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maybe first?

anyway, DRM-free is a deathblow to AMZN music...

How embarrassing for Globe and Mail...

A billion of anything is a lot, Matt (except to the U.S government).


MDN's best line yet

Jan 07, 09 - 10:13 am Comment from: Demon

In the end there will only be one real on-line music store and that will be iTunes. iTunes is the biggest most well stocked music store in the World. Now, If they'd just sell the tracks in Apple Lossless format I'd be happy and buy download able music too. Until then I'll stick to buying CD's thank you very much.

Being from Canada, I can say that usually the Globe is a fairly reputable and reliable paper to read. I regularly read it because it is much better than the local paper around here. However, this article is one of the worst I have ever read on Apple. As a regular reader I will take the opportunity to voice concern over this article. I encourage others to do the same.

--mAc

Your headline is wrong, wrong, wrong.

It should read THE GLOBE AND MAIL BLOWS.

That commie rag never gets anything right.

The Ottawa Citizen headlined the story even worse than the Globe and Mail.

The front page headline in Ottawa Citizen said that Apple is increasing the price by 30%. They under report the sales of songs by 33% (calling it 4 billion vs 6 billion) and do the same for the number of customers understating the number at 50 million when Schiller said yesterday 75 million credit card accounts.

The Citizen article also makes it sound like DRM was all Apple's idea and, as is so often the case, neglect to acknowledge the recording industries duplicitous actions.

I just wish that the newsmedia could get the facts straight and (MDN word) "report" it accurately.

I haven't actually seen today's Citizen, but I'm not surprised by medelegant's report. It's a pretty pathetic paper (as most of the Southam papers have become since CanWest took over).

The Globe and Mail, even though owned by Rogers' competitor Bell Globemedia, has usually given Apple very positive coverage over the last few years. This was clearly an anomaly from an otherwise good paper.

Go too the full story and read some of the comments from their readers. It's proof that most people do not understand how iTunes even works. It's truly unbelievable how misinformed people are.

Jan 07, 09 - 11:57 am Comment from: Randian

"It's truly unbelievable how misinformed people are."

Well said, mks1, but keep in mind that this fact is the very backbone of journalism and politics around the world. Stupidity, ignorance, and a willingness to believe anything told them by so-called "authorities" makes the population of the world go 'round.

Let me ask you all a question: If the Republican candidate for U.S. President admitted to using cocaine during the campaign do you think the press would have:

a) Blared it from loudspeakers, plastered it in headlines, and broadcasted it 24/7 until Election Day.

or

b) Swept it under the rug as they did with Obama?

Let's see how many of you can divorce yourselves from your politics and answer the above question truthfully.

I attribute the whole Obama fiasco to privileged white- and liberal-dominated media and their misplaced guilt over slavery, among other things, but that's just my own opinion from the inside.

Did you concieve of this "question" all by yourself or did you have help from the signals on you tin foil hat? Keep your racist musings where they started; "on the inside."

Journo, that was out of line. Note that I am not denying the truth of it, merely its appropriateness to this forum. My one argument would be that the American press is much closer to the middle of the road than you suggest and may even be right-facing: please note the way they treated Bush's claims of WMDs - still not a sign of them - in Iraq as THE reason for going to war there. And their acceptance of the code of silence regarding the death toll there after Bush declared "victory".
On Topic: it's easy for news sources to get these things "wrong". But ... the number of "customers" is more of a "guess" than you would think. ALL MobileMe customers have their credit card numbers included in the iTunes Store roll-up, even if they've never run iTunes much less bought a tune.

Jan 07, 09 - 01:57 pm Comment from: KingMel

A similar article in the Houston Chronicle gave too much credit to the music companies, in my opinion, as if they were doing consumers a favor by dropping DRM in spite of Apple. We all know that the reverse is true.

It amazes me how easily people skew things, either through ignorance or to fit their particular agenda/perspective.

Jan 07, 09 - 02:30 pm Comment from: Cubert

I want to see someone, anyone, report about the blatant extortion attempts by the record labels (ie. DRM required for their songs sold through the iTunes Stores but no one else) to force their agenda (ie. tiered pricing).

Honestly who cares? For those who base theirs opinions off single sources and can't do a little research, deserve to be misled and should continue to live an ignorant existence. Personally, I'd rather they didn't like Apple and stayed away, keeping the community full of intelligent, logical people.

Deathblow to Amazon? Who knows. Still, we can get DRM free tunes from Amazon for .99 intead of $1.29 Record labels still trying to screw Apple and its customers

Jan 07, 09 - 03:14 pm Comment from: Sixvodkas

@ DLMeyer;

France's intelligence community stated Iraq had WMDs
Russia's intelligence community stated stated Iraq had WMDs
Germany's intelligence community stated Iraq had WMDs
Great Britain's intelligence community stated Iraq had WMDs

As a matter of fact, and at that time, nearly all of Western Civilization (certainly those in the UN Security Council) clearly, loudly and publicly stated that Iraq had (or was attempting to procure) WMD's.

Your attempt at historical revisionism ("It's all Bush!") only serves to prove just how far off base you truly are.

Jan 07, 09 - 04:04 pm Comment from: Predrag

Sixvodkas,

What you are saying is simply not true. Not one of the intelligence agencies had explicitly said there was "solid" evidence to claim that there were WMD, except the US; not to mention that not even CIA was very happy about the way their 'raw data' was interpreted by agenda-driven WH cabinet. There is an ocean of difference between 'had WMD' and 'had capability to produce and possibly could have' (with as many cautionary statements as you could possibly have, all to imply that data is simply not reliable).

Therefore, no amount of 'revisionism' will change the FACT that it's really all Bush...

Back to DRM.

If people, for one minute, think that just because DRM is dead, this is a cart blanche to copy and illegally transfer music, then I have some bad news for you.

The whole point of DRM free is so that you can play your music on any device that you want. Your Device. Not your friends or distant friends/family twice-bit-torrent-removed.

If you forget that, then you might want to look at your updated song catalog that now shows 256kb downloads and after pressing "info" you will find your name all over the info list showing that you purchased it, when you purchased it etc. Unless you get rid of those tags, your ass can still be grass for illegally sending music out to others. Not to mention the other credit card, personal identifier tags that are hashed in the digital download, acting as personal signatures.

DRM is freedom for people like me who want to be able to play music, after purchasing it, on any device that I own, without having to pay for it again and again and again and without having to degrade it by transferring it to another format. I also think that this provides a great move to the future, when other hardware arrives.

Jan 07, 09 - 06:22 pm Comment from: Predrag

darknite,

Not to nitpick, but for US$ 0.99, Amazon only offers 256kbps MP3 files. We all know by now that AAC encoding is approximately twice as efficient as MP3. Therefore, the sound quality of those Amazon MP3 files ought to be more-or-less the same as the old, original (DRM-wrapped) 128kbps AAC files. Consequently, what you're getting for $0.99 is twice as bad as Apple's $1.29 tracks. Not to mention that it is expected that the labels will only ask $1.29 for the tracks that are highly popular (i.e. where they can milk it as much as they wish). Whatever is sitting on the shelf, or on the back catalogue, or of slightly lower commercial appeal (most often inversely proportionate with artistic quality) will still sell for $0.99, or even $0.69.

And RickW, you are absolutely right. The meta-data will continue to contain user info in every downloaded AAC file from iTunes (as it has for the past almost six years). Most casual pirates won't know this and if there's a reason for alarm (i.e. someone aggressively sharing 10,000 of their iTunes tracks on LimeWire), RIAA could easily send their Dobermans over.