Sony caves in to mp3
p2pnet.net News:- The mainstream media is all over itself with the news that Sony will now support mp3.
Like Sony had a choice.
It’s been promoting its ATRAC3Plus but now says new Sony players will handle mp3s and eventually, it’ll provide software upgrades for existing devices.
The writing has, however, been on the wall in indelible ink for years.
P2p and file sharing are here to stay, locked in solid, and mp3s are the preferred modes of listening. That’s it, plain and simple, highly expensive attempts by Sony and others to force people into adopting proprietary technologies notwithstanding.
“The shift from reliance on its proprietary format will begin with flash memory-based players, the electronics giant said, but plans are still being finalized on how and when,” says CNET News, continuing that Sony is also considering expanding mp3 support to hard disk devices, although “no decision has yet been made on that front”.
In much the same way that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the entertainment industry and its cohorts are fighting a losing battle against p2p, file sharers and file sharing, there never was any doubt that MP3 Rulz.
But, says CNET, the company’s new Sony Connect online music store will continue to (try to) sell songs encoded in ATRAC, quoting ZDNet France source as sayng, “We want to push Atrac on our music download services and remain convinced that it is the best format on the market. But it is clear that the industry benchmark is Apple’s iPod, which is compatible with MP3.”
But bottom line, 99% of music lovers in the real world of online music surf the p2p networks.
The music idustry says these people are thieves because they’re not buying ‘product’ from them.
Downloaders and file sharers would if they could. But who in their right mind is going to pay the kind of money the members of the Big Four record label cartel are demanding? The corporate music industry would have buyers – if only it would sell at reasonable prices and open up its catalogues instead of trying to palm off the same tired 750,000 or so tracks through the same tired corporate music sites at the same exhorbitant prices.
But as with Sony and mp3, change is on the way – even in the corporate music world.
Yesterday, eMusic was re-launched, offering burnable and shareable indie and established music tracks of the kind often looked for on p2p networks.
Broad range offerings include music by Duke Ellington, Bob Marley, Maria Callas, Sam Cooke, John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, the Pixies, Little Richard, 50 Cent and John Coltrane.
And users can burn, download, share, etc, to their heart’s content and play the tracks on “virtually everything,” p2pnet was told.
eMusic is hard-core commercial, but no one has ever said it’s wrong to make a dollar, or a pound, or a yen, and the eMusic launch is a sign that at least some components of the Music Biz are starting to figure out which way is up.
eMusic is subscription based selling up to 40 tracks at about 25 cents a track, mid-level with 65 tracks at about 23 cents each, and Premium with 90 tracks at about 22 cents each – prices which are getting close to being reasonable. It’s a start.
Now if only there was some way to sell everything in industry catalogues, instead of just cookie-cutter dribbles, together with the amazing new music being offered by the genuinely indie labels and artists, a lot of people would make a lot of money and best of all, finally, The Customer would be getting what he or she wants and and is entitled to, having been ripped off shamelessly for decades.
And having heard it on mp3s, they’ll buy high quality hi-fi DVDs for home listening.
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See:-
flash memory-based – Sony to support MP3, CNETÂ News, September 22, 2004
burnable and shareable – eMusic returns, p2pnet, September 22, 2004
September 23rd, 2004 at 4:38 pm
Maybe next all these companies will start to support .ogg files?
Maybe that’s a little much to ask…it is open source…
If you haven’t tried it though, I highly recommend trying it! I can’t go back to listening to my 128 kbps mp3s…
September 23rd, 2004 at 5:11 pm
As with the VCR, which was belatedly attacked by the Media companies, the millions of MP3 players flooding the market makes the RIAA’s and Judiciary Committee’s pathetic attempts to put the genie back in the bottle useless. I hope Hatch and Leahy have some advisors (I know those two dinosaurs don’t have a sweet clue what is happening all around them) to inform them that their silly little laws will soon be unenforceable and also that calling most of their electorate theives is not a good way to get yourself re-elected.
September 23rd, 2004 at 7:37 pm
Ahh Betamax – it seems so long ago (and obviously most people have forgotten it) that we won our rights to legally record movies and TV shows with our vcr’s (aka time shifting) so we could watch them later since not many of us are privileged with being rich or home jobs sitting in front of the TV all day lol. We could give that tape to a friend for free, or let them come over to our place and watch it – all legally… Then enters US Patriot Act/DMCA and now we’re supposed to forget about the standing laws they overwrote in the interest of ‘fighting terrorism’ and ‘protecting Intellectual Property Rights’ though throwing the rest of us (the people who work and pay for people to have fun recording music and movies – we’re the real people producing product for our country.. food, shelter – real jobs and get paid jack crap for it too) into the classification of pirates and thieves for exercising fair-use by ‘not charging for use of legitimate copies that were made and shared – in the same fashion that someone could record a movie in vhs and share it LEGALLY with thousands of people and as long as NO money is charged it didn’t violate fair-use. The people they need to worry about are the people ‘selling’ their movies and songs in black markets – not little Jimmy who’s 8 and likes Britney Spears and uses p2p to get them cause its ‘cool’ until mommy and daddy go to freaking court and get fined thousands of dollars….
MP3′s and the crap quality mpg/avi movies are no better than ‘advertising’ – like listening to music on the radio…. When a good movie comes out and ppl download them – If they ‘love’ the movie (star wars saga for example) they will go to the theater because the QUALITY is so MUCH better that they HAVE to see it after getting the taster of avi/mpg – same with MP3′s except in that case the artists best bet is to have more concerts….. Though I’ll admit, for 22 cents a piece even I’d consider buying music – though I’m boycotting music and movie purchases from anyone supported through the RIAA so I’d have to check the short list of ‘which’ musicians are not RIAA backed before buying :p
The people have spoken – We’ve made ‘some’ impact and the media industry ‘will’ eventually bow to our demands because ‘we’ are their sugar daddies(and mommies) – without us the poor Musicians and Actors would have to give up some of their ‘well earned (lmao)’ bling bling and not buy their 25th house in Beverly Hills (oh the travesty)…. We’re tired of going to work 2,080+ hours a year and making barely enough to survive – most of us will never own a home or ever retire in our lifetimes, so pardon us if we really don’t care if the rich get richer.
_-Jile-_