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     So, I've been listening to the arguments about the Apple music store, and iTunes 4 for a few days now, DRM issues, selection issues, download encoding issues, etc. What is interesting to me about these is the same thing that always fascinates me about any sort of arguments in the Mac community, and that is the polarity of the arguments. Everything is either perfect, or horrid, and there's very little room for compromise.

     Which is a shame, because the Apple music store, and iTunes 4 are both studies in compromise, and would not exist in their current form without compromise.

DRM

     Of course, this was going to be one of the biggest issues of the service, and was completely unavoidable. Let's be clear on something. Without some form of DRM, without some way of limiting the amount of times you can copy a song, or stream it, this service wouldn't have happened. The major labels wouldn't have signed on at all. Period. I also doubt that the independent labels would have been able to jump on board, because the music industry is extremely incestuous, and the major labels are able to exert a lot of pressure on the indies if they so desire.

     So DRM is a fact of life, we aren't not going to have it. So the real question becomes, is Apple's DRM setup overly onerous? Not really. Let's compare this to buying a (DRM-free) CD or tape.

     With a CD or tape, you can listen to your music whenever you want in the player of your choice. If you wish to rip it to MP3/WMV/WAV/Whatever, you can, and then transfer that file to the player of your choice, and listen to it that way. If you wish to set up an MP3 server, and store your music there, and listen to it on another computer, you can. If you want to play it at a party, you can. If you want to make a mix CD or tape, you can. All of this is legal. It's all personal use.

     With Apple's DRM, you've bought the songs. You can listen to them whenever you want in the player of your choice, as long as it handles AAC. (No, this isn't a restriction. A CD does you no good without a CD player of some kind, and a tape does you no good without a tape deck of some kind.) You don't have to rip it to another form unless you want to listen to it in a player that doesn't support AAC. But if you want, you can. (I'll deal with issues of quality in a second.) You can stream these files to up to three authorized computers, with a hard limit of 5 computers connecting to your computer, authorized or not.

Limitation the First

     Ah, the first limitation. The authorization issue. Apple limits how many computers can legally play a downloaded song. Now, I will bring up that this only applies to downloaded music. If you rip your own, there's no authorization issue. Apple could have done this, with ease. But they didn't. Primarily because it would be a stupid thing to do. So authorization issue only hits you on stuff you download. Now, why are they doing this? Well, that nasty 'compromise' word comes into play. Remember, RIAA hates things like Gnutella, Kazaa, etc. Because they allow you to set up your system as a music server to the world, and you don't have to pay any licensing fees, or anything. Nobody, including the artist makes any money off of this. So Apple agrees to limit this. Let's face it, this is not a really bad number. Yes, I personally would like to see it at ten, but it beats none. Again, this is the kind of thing that makes the music companies nervous, the fact that one person buys a song, or downloads it illegally, and then distributes it to an unlimited number of other people.

     While it could be argued that radio is a form of streaming, the fact is, radio stations pay a not insignificant amount of money for the right to play the music they play, and unlike internet sharing, their audience is subject to a hard geographical limitation due to range limitations on transmission strength. So WXRV here in Boston may be able to transmit to an unlimited number of people within it's transmission range, but not outside of that. Even the radio stations that are streaming on the Internet are paying for that privilege. While the artists aren't making a lot from the royalties that this generates, it is infinitely more money than they are making off of things like Gnutella.

     So you can really only stream downloaded songs to three Macs, and ripped songs to five Macs. Well, so what? I mean it. So what? Are you really being oppressed because you can't stream to everyone on your subnet, or everyone who knows your IP address? I mean, if you want to get technical, that's public broadcasting, and personal use doesn't include that. So, in a sense, Apple, and iTunes 4 are giving you a wee bit more legally than you get normally. It's not an unlimited right, but no right is. As well, face it, as DRM goes, this is a pretty minor restriction, and it's also bypassed with about five minutes of work.

Limitation the Second

     So back to the other DRM issues. The next one deals with burning CDs, and it is a really minor one. You can't burn more than ten identical CDs. Every ten CDs, you have to change the playlist. This one hasn't caused many issues, which is good, because it's a minor thing anyway. Again, it's a compromise. This way, RIAA can't point at iTunes and say "Hey! You're letting everyone become black - market CD distribution houses." It's about as secure as hiding your music in an invisible directory on your iPod. If you want to bypass it, you can, but why? I really don't see a desperate need to be able to burn a hundred CDs under anything resembling personal use. Even Sybil would have only needed sixteen or so.

     I think the thing that worries me the most is that Apple's only solution to preserve your songs is to back them up to CD or DVD. The problem with that is what happens if your house burns down? Or some other catastrophe befalls your only authorized computer, you don't have an iPod, and all your backups are on optical disk? Okay, so that may seem like a stretch, but these things happen, and I think you need to plan for the edge cases with this type of scheme. I'm not saying Apple hasn't thought of this, only that I haven't seen any kbase articles on this yet.

     There are still a lot of "what if's" with regard to the DRM Apple is using, and it would behove Apple to answer these sooner rather than later.

U.S. Only

     Another source of consternation is that the Apple music store is for U.S. residents only. This sparks cries of "discrimination", and "Apple is ignoring non-US Mac owners!" Nonsense. Anyone with any knowledge will tell you that music licensing, especially for a service like Apple's is a nightmare of laws that are often in direct opposition to each other. If you want to complain to someone, yell at the legislators in your respective countries, (U.S. included), to sit down and create a common standard. We'll all be dead of old age by the time this happens of course, but that's the only real solution.

     Another issue to remember is that this is all very experimental. The deal Apple struck with the majors is only for a year, so this is really a trial run. If it works, then the companies may help deal with the licensing issues overseas, and more Mac owners can benefit from this. As with all things, when you sit down to write your concerns, be calm, cool, and polite. I'd also recommend sending your concerns to the labels as well as Apple. Both sides need to agree on this. There's that compromise thing again.

Download Quality

     The quality, or lack thereof is another problem people are having with Apple's music store. The audiophiles are up in arms, heck everyone is. 128Kbps AAC isn't good enough, Apple is screwing the customer by not having a selection of bitrates, etc., yadda. I'm not going to comment on how 128Kbps sounds, as:

1. I worked on B-1B bombers for years, so my upper range hearing is a mess. Midrange and lower range I am fine with, but there are huge chunks of the upper end that I either can't hear, or cause me pain. I will say I don't have any problems with 128Kbps, but caveat deaf twit.
2. I'm not an audio engineer, so I don't have the background for deciding if an encoding scheme is good, bad, or indifferent.

     However, looking at the music that I've been converting to AAC, from higher rate MP3, (I can hear the difference between 128Kbps MP3 and 256Kbps with VBR MP3), the file sizes seem to be a little less than a MB a minute. Now, Apple could encode at multiple rates, but that causes a lot of problems.

1. Your storage needs instantly double, or triple. Disks may be cheap, but not in that quantity. That also increases backup costs, administrative costs, etc. Managing storage on that scale is not insignificant in terms of either money, time, or people. The more it costs Apple, the more it costs us.
2. Bandwidth use goes straight up. Again, if you have multiple choices for encoding rates, or a higher encoding rate, then you have to be able to upload those files to your customers. That is not a non-trivial concern. Even at 128Kbps, Apple is getting overloaded. At higher rates, it would be worse. And the bandwidth costs go up. And the per-song costs go up. Remember the .mac lesson.
3. You cut out people who don't have fat pipes. Yes, I know, get off the modem. Well, there are rather large parts of the country where a modem is your only option. I have friends in some of them. They would love to have cable, DSL, or even satellite Internet access, but they don't. While a 3 - 5MB file size is annoying on a modem, it's not a killer. You get into the 10MB and greater range, and people stop bothering. So a smaller file size with solid quality gives everyone incentive to buy and download. The customer is never always right, but they are the customer, and you at least try to get more of them.
4. The record companies would have a fit. If Apple was downloading CD - quality audio, then I'll bet it would either cost a lot more, or the DRM would be a lot more onerous. So the bit rate is a compromise. And if you're an audiophile, why are you listening to lossy compressed songs anyway?

     There's that compromise concept again. Nobody totally wins, nobody totally loses. But we get something we didn't have before, and that's a win in my book.

     Music Selection

     While Apple is bragging about having over 200,000 songs, that's really not that much. There's a lot of music they don't have. But it's new. They're ripping as fast as they can. And you can see new stuff every day. If you're talking about the really big bands, like Led Zeppelin, or the Rolling Stones, well, they do business differently. You have to get Led Zeppelin to agree to this, not just Atlantic Records. Groups that large make their own deals. The independent labels will come as well. Especially for them, this is a distribution pipeline that they'd kill to get, so I don't see them holding out. A larger selection only benefits Apple, so there's no logic behind insinuations that they are somehow shutting out smaller labels.

     There is however, one real problem with the selection. More correctly, it's the naming conventions of the songs.

     Dread Zeppelin did a cover of "Moby Dick". They did not cover "Moby D**k" The name of the album by Les Elgart that has the song "Bandstand Boogie" is "Dick Van Dyke's Dance Party", not "D**k Van D**e's Dance Party". The name of the song by Pinkard and Bowen is "The Ballad of Dick and Jane", not "The Ballad of D**k and Jane". Richard Pryor did not have a track on "Supernigger" called "Super N****r".

     That's just stupid. I mean exactly that. It's stupid. It encourages stupidity. So, while Apple insists on taking that action, I personally will not buy a single track from their online store. Nor will I listen to previews. They can do stupid things, that's their right. But I'm not encouraging it monetarily, or in any other way. If you don't agree, cool. That's one thing that's nice about being different people. I won't think any less of anyone who does disagree, regardless of reason. But I just cannot support rampant offensensitivity about the English language and its uses. When you pervert the language, you pervert thinking. It's propaganda, and they can just carry on without me.

     So, with the exception of my little issues with Apple's naming problems, what you see is a series of compromises. (Yes, I do 'get' that D**k is a compromise. It's just one I can't live with.) Most of them were necessary to avoid having this be a silly subscription service, with really onerous DRM, or charging more for burnable tunes.

Pressplay fights back

     I'd also like to answer some of the issues brought up by Seth Oster, VP of Corporate Communications & Public Affairs for PressPlay, a subscription service.

     Well, that's what I want from a store. Gimme my stuff, take my money, see ya. I don't want to pay to listen to someone else's music. There's a way for me to do that for free, it's called "radio". I can listen to all the radio stations, internet and otherwise I want to, and it won't cost me $9.95 a month. I won't pay a dime until I want to buy the song.

     Hmm...so you're charging them $9.95 a month for what they can get for free in an almost unlimited number of internet radio locations. I'm not seeing a real benefit to Pressplay yet.

     So, in addition to paying for the privilege of listening, I have to pay you extra for a permanent download...just like Apple. It seems to me that you're making money off of what's out there and free, and then for permanent downloads, doing exactly what Apple is doing. The line about Apple's store taking away flexibility and choice is PR nonsense. Apple's store is not a streaming service with purchasing as an option. It's a store where you buy music with some preview ability. They are exactly what they claim to be, which is not the same service as Pressplay. If you want to just listen, go to Live365, and listen all you want for free. Why, that saves you $9.95 a month over Pressplay. What a bargain!

     Ah, here Seth can't resist playing with numbers. He's silly for doing it. He's confusing listening with purchasing. Apple's store is not a listening service, it's a store. They don't claim to be a listening service. But let's compare prices on actual downloads. First, we have to understand something. What Apple is selling you is what PressPlay calls a "Portable Download". The "Unlimited Downloads" that you get for $9.95 a month aren't really yours. They don't work unless you keep sending Pressplay money. If you cancel your subscription, then you lose all that music you've been paying for. An analogy would be National Geographic taking back all your old copies of the magazine because you no longer want to get any more. So, the unlimited stuff isn't even close to your music. It's their music, you're paying for the privilege of listening to it. That's all.

     To get "Portable Downloads" as a part of your monthly subscription, you have to go to the middle tier of service, "Unlimited Plus". (Okay, there is no such thing as Unlimited Plus. It's bad language, and you should dislike Pressplay for using such a ridiculous term.) That tier gets you ten portable downloads per month, but it's $17.95 per month. So, if all you do is Portable Downloads, (We're comparing similar services) those ten songs are going to cost you $1.79 per track. Hmm...Apple's already cheaper, by almost a buck a track. Not looking good for Pressplay here. But what about the highest tier of service, "Annual Plus"? Well, again, if you want that for the Portable Downloads, you get 120 per year, all available on day 1 of your membership. So that's now $1.49 per track. A better bargain than the Unlimited Plus, but Apple's still cheaper.

     However, you don't have to go to one of the upper tiers. You can buy Portable Download 'packs' of 5, 10, or 20 downloads, for $5.95, $9.95, or $18.95 respectively. So, that works out to $1.19 per track, $.99 per track, or $.94 per track respectively. So at best, Pressplay is precisely a nickel per track cheaper for 'real' downloads than Apple's store. Of course, when you factor in that they're hitting you for $9.95 a month for listening, which you can do legally for free at hundreds of other sites, Apple is ahead before you start. Oh, and since you have to buy those packs in bulk, the prices I quote per track only apply if you download 5, 10, or 20 tracks. If you download less, then you pay more per track. Seth, here's a tip. The Mac market isn't really that dumb. We can count.

     Which brings me to his last statement, and I'm really surprised he was silly enough to make it.

     Wow...a service that's been around a day as of the date of this statement has less music than one that's been around for, well, more than a day. And it has features that Apple never claimed to have, and you get charged for them, even though you can get them for free with ease. Oooh, hold me back, I want Pressplay. Well not really, and that brings us to the last little gem in Seth's statement.

     That's true. Because if we look at pressplay's FAQ on minimum system requirements, we see this little gem:

     So this wonderful service is absolutely useless to Mac users. He's promoting a service that the people using Apple's store cannot use unless they buy a Wintel box, or Virtual PC. Exactly why is he even talking about this?

     Because Apple scares people. Because they take risks like this. Because when the Windows version of iTunes 4 comes out, what happens if people realize that they can get everything pressplay gives them outside of Portable Downloads for free, and that Pressplay actually charges you more than Apple for a single portable download?

     If Pressplay wasn't worried, they wouldn't have been so silly as to put out a statement this fragile. But this scares them, and scares them badly.

     As it should.

john

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