Switchfoot on DRM
p2p news / p2pnet:- San Diego band Switchfoot has released a new album called ‘Nothing Is Sound’.
Cool. But who’s Switchfoot? And why should you care, especially since they’re signed by one of the Big Four record label and movie cartel owners?
Because that automatically means
DRM
Digital Restrictions Management
But Switchfoot (brothers Jon and Tim Foreman, Chad Butler, Jerome Fontamillas and Drew Shirley) is very, very unhappy about this and is doing a Dave Matthews.
“Hello friends,” posts the band’s Tim on the band’s Sony Music forum.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
DRM
By Tim Foreman - Switchfoot
My heart is heavy with this whole copy-protection thing. Many PC users have posted problems that they have had importing the new songs (regular disc only, not the dual disc) into programs such as itunes. Let me first say that as a musician AND as a music fan, I agree with the frustration that has been expressed.
We were horrified when we first heard about the new copy-protection policy that is being implemented by most major labels, including Sony (ours), and immediately looked into all of our options for removing this from our new album. Unfortunately, this is the new policy for all new major releases from these record companies.
It is heartbreaking to see our blood, sweat, and tears over the past 2 years blurred by the confusion and frustration surrounding this new technology. It is also unfortunate when bands such as ourselves, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, etc… (just a few of the new releases with copy protection) are the target of this criticism, when there is no possible way to avoid this new industry policy.
For mac users these songs should import seamlessly. We are told that itunes is coming out with a new version for PC users in early November that will be compatible with all of these new CD’s but in the meantime it’s frustrating for all of us. That said, there are a number of solutions (as is always the case with these types of things) for importing the CD into your itunes and ipod. We have compiled some of the easier ways below. I feel like as a band and as listeners, we’ve all been through a lot together over the past ten years, and we refuse to allow corporate policy to taint the family we’ve developed together. We deeply regret that there exists the need for any of our listeners to spend more than 30 seconds importing our music, but we’re asking as friends and partners in this journey together to spend the extra 10 minutes that it takes to import these songs, which we think you’ll agree to be our finest collection of songs yet. As a band, we’ve always been known for having the best fans in the world and I know that will continue for years to come. A month from now, I hope to be singing these songs together at a show, and the extra time spent importing the music will perhaps be forgotten, or at least forgiven. Thank you for your understanding and the continued kindness that you have always shown for five dreamers from San Diego, we love you guys,
-tim foreman
A) If you’re a mac user, or you have access to a mac, or you purchased the dual disc, you should have no problems… simply import the songs the same way as you always do.
B) If you’re a PC user, and you haven’t yet tried to import the the disk yet, download and install a free program called CDEX from http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/downloads.php. Now hold down the shift button while inserting the switchfoot CD (this disables the auto-run feature on the CD). Make sure that you hold it down until you are sure that nothing has run (maybe 60 seconds). Once the CD is loaded without auto-running it’s software, open the CDEX program, and select tracks 1-12 (Lonely Nation-Daisy), excluding data tracks 13 and 14. THen select the top icon on the right side of the program “Extract CD tracks to WAV files”. THis will extract them to your mymusic folder. Open iTunes and drag the .wav files you created into your itunes library, and you’re done, and free to convert the songs into mp3, or whatever format you wish. (If you’ve already tried to import another copy protected CD like Foo Fighters, etc…, you may already have the protection software installed on your computer, and should go to plan C.
C) If you’re a PC user, and you’ve already tried to import the the disk and accepted the auto-run installation, or don’t mind accepting the auto-run installation, place the CD into your computer and allow the Sony BM audio player on the CD to automatically start. If the player software does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer. Locate and select the drive letter for your CD drive. On the disc you will find either a file named LaunchCD.exe or Autorun.exe. Double-click this file to manually start the player.
Once the Sony BMG player application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.
Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.
Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher (or another fully compatible player that can playback secure WMA files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp by dragging them from wherever you saved them into Windows media player. Once they are in the Windows media player playlist you can burn the songs to a standard Audio CD by right clicking on the songs and selecting “add songs to burn list.” You can then burn the songs to a standard Audio CD. (Please note that in order to burn the files, you will need to upgrade to, or already have, Windows Media Player 9 or 10, which can be downloaded for free at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx )
Once the standard Audio CD has been created, place this copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would any normal audio CD.
(Good on ya, Tim)
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Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
September 19th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
I have nothing but admiration for artists who, first and foremost, want to get their music in front of as wide an audience as possible with as little hassle as possible. But I strongly suspect that, when Switchfoot signed with Sony, they signed over rights to their music, at least for a while. If so, I’m afraid Sony might go after them for facillitating the circumvention of copy protection on their own music!
How long will it be before we see major labels suing artists for this sort of thing?
September 19th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Stop using Winblows and start using Linux (BSD or other os’s). Demonstrate your frustrations to the lables by using LimeWire to receive your intertainment instead of buying music from the store. Make the cartels irrelavent like they are trying to do with the wishes of their customers.
September 19th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
i’d never heard of switchfoot.
because of this article, i just used the search engine here and found a couple of torrents for the album.
it’s really good - use the search engine here and get it now.
September 19th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
“..posts the band’s Tim on the band’s Sony Music forum”
Did this escape everyone’s eye? Who controls the board that this “rebelious hack” is posted?
I think this is an unholy covenant between Switchfoot and Sony to play good cop/bad cop, which will result in the sympathy, anti-corporation, and “Yeah! Stick it to the man! I’m supporting this artist fer sher” purchases. Sony could care less than what’s shown on the bottom line.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
“Did this escape everyone’s eye?”
Nope, only yours. This is right at the top of the story “Hello friends,” posts the band’s Tim on the band’s Sony Music forum.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
Really need a “roll eyes” smiley right now.
I was inferring to the fact that it is posted on SONY’s music forum, and the fact that everyone was praising Switchfoot for a statement that obviously had to be allowed by admins employed by SONY. If SONY didn’t want this info broadcasted, SONY could have removed it from SONY’s forum.
Clear enuff??
September 19th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
I seem to recall that Coldplay’s “X & Y” was being leeched via Bit Torrent far and wide at least two weeks before the ‘official’ release date. Apparently the ‘promo’ copies of CDs don’t include DRM at this point. It would likely irritate the recipients who are general program directors and DJs at radio stations, concert promoters, booking agents for television productions, etc.
September 20th, 2005 at 4:32 am
That post was replied to almost immediately after it was posted by a member of the message board, which in turn shows that whether or not Sony would’ve removed the post, there was already someone, probably more than one person, who read it before Sony even realized it was there. Basically, removing the post would’ve drawn more attention to it
September 20th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
*and* everyone knows that Sony’s forums aren’t well watched by administrators, those are moderated by normal users.
September 22nd, 2005 at 2:29 am
Doesn’t matter if the CDs include DRM as DRM can’t work. All it takes is one person out of the 6.5 billion people to have the technical skills to decode the DRM and then make it available to everyone else in a DRM-free format. There is no way to make content available to a digital device without making it also available to a technically sophisticated person in control of that device.
All DRM does is provide motivation for people to get their content from other than authorized choices.
Letter to an MP where I spoke about the snake-oil of DRM:
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1050
September 22nd, 2005 at 9:03 pm
OK, so the DRM mechanism is software automatically installed on your Windows computer by software on the CD? And to make it work, you have to leave enabled a very dangerous misfeature of an operating system renowned for awful security? People who are actually affected by this get exactly what they deserve for their ignorance. Seriously.
I would have to go through hours of effort and seriously inconvenience myself before that DRM mechanism would actually restrict my access to the CD audio data. It’s as effective as writing “please don’t copy this disc” on the CD, except that in this case computers running WIndows actually read those instructions and comply with them (apparently without the user’s consent, before the user is given the option of installing or refusing to install software). That has got to be the stupidest technical measure I’ve ever seen. The only thing stupider is that it actually works because so many people’s machines are configured to be insecure by default.
I wonder if there are any CD drives that have upgradable firmware and that can accept firmware upgrades on CD’s. That would effectively do the same thing that this toy DRM system does, but without the possibility of working around it. On the other hand, it would make it possible to burn CD-R’s that instantly, automatically, and permanently disable CD drives…so hopefully it never happens.
September 23rd, 2005 at 7:55 pm
please don’t be mean to my good buddy Tim Foreman, whom I just saw in concert!!! Yay for Tim!
October 1st, 2005 at 4:11 pm
when major labels stop making money from the artists