more music ranting
Prompted by the previous post, I have my own little rant about the way that music labels respond to the threat of digital music. I refer of course to the copy protection of CDs. Now we don’t have fair use provisions in our copyright laws, and until today there was no legal way to load commercial music onto my iPod. But let’s pretend for the last 6 months or so I have been doing just that with my existing CDs. Haul me away now Australian Federal Police!!
But although it is not legal, why would the record companies want to prevent me from doing so? Having an iPod is encouraging me to buy substantially more CDs than when I didn’t have any convenient way to listen to music. Record company people, let it be known that I have bought a dozen CDs in the last couple of months that I wouldn’t have otherwise purchased. If you don’t wish to retain my custom, then go on the way that you are.
Because every now and then I buy a CD put it in my computer and find that it is copy protected. What’s more, it comes with a little note at the very back of the information booklet down in a corner which says something along the lines of “This CD had copy protection and may not play in some players including car stereos and computers”. What the?
This is feature which is patently not for the benefit of the consumer. In fact, it renders the product I purchase inferior. It doesn’t have the same functionality as other CDs in my collection because that functionality has been removed. But there is no discount for this loss of functionality, and I can’t return it when I find out it is effectively useless to me. So what do I do?
Well of course, I find out what the hip young people are using to download illegally copied music and I download a copy of the CD that I have just purchased. Thankfully not every record label is including this technology. However, if they all do, and if the music I like is not on iTunes, then they will be forcing me to download pirated music and will be dissuading me from buying CDs legitimately.
How is that a sensible way to discourage file sharing?
You know what would encourage people to buy CDs rather than download them?
- Include lyrics of every song on the cover liner even if they are covers
- Include individual codes to enable people to download a bonus track from your website - they can do it for software so don’t tell me you can’t do it for music
- Make CDs cheap and with no protection.
- If you must incorporate protection, sell a more expensive unprotected version with a licence to copy the songs to a computer or mp3 player with the increase in costs to cover your lost revenue. I would pay an extra buck or two per CD for a licence
- Promote all artists with free unprotected downloads of sample mp3s. Mp3 players are fantastic devices to allow people to load a bunch of music and decide what they like
- Improve CD covers. They are crappy and break in five minutes. Plus the cover liner gets all mangled trying to fit in its little place