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Author Topic: Defeating Copy Protected CDs Evans A Criswell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1579 From: Huntsville, AL, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-10-2003 03:36 PM                        I feel that one of the main problems with the music industry that has led to many of its problems is the lack of "singles". Back in the 1980s when I started buying my own music, you could buy 3 45 RPM singles for $5 in most places. That's 1.66 plus tax per song. Before I had the money to buy many albums, I could go out and buy singles and get all the songs I liked that were being played on the radio at any time. Back then, I usually did not buy an album unless it had 3 songs I wanted or had a version of a song that was different than the single version and I just "had to have it". When vinyl 7" singles were phased out, cassette singles replaced them. I never bought cassette singles because the quality was so poor. There were some CD singles made (and still are), but I find that most songs I wanted didn't have CD singles. Many stores now don't even carry CD singles. Now let's go back to the 1980s... Suppose there had not been "singles" back then when I was a poor high school student or college student. I wouldn't have been able to afford many albums and I would have had to tape music off the radio like I had to do before 1984 or borrow records from friends and tape them. The single allowed people who wanted one song to buy it cheaply. There is no such concept now. If you want one song, you have to get the album, unless the song you want is one of the rare ones you can get a single for, if you can find a store that sells it. I have 504 7" 45s, nearly all of which I bought from March 31, 1984 until March 1989. That's 100 songs I bought per year, at under $200 a year, not counting albums I bought. For $200 a year back then, I could have only bought 23 albums a year since albums were $7.99 or $8.99 each. There were many albums that only had one or two songs that were popular, so I wouldn't have been able to get nearly the number of songs for the money. That's the problem we have now, compounded by the high prices of CDs. I still buy music I like on CD and now have nearly 2500 CDs. I don't care for most of the newer music out there, so for me, it's not the cost, it's the quality. The introduction of "broken CDs", one of which will not play on my main home stereo setup (although I had no trouble making a copy that would play fine on it), will likely make me avoid new releases to an even greater degree.  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 10-10-2003 03:59 PM                     The audio on an audio CD is not a .wav file. Audio discs are structured different from data discs and "enhanced" or multiformat discs.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 10-10-2003 05:27 PM                     Correct. Apps like EZ CD Creator or Sound Forge will take a music CD and interpret a WAV file from the original LPCM source. There is essentially no quality loss in this since you are not compressing the data in any way. For pay per download schemes, I will not pay $1 per tune to download a low quality 128kb/s MP3 or AAC file. Sorry, no way. It is equivalent to radio quality or the quality I get from music only channels off my satellite dish. If they offered $1 per tune for downloading an uncompressed LPCM based WAV file, then I might consider it. quote: These processes (not totally unlike those in our industry) all have a "value", which must be reflected... along with the cost of shoplifting (read: 'downloading') in the final retail price. Sure, CDs like any other product must have theft, damage, acts of god, overhead, cost of production and all that other good stuff amortized into the price. The trouble is the music industry still makes a very nice profit even if they sell their discs for half the current going rate. One major reason why: they screw their signed talent by not paying them any royalities! Hooray for the "rolling break even" and other creative accounting practices! Another thing which absolutely must be factored into the price of a CD is how it compares and competes against other digital entertainment products. I paid less for my copy of "The Matrix" on DVD than I did for the soundtrack CD. I see DVDs, video games, digital satellite TV and other emerging forms of entertainment as being one major force why the music industry's revenues are dwindling. Of course, monopolized radio and bland music that has been re-tred for over a decade is the other huge factor in the equation. The adverse effects of downloading has been badly overstated. The RIAA can either address the real causes of their misfortune or continue blaming it all on music pirates and watch the major record labels go out of business.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 10-10-2003 05:48 PM                        So what is the main difference between WAV, AIFF, LPCM, and all of these uncompressed audio data streams? They are all linear. They are all uncompressed, so the 1's and 0's denoting the actual musical data should be identical. The only difference I could see is if those 1's and 0's are stored differently in each format and the headers.  |  IP: Logged Chris Trainor Expert Film Handler Posts: 161 From: Greenville, RI, USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-10-2003 09:08 PM                        In response to the longago posted 'reasonable price'. A Reasonable price would be defined as what is 'reasonable' to your target market. If your targeting teens and young college students your target price should be about $5 - $10/cd. Why? because that's what most of them can afford. if you set your target price outside of that scope and all they have to do is go online and get it for free that's what will end up happening. Kindof like when they raised the highway speed limits around here from 55 to 65mph.... most people didn't speed up, there were just more 'legal' drivers. I think the same goes for the music industry, if their $15 CD's were $7 and their $20 CD's were $12 or so they'd have much less of a piracy issue. --Chris  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 10-10-2003 09:25 PM                     quote: I still buy music I like on CD and now have nearly 2500 CDs. WOW! You must be a criminal though. Just because.  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-10-2003 09:33 PM                  I have had over 10,000 CDs. I originally bought just one and ripped the tunes that I like and then would exchange it for another one to rip. >>> Phil  |  IP: Logged Dan Lyons Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 698 From: Seal Beach, CA Registered: Sep 2002 posted 10-10-2003 10:41 PM                     Haha, where are you shopping Phil? None of the major chains, Tower, Virgin, etc, will let you return or exchange something if it sucks. That's why I hate them. I hate Tower Records so very deeply. Just the other day I was there and saw a CD of Queen rarities and B-sides for $10. I'd never heard of some of the songs, so i bought it. It is the worst thing I've heard in my life. Imagine a bad bootleg turned into a crappy MP3 and you get the picture of what this sounds like. So now I'm out $10 and have something unlistenable. They could at least give you the option to open and listen to any title in store before purchase. That is probably one reason record sales are down. People need to know what they're getting before they buy. Would you go shopping at a major department store if they didn't let you try on or return clothing? Of course not! So yes, from now on before any purchases, I will definately be downloading a few songs to make sure I like the album first. Danny  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 10-10-2003 11:16 PM                        Phil, remember the guidelines about member pics. They have to be actual pictures of you. Members get their pics deleted for submitting pics that don't show enough of their face. What you have there is an avatar. Be careful, or Brad'll getcha! (My guess is that this has something to do with the chat room that absolutely no one will understand the reference to).  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-11-2003 01:03 AM                  Joe, you can thank the Grand-Poo-BAH for that change! What a jerk...him, not me! >>> Phil  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-11-2003 07:21 AM                        Danny -- Virgin Records (at least my local store) has kiosks which will let you listen to short samples of pretty much every recording in the store. Unfortunately, they aren't really useful for judging sound quality, since they use some horrible compression scheme. But at least it's better than what most record stores (don't) offer. I can understand why record stores won't take returns once the product is open unless it is defective. Otherwise they would surely take a huge loss on product would could only then be sold as "used" at less than half of the original retal price.  |  IP: Logged Raphael Jacquot Film Handler Posts: 7 From: corenc, N/A, France Registered: Oct 2003 posted 10-11-2003 08:01 AM                    Those "protections" are nothing but snake oil. the first thing, is that in order for you to be able to play cds in a player, you need to be able to read the table of content. these supposedly protected cds are built so that there are several sessions burned on them, with the first session ok (otherwise, a normal player doesn't work). The one thing that has those so-called "protection" sort-of work is that most cd players for computers are using extremely buggy firmware. Now, take a *real* cd player (my plextor burner is a good example), and all those "protection" fall to the floor, not protecting anything. These protections are not "effective" (as described in the DMCA and as common sense would have it), hence, there is no DMCA lawsuit to be held. -- end of story -- <rant> now, the DMCA has to be the worst fake law yet to have been enacted in the US. (and this is not counting all the stuff on dumblaws.com) </rant> Bobby That's assuming those "artists" have any talent to begin with (milli vanilly anyone) Chris Too bad we can't vote on posts, (+5 insightful) Dan And those "sucky" cd are what ? 75/80% of the available material ? (sounds just like movies if you ask me, 80% are not worth the stock they are printed on)  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 10-11-2003 11:20 AM                     quote: That's assuming those "artists" have any talent to begin with (milli vanilly anyone I assume you are referring to my comments about the very common practice of the music industry not paying the artists? Sorry, but talent or lack thereof is totally irrelevant in this matter. If a record company signs a fake lip-synch duo to a contract, they damned sure need to live up to their end of it. This is one of the sore points I have with the RIAA and the big recording labels. They are so full of shit when it comes to complaining about theft. They whine about Internet piracy while at the same time screwing many of their performers out of pay. And there are so many ways they do it too. Creative accounting is one way --sometimes its so creative the performer actually gets a bill instead of a royalty statement! Or the record company just falls back on the old tactic: simply don't pay. The rock group is starving their asses off and can't afford to hire a lawyer. The legal system in America only serves those rich enough to buy justice. You cannot just walk into a courtroom, file suit and say you were wronged. You have to pay a lot of money to do it. If you don't have a war-chest of money to pay lawyers, your contract isn't going to mean shit. So the only thing most music acts can do is suffer through making a number of albums until a couple are so successful that they can demand better terms when a contract gets renewed or go to a different label. That's the only time when a band really starts to get paid. Trouble is most successful bands don't last long enough to do that. So the "you don't like it, sue me" tactic the record company plays works 99% of the time. Many in the general public are wise to this problem too. A lot of the bands chronicled on shows like VH1's Behind the Music have horror stories of starving for years on the road while the record company got millions from their work. The Goo Goo Dolls nearly broke up over it, just a breath away from going back to day jobs even though their songs were in heavy rotation on the radio. With that condition ever present, it is really difficult to feel sympathy for the suits in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville when they cry about money lost over downloading. The suits are thieves too.  |  IP: Logged

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