“Recent CDs by Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews Band containing new anti-piracy technology are selling well despite a backlash among some fans angry that the discs are incompatible with iPods, experts said on Thursday,” Sue Zeidler reports for Reuters. “Aiming to curb piracy, labels like Sony BMG, which released both records, are rolling out copy-protected albums in the United States, which let users make three exact duplicates of a CD, and store files on a PC in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media format. But the copy-protection bars users from importing music onto iPods since Apple’s Fairplay software is incompatible with Windows.”
Zeidler reports, “Record executives said they were continuing talks with Apple Computer Inc. to make these CDs compatible with iPods. ‘It’s up to Apple to flip the switch,’ said one record label executive. Apple declined to comment on such talks. ‘We have not announced any plans to license Fairplay technology,’ said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris… Sony BMG, a joint venture between Japan’s Sony Corp. and Germany’s Bertelsmann, said users can get the music onto iPods by transferring files to a PC, burning them to a CD, ripping those and transferring them into iTunes.”
Full article here.
The copy-protection bars users from importing music onto iPods since Apple’s Fairplay software is incompatible with Windows? Doesn’t iTunes come in a Windows version?
This is an attempt to force Apple to license FairPlay or incorporate WMA, more than anything else. For those who say that Apple’s “closed” iTunes Music Store (iTMS) + iPod system is to blame: Apple doesn’t force people to buy their music from the iTunes Music Store to get access to their music. What does Sony BMG offer? Discs that are useless for iPod users. The best option that Sony BMG offers iPod users are lower quality versions of the albums via iTMS. What if you want the CD-quality version of these albums? Will this tactic work to force Apple to license FairPlay to others or license WMA from Microsoft?
[UPDATE: 8:04pm, EDT: Added first sentence to “take” to highlight incorrect statement in quoted article. Also added “or incorporate WMA” as per reader comment(s) below along with various other fixes.]
Related article:
Sony BMG and EMI try to force Apple to ‘open’ iPod with iPod-incompatible CDs – June 20, 2005
Foo Fighters CDs ripped just fine. Hello retards, try it before you panic, it works just fine in iTunes on the PC or Mac and works with the iPod. Man people are just stupid.
1: read this and use it to crack the discs:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/
2: spread the cracked music files far and wide.
That’ll teach them.
I bought the Foo Fighters CD (because they kick major ass, and by the way Dave Grohl uses Apple Macs) and ripped it to my Mac with no problems.
Amen, Jeff,
There’s no **$)%^ way I’m ever purchasing a CD with copy protection on it, unless it’s to open the package and walk back into the store to return it as defective.
Good Lord, you take a technology that’s worked just fine for a quater century and hose it up the a**, make honest people suffer, and don’t really slow down criminals at all. Brilliant!
MW “place”, as in “place foot in mouth, and chew real hard”
This is precisely why people download stuff. If my bought and paid for CD won’t work the way I paid for it to work then I’ll go and download a more user freindly version.
That is a very, very bad decision
Is the Mac blocked from accessing these CDs to playback/rip? There use to be no issues in the past. If these CDs are Windows-only, then it looks like a possible class action lawsuit is inevitable.
bgmccollum – ROFL, Thanks for adding this. It made the whole article. Another GREAT reason to buy a Mac! Oh those poor poor windoze users and the hoops they are made to jump thru.
I have the new dmb cd, and i have it both on my itunes and on my ipod.
i bought the cd from the dmb store and it plays perfectly on both, so i dont know what the fuss is about
There are also a couple of hardware approaches that can work as well. One is as cheap as chips and the other is more costly.
First, let me make the point that not everyone has access to iTunes online…like Australia (Fuck Sony for being so greedy).
Second, I have used iTunes online from another country and as Apple admits the download is “near cd quality”, Myself and others want cd quality.
And now for the fixes:
1. The Walkman alternative. Plug a good quality portable cd to your audio in socket. Use say AudioHijack and the signal will be read as “clean” (non drm music) Then transfer the music to iTunes.
2. The pre-amp alternative. This is a more expensive option where you use a USB pre-amp. Either one made by Griffin or as I use, a Terratec Producer 26 USB which is more high end. Connect a cd to the pre amp and then connect the latter to a USB socket on you Mac and play. You’ll need to capture the audio with either CD Spin Doctor or Analogue Ripper. Once you’ve done this you can then move onto the fun stage.
3. The fun stage is where you transfer the audio to iTunes or even burn a clean cd. Now I’m unsure whether the new cd is non DRM. However once the music is captured you can transfer it to iTunes.
4. Transfer to your iPod.
Then there’s way to rip dvds using Mactheripper and compressing with Roxio Popcorn. Oops wrong post!!!
Even though there is a lot of flaming on this site when something like cd DRM or the like comes along people can find out how to overcome these faux “problems. Good onya guys and the same for MDN for providing a forum to screw the screwers.
And now I have one simple question I’m just a humble Australian ex musician who doesn’t know what LOL stands for …please help this Antipodean in her/his ignorance.
Hey, Notbikersrule,
LOL stands for “Laugh Out Loud.” ROTFLMAF is “Roll On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off”. Etc.
Now a question for you, you analogue CD ripper. I have a friend who’s slowly recording his old vinyl albums onto his Mac. The recording through a USB preamp works great, but neither of us can figure out how to automagically split the tracks up. Is there some little bit of software (or a VST plugin) that “sees” these silent gaps and can split up tracks based on that? Thanks if you know the answer!
Can’t you just rip it on a Mac and then put it on an iPod. So you give the CD to a friend (who has a Mac) he makes a copy, you put it on your iPod and he puts it on his iPod – wait now you have given a friend an illeagal copy.. Yeah this will help piracy.. IDIOTS
John,
use Garage Band if you have it. it is a great tool for cutting up those old Vinyl tracks. its a little overkill for the application but does a good job.
or you could do what i do and just download (yes from the internets illegally) the albums i have in vinyl. i bought the music, if i want to listen to it in this decade with this decades technology then i dont see anything wrong with “stealing” it. it doesnt weigh on my conscious, and it sounds better than the analogue rips, which tend to sound … bad no matter how careful you are.
Dear John,
My friend Notbikersrule told of your mate’s dilemma. Analogue Ripper gives you the option of doing this. It creates small gaps between songs (less than what’s on vinyl). It also rips albums as songs. The album’s contents are listed as songs. It’s a great little shareware program that just works. The website is: http://homepages.which.net/~i.mann/TAR/Ripper.html. The cost is $US19.95, which is sooo little for so much. I’m using it on an iMac G5 using latest version of Panther.
What pre amp is your mate using?
And I like your reference to “slowly recording”, real time recording is so 1980s.
My wife and me are ex music industry (she was a DJ) and we’ve got a 1200 album collection. I’ve got the unenviable task of transferring the lot of them.
Thanks for the explanation of LOL and ROTFLMAF. The latter I haven’t struck yet. That could be because of the tyranny of distance which is the reality of living in Australia. We do have great beaches though, which in Sydney we enjoy from October until the end of April.
Anyway I hope this software info helps your mate.
Dear unclebob,
I can see your point but it just grates to see people having anything do with illegal downloads. Personally I just can’t do it. Rearding Garagebansd you’re right it is overkill. The Analogue Ripper (TAR) is specifically written for transferring/converting audio from analogue to digital and it only costs $US19.95.
By the way I don’t have anything to do with TAR but I do have a special affection for Mac shareware that is free from bloatware, is stable and just works. But then again we have come to expect this from all things Mac. I do feel sorry for those ignorant Windows’ users. Well just a little bit anyway.
Come on people, read what’s been written. These CD’s can be ripped on a Mac, placed in iTunes, and then transferred to an iPod. There is no problem for us. Since I could care less about the PC crowd, maybe this will be an excuse for them to start looking at Macs.
Even if I can rip it, I’m not going to give any money to a company that tries to block my legitimate rights to copy music to my computer. I don’t steal music. I don’t give away copies of my music. So this is just bogus. Besides, these idiots who run the media companies, do they realize that any copy protection scheme is usually broken in about 5 minutes? So the people who don’t steal music are getting screwed, and the people who do, figure out how to do it in those 5 minutes.
The record companies seem to forget an important point. I love my ipod and ITMS. I could care fucking less about their CD’s and copy protection. If a consumer loves their product, do they actually think they will give it up to get something else to work. If it doesn’t work, that’s their problem. Why should I bother spending my time dealing with them. I just perceive it as their inability to make a product that works.
Step 1) buy the cd
Step 2) download the mp3
Problem solved! (please note, Step 1 may not be required)
funny never had a problem, they both work as normal cd’s in my mac lol
I think Apple should allow any type of file to play on the iPod. It is after all a digital music player.
An iPod can handle any format, just not MS DRM, which is not a format. Someone should Dave Matthews that it’s his fault, not Apple’s. His CDs don’t conform to the Red Book standard, thus aren’t even real audio CDs that can bear the Compact Disk logo.
Just want to add that the Foos CD works fine for me. Ripped it and put it on my iPod. No problem. I guess the copy protection problem is only on PCs…get a Mac, things just work
haven’t bought them.. don’t like the bands.. but again..
theses discs only have problems on Windows..
On a Mac, you can copy them into iTunes and put them on your iPod, as has already been stated above…
It’s very shortsighted of the record companes to do this. There will ALWAYS be ways around DRM. You could easiy get a digital signal out of a CD player, run it thru a professional sample rate converter which would remove the DRM, then record back into your comptuer..and end up with a digital copy of the orginal without the DRM. Yes, it’d take a bit of work…. but it CAN be done!
One more thing to help Apple sell Macs
Well, the point that all of you are missing is that the music industry is always looking out for us, the consumer. Thus, we should never question them because they care so deeply for us.
What’s a CD? Isn’t that some backward technology from the early eighties? Imagine, you had to order by mail or go to a store, where you had to browse through endless stacks of boxes, only to find out that the store did not carry the music you were looking for. And when you liked a new song, you had to buy another 10-15 along with it, whether you liked them or not. And now they are restricting the use of this old technology? Who gives a f§ck?