for eveyone for at least a year as compansation from the big label for illegal use of DRM for so many years, and of course Sony should be force to release in whole catalog into the public domain and then be shutdown for that massive rootkit invasion they did,,, ho, well that whould be justice serve, so it will never happen..,, (when was the last time the bad guys got punished in court>)

Hooray !!

I'll still refuse to buy music in a digital form regardless of DRM or not. I won't rip any of my own CD's at less than 192bit for use in the car and at less than 320bit for use through my network. Most of the stuff you can buy online is at best 128bit and the sound quality is pretty poor unless you are using pretty poor equipment/speakers... Meaning most MP3 players.

First thing I did when buying an MP3 player 5yrs ago was throw away the speakers and buy a decent set of proper portable headphones... Still got them and they still work great as does the MP3 player.

Even then, I'd prefer to listen to a real CD as you can tell the difference..

I also agree that there is very little music these days that interests me... I've actually been on a bit of an 80's retro kick the last few months and been searching out music I already own on vinyl, but not CD. So much in fact that my next gadget purchase will be a USB turntable so I can convert that vinyl into MP3... pops, clicks and all. Some of it you simply cannot find online.

Might I suggest though it won't cure everything, that they might do better to keep up with industry trends rather than being last all the time. Agile these guys are not they are not going to stand a chance unless they get some people at the top who pay attention. People will

always buy crap, but they want their full measure of crap, not what they were selling.

A lot of DJ sites were offering DRM free 320kbps songs a couple of years ago and now even offer lossless and wav formats - hence will be as good as CDs (and some better). As bandwidth becomes more common place I'd expect this to make it into the mainstream.

On the other hand I refuse to buy CDs any more now because it feels so last century....I'd rather pay my 79p etc., or even better subscribe to a monthly service.

Actually, Amazon's MP3s have a bit rate of at least 192 kbps(that's what WinAmp shows for the ones that I downloaded), and their FAQ has this to say about the MP3s:

"Bit Rate: Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for maximum audio quality and smaller file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps)...Some of our content is encoded using a constant bit rate of 256 kbps." (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154210)

I've read numerous reviews of various compressed music formats. In blind tests with people listening to the music it is a rare - no very rare - person that can tell the difference between MP3's above 192kbps. We 50 year old types with a history of playing our music too loud can't tell the difference with anything past 128kbps.

128kbps MP3's cost less off MP3sparks.com, download quicker, sound fine and will convert to CD audio if you feel the need to burn a CD.

I think the majors are making (maybe too late) a good choice. I buy my music off of the controversial (but legal) site in Russia because I don't want any DRM issues. I might pay a little more from a non-controversial site if I could get it in standard MP3 format. What will really win me over though is a subscription model where there is no distinction between listening and recording - just like my cable TV. In my mind if I paid a monthly subscription and recorded it to my hard drive it's no different than recording a TV show to watch later. Later could be tomorrow or could be next year.

Tony

"there'll be digital fingerprinting and watermarking, which will work like this: You download a tune from your nice'n'legal paid service. This tune is secretly watermarked with your name and address"

More likely the track will have a semi-anonymous number which represents the vendors transaction id. The number is anonymous except to the vendor of the track. If the copyright owner find a copy widely distributed on the internet, they could go to the vendor, obtain the details of who bought it and pursue that person for distributing your copy of the music.

I happen to like this solution, I've been pushing it for years. It lets you do everything you want with the media, it even lets you distribute it widely on the net if you choose, but not without consequences. So you may have to defend against the consequences but that's just like anything else in the world.

"You give a copy to your friend, secure in the belief that there's no DRM in it. Your friend, in turn, generously shares it with the world via Pirate Bay."

Which is of course what the copyright holder wants to prevent! It's a fair balance I think between letting you do anything you want with the track EXCEPT wide distribution. If you're dumb enough to share it with Peter the Pirate, you'd better take the consequences.

They were promised less piracy and hence more sales if they went the DRM route. But what they got was fewer sales, even though unrestricted MP3 were priced higher. So if DRM reduced piracy, why didn't they sell more?

http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/servlet/TopDownloadsServlet

That's why all the DRM'd tracks are down the lower end of the Walmart charts, EVEN THE WALMART EXCLUSIVE tracks.

So look at Sony's future, you (a musician) could sign with Sony and be DRM'd and have no chance of reaching the top of the charts, or you could sign with EMI, be in MP3 format and have a much better chance of reaching the top of the charts. Either Sony dropped the DRM or over time the musicians would drop them.

Nobody, nobody, ever, takes on their customers and wins. I don't care how large you think your corporation is, if you do that you will die.

You buy a CD from the shop, you can quite easily sell it on.

When you buy your DRM free MP3 with it's fingerprint pointing to your transaction, kiss goodbye to any chance of selling it on in future.

That's one reason I won't buy downloadable music.. I like to have tangible assets that might be worth something in future or that I can hand down to my kids.. or allow the tax man to seize as payment for my tax bill. Will they accept MP3's?

"When you buy your DRM free MP3 with it's fingerprint pointing to your transaction, kiss goodbye to any chance of selling it on in future."

Is there a resale market in MP3s that AREN'T watermarked? No?

If there was, keep the receipt when they ask you WTF your track is doing on Pirate Bay, explain you sold it to Jack the Pirate, of 245 Mateys Street, and give them the receipt.

The watermark doesn't stop you doing anything, if you can justify it, you can do it.

Here's everyone comparing and bitching about bitrates of MP3. I find that funny.

If you really want your audio quality to remain, use FLAC or Ogg Vorbis. Bonus with these is that no giant corporation owning the rights to the codec. No one claims royalties just for the encoder.

These are both becoming supported on network audio players for home, portable players and of course on full computers.

Or if you must pay royalties for proprietary encoders and formats, there's always WMA-lossless. Supported by most WM9 (and up) capable players, and being lossless sounds just like the CD.

I rember them trying this early on in the mp3 debate they gave some students 3 DIFFRENT files with DIFFRENT wata marks and they removed them with in a week the repor then pointed out that in a real senro they would have been hundre3ds of identacle files and identicle water marks so it was a no brainer

Then still not buying....waiting...

I am NOT PAYING A @#$%ING DOLLAR FOR 192K BULLSHIT.