Desert Words

Interesting. According to this article, Sony BMG is testing out another DRM method to prevent pirate copying of their CDs, but allowing consumers to make a backup copy.

Problem is, while it shows some open-mindedness towards the flexibility in listening options that music buyers have become used to in recent years, it still shows some remarkably bad form.

1) Limiting track exports to WMA only? All those folks with iPods and iRivers and other MP3 players who like carrying their music around with them are gonna be pissed, not to mention all those people who don’t own Windows PCs and are used to listening to CDs on their Macs or Linux boxes.

2) Not informing the consumers which CDs will have this newest kludge on them? So you torque off the consumers by making them buy the thing before finding out it doesn’t work in their car stereo.

3) Finding out your new method of data protection has been already cracked? Priceless.

I am personally going through a shift in music buying and listening, and the things I’ve come to discover over the past few months have been funny and interesting.

First, I realized that most of the cd’s in my collection, which at one point contained nearly 1100 legally obtained discs, had been purchased prior to 1997, and a great deal of those had been bought between 1986 and 1996. That’s right, 19 years ago this summer, I bought my first cd’s. I bought those 10 discs a few months before I even owned a cd player… had to save up for that, being a poor college kid and all.

After I had that first player, a cool Sony model that had an A-B loop feature on it (my guess was to attract the DJ crowd to using cd’s), I bought cd’s like they were candy, and listened to them non-stop. I didn’t have a cd player in my zippy little car, but I was able to copy them to cassette and play them in the car until the wore out, then made another cassette. I would even fall asleep listening to the same album or even the same song playing over and over again — if you don’t believe me, ask my brother why, to this day, he still hates Home by the Sea by Genesis.

(I swear, it wasn’t intentional. I thought I hit the “repeat disc”, and instead made it repeat one track, and fell asleep before it had even finished one playing).

Anyway.

Sometime in the late 90s-early 2000s, my interest in radio dropped significantly. I couldn’t listen to radio in the mornings anymore… 80% annoying morning dj bullshit and 10% news and 10% music isn’t what my idea of radio was about. Didn’t matter what station, or what city: rock, urban, pop… name it, and they played the same 10-11 songs 8 times a day, with the same “oldies” thrown in during lunch hour.

I started following music listings and indie releases on the Internet around 1996-97, and I would take a list with me to some of the independent music stores that you could find all around different parts of downtown Philadelphia and parts of South Jersey. I’d listen to a lot, but only buy some. There were acts whose new music I’d buy without question: U2, Prince, Peter Gabriel, and a couple of “newcomers” like Live and Rage Against the Machine, but by 2000-01, I wasn’t buying much of anything, and listening to zero FM radio at all. I wasn’t even listening to AM radio, since I was out of range of my favorite baseball teams, and other sports teams whose games I would have listened to.

Since 2000, I have gotten rid of more CD’s than I’ve purchased. I’ve made mix CDs out of my favorite songs and bands, and listen to them while driving, a habit formed from making my own mix cassettes from CDs long ong ago. I’ve even ripped MP3s of some tracks out of CDs I still have, and I listen to them on my Mac laptop now and then. I don’t download music illegally, and there is a list of tunes I’ll buy from the iTunes store one of these days. Hell, listening to someone else’s MP3s of Evanesence’s album a couple years ago led me to go buy it, and I’m going to do the same with the Lord of the Rings soundtracks, as soon as I’m sure they’re not going to release a version with more music added to it (I’d heard a rumor…)

But this new move of Sony’s just shows that they are more interested in preventing piracy than they are in making sure people who buy their music can listen to that music any way they want. How exactly is this going to stop the hemmoraghing of their music company’s bottom line?

Back to my 19-year-old compact discs: I am going through my CDs again, and I’m getting rid of more than I ever thought I would have as little as a year ago. I’ve sent one box of about 25 discs to a friend who ships CDs, DVDs and books to soldiers stationed overseas, the Middle East especially (and yes, she makes sure that no material that would be offensive to the people living where the soldiers are posted). I’m going through my other rack of CDs this week, and I may have another 30-40 discs for her, plus another 20 or more that I’ll take to one of the local used/trade-in shops.

All told, comparing CDs that I’ve bought in the past 5 years with how many I’ve gotten rid of, well, let’s just say that if my behavior is typical, the RIAA would take up focus groups and marketing studies to see what’s gone wrong with the program. I think it’s a safe guess that I’ve gotten rid of 200-250 discs, and that was prior to this current purge. I may be down to under 600 discs by the time I’m done with this round (it’s also scary how many books I’m getting rid of, but that’s another discussion). Over that same 5-year period, I may have bought 30-40 discs total. Do the math.

Honestly, I’d much rather buy 5 or 6 songs from iTunes, and play them on my computers or burn them to a CD to be played while driving. I’d rather buy a used CD for $6, listen to it for a month or 6, then trade it in on something else.

But rest easy, RIAA companies… I’ll still buy new U2 cd’s, and I still have to go get a Best Of compilation or two by The Rolling Stones and The Who. And maybe that first Aerosmith compilation, and there may be a ones out there for Parliament and Funkadelic and Lakeside that I haven’t run across yet. I just haven’t gone into a record store to look, and wide selection isn’t easy to come by outside of a Best Buy or a Tower Records (and one of those closed down in early 2004).

Come to think of it, maybe I should just buy those albums from iTunes, after all.

Related links:
Geek.com: Sony continues DRM drive on music CDs (amusing reader commentary)