhapsody, or digital music distributor MusicNet — would talk on the record about their company’s position on the various programs,” Hellweg writes. “Their reluctance is understandable. Since programs such as Replay Music operate locally on the user’s computer — recording whatever is going through a soundcard as opposed to going out and pulling streams directly off of, say, Napster’s servers — there’s little the subscription music services can legally do to stop them.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, okay, so it’s not so secret anymore. Therein lies the subscription services’ not-so-little problem. We’d bet that the music labels can do the math.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
AOL removes Napster pirate plug-in ‘Output Stacker’ from website – February 17, 2005
Napster feels the heat over flawed copy-protection scheme – February 17, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs warns record industry of Napster To Go’s security gap – February 16, 2005
Users thwart Napster To Go’s copy protection; do the music labels realize the piracy potential? – February 15, 2005
Napster-To-Go’s ‘rental music’ DRM circumvented – February 14, 2005
Shhhhhh! Keep it down, will ya? This is our biggest selling point!
So everyone is going to be forced to buy-a-song model.
Greedy bastards should have done the right thing in the first place – typical Windows-centric thinking if you ask me
In subscription models, don’t the artists and labels get paid according to play count? So if some one only downloads it once, captures the stream and steals it, the artist and label end up getting stiffed. Well, it will remain to be seen how much this will end up actually happening but if it is as easy as they say then I would it expect it to be pretty rampant.
But AOL pulled their WinAMP plug-in, so the world is all right now, isn’t it?!?!
uhhh … last time i opened my Mac…. I dont think I saw a sound card… am I missing something here ?
</sarcasm>
As a Mac AND PC guy (yeah, right), I’ll approach this subject with my typical facade balance and even perspective, while really digging at the Mac platform.
Oh never mind.
As a Mac AND PC guy (yeah, right), I’ll approach this subject with my typical facade balance and even perspective, while really digging at the Mac platform.
Oh never mind.
I like roast beef.
The subscription model sure works well for us.
So this is like us buying Audio HiJack in the Mac, with the exception that we can’t subscribe to the subscription services in the first place?
For Mac users, then, it’s not that we don’t steal music, but that we CAN’T steal music!!???
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MacSmiley:
This is where NoMacForYou’s suggestion to get a $350 Dell comes in handy.
Dell ShitBox: $350 (give or take)
One Month of Napster: $15 (I guess?)
Download and re-format a couple of thousand songs or so? Free
Total Savings over iToons: LOTS
Oh, wait. The songs come in WMA format? Forget it.
Besides, you don’t want the enviro-Nazis coming after you when you throw the Dell shitbox into the dumpster after a month.
The last poster’s comment seems ridiculous on its face, but it also makes sense in many ways. The economic model actually works!
Wiretap Pro. Great piece of software. Record anything.
Oh, wait. The songs come in WMA format? Forget it.
You can get plug ins for Windows WinAmp that record it straight from Napster to Mp3, WAV is much better format though.
http://blog.kordix.com/marv/archives/000400.html
VerticalSmiley..
then you realize that P2P networks are still up.. and legal in some countries.. oops..
80% of the 10,000 tunes on my iPod came from my CD collection. The other 20% just showed up one day for free. Good thing I live in Canada where that sort of thing is still legal.
We have to let extreemist Muslim Terrorists go free on bail and we can steal all the music we want. What a country.
extreemist? learn how to spell, fool.
And how about those Christian and Jewish terrorists like Bush and Sharon?
hey, they were NOT extremist Muslim terrorists – that’s the problem. they captured too many people, tortured too many (via extreme extradition), and lost the ability to convict any even on small charges because what they went through could never be officially disclosed. damned if they do and damned if they don’t – despite all the time knowing that torture does not work, and violating civil rights of citizens or foreigners doesn’t work.
count them – no one went out on bail. (you think any of them had money for bail? they did not even have lawyers, their families did not know where they were, and they had no communication with the outside. it’s amazing they were not simply executed to cover up the tracks.) they were simply released for lack of evidence!!! that’s Ashcroft and Gonzales’ legacy – out of thousands, not one conviction. I don’t care about your party affiliations, but what kind of record is that? if even 1% of them were terrorists, we’ve just released them back into the wild as martyrs and future, REAL terrorists.
there are REAL terrorists, but it’s the keystone cops who have been running the show since before 9/11. if your house was robbed when a certain guard was asleep while on duty, would you trust that same guard to report on the facts, disclose all lapses and mistakes, and then pursue the robber?
“80% of the 10,000 tunes on my iPod came from my CD collection. The other 20% just showed up one day for free. Good thing I live in Canada where that sort of thing is still legal.”
It’s actually not legal in Canada, it is that the music industry was disallowed to subpoena ISP’s for the the users information, but it is still considered illegal by law to download the music. Just to clarify.
“Terrorists,” like “Communists” once upon a time, is a much-abused word. Remove the reason why people resort to terrorism and the problem will go away.
Thousands of detainees? Never heard that. There are 500 at Gitmo, maybe that many scattered in US and European lockups, counting the 69 that the UK has.
No convictions?
Richard Reid
John Walker Lindh
Yahya GobaShafal Mosed
Yasein Taher
Taysal Galab
Mukhtar al-Bakri
Sahim Alwan
Jeffrey Battle
Patrice Ford
Ahmed Bilal
Muhammad Bilal
October Lewis
Mike Hawash
Masoud Ahmad Khan
Seifullah Chapman
Yong Ki Kwon
Donald Surratt
Hammad Abdur-Raheem
James Ujaama
Iyman Faris
And my personal fav, Lynne Stewart.
Michael, one of the fallacies of the age is that reading Krugman makes one smart.
Less is more, that is true on its face. What needs to be removed?
Mommy says that Juicy Juice has vitamins in it.
Jaypiddy,
It is legal to download in Canada. It is illegal to allow uploads from your computer.
They are trying to get the computer owners that allow uploads from the ISP’s.
Just to clarify.
Not only that, we are about to pay Russia billions so that we can drive our SUV’s. Kyoto!
Canada, what a country.
I like Apples and Grapes