Comment Articles

Music industry seriously off-key

David Coursey AnchorDesk

Published: 28 Nov 2001 16:59 GMT

OK, so the music industry really is as stupid as all those Napster users always said. I know this because I've researched a news story that sounded so odd when I first heard about it on the radio that I just assumed I'd heard incorrectly.

"What do you mean those commercial Napster replacements won't allow me to download music to my MP3 player?" I thought to myself, certain that I'd missed something.

After all, how could the record companies' partners -- companies like RealNetworks, Sony, and AOL Time Warner -- let them get away with such foolishness? Everyone knows the main reason for downloading music -- at least one of the main reasons -- is to be able to download it and carry it around, generally on an MP3 player of some sort.

BUT NOOOOOO, these hoity-toity music services -- Pressplay and MusicNet by name -- aren't going to allow music to be downloaded to a player. For $10 a month, give or take, users will be able to download 30 to 50 songs to their personal computers. And that's as far as the music goes.

Not that being unable to download to MP3 players is such a problem -- except for the customers, that is -- because these services won't be using MP3 as their format. They'll be using Microsoft's Windows Media format, as well as some proprietary formats of their own. The most important benefit is that these formats were created with "rights management" in mind, meaning the built-in ability to prevent dubbing the music to your player or burning it onto a CD.

These formats will also generally offer better sound quality and/or smaller files than equivalent MP3-formatted music. So, you'd be able to put more hours of music onto your player -- if you were able to put it onto your player at all. Nice Catch-22: The same technology that makes it impossible to copy the music also makes the files smaller if you were able to copy it.