Comments on: Liberate Portable Music Players: UMS, MTP, and Platform-Agnostic Drag-and-Drop Music Listening

By: Keegan

Keegan — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 02:50:33 +0000

What if you want to subscribe to Sirius or XM and download to your MP3 player? Which ones are compatible? MTP or UMS?

By: Where’d I leave that note? » Blog Archive » Platform-Agnostic Drag-and-Drop Music Listening

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:07:30 +0000

[...] For now, stay away from PlaysForSure because it signifies an interface is being used that does not natively work with linux or mac. Read more about Microsoft’s MTP protocol that replaces the much more friendly UMS (USB Mass Storage):here. [...]

By: Create Digital Music » MTP, Portable Player Standard? Microsoft’s McLauchlan Sets Us Straight

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:52:10 +0000

[...] Portable music player technology isn’t as simple as it once was. With digital music files have come new restrictions from the music labels on how music is played and transferred, as well as discussion of various specifications for connecting devices to computers. In a June 16 story on Platform-Agnostic Drag-and-Drop Music Listening, I suggested lovers of independent music might be better off foregoing both Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Microsoft’s preferred connection mechanism, the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). [...]

By: blog.forret.com | links for 2006-06-22

blog.forret.com | links for 2006-06-22 — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 09:26:39 +0000

[...] Create Digital Music Ã‚Â» Liberate Portable Music Players: UMS, MTP, and Platform-Agnostic Drag-and-Drop Music Listening The old way, UMS (USB Mass Storage), happens to work just fine with Windows, Macs, Linux, and anything else that supports USB drives. You drag and drop files, you drag and drop music Ã¢â‚¬â€? simple. But UMS doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t work with music with DRM. Apple requires y (tags: mp3 portable player itunes ipod creative media drm) [...]

By: Create Digital Music » Alternative Music Distribution: Music on Sticks, Music on Mozilla, and Escaping iTunes Lock-in

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:31:26 +0000

[...] I hate ending on sour notes. So, instead, let’s look at some positive opportunities for music distribution. Indie labels and music makers alike on this site I know have no love for Digital Rights Management, but let’s look at some alternatives, from Mozilla-based iTunes alternatives to music on sticks (and reasons to dump iTunes). [...]

By: andrew garton

andrew garton — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:45:40 +0000

i run a label in Australia and i ain’t pushing for DRM at all! and none of the artists on my label are keen for it either. although we see the broad market reach, we also find it a hinderence in terms of retaining independence… we want to release stuff whenever, how ever and to whomever cares to listen, turn up to our gigs or download our give aways…

i’m sitting on the Music, Video, Multimedia panel at the iCommons Summit in Brazil this week. peter, your paper has focused a number of issues for me and certainly a need for sound business models within the Creative Commons licensing frameworks. CC for me is a kind of elective DRM, although we’re not talking emdedded data and crippling hardware, we’re talking collaboration in some form between artists and their audiences who may be artists themselves and so on…

anyway, i was loaned an iPod to keep me company on the 22 hour flight. i found i couldn’t load any of my tracks onto it without deleting my mate’s entire library! thank goodness he’s got good taste!

better start packing!

By: otaku

otaku — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:11:19 +0000

I strongly recommend that people buy the retail CD if they are planning on buying a whole album. iTunes is great for singles and the instant gratification culture that we have gotten used to, but nothing beats having the actual CD with art/lyrics etc. Then you can rip it into whatever future format.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:35:18 +0000

Paul, I agree absolutely that non-DRM’ed distribution makes sense . . . more on that later. But I think labels are pushing for DRM even on lower-volume sales. eMusic’s catalog is limited, and I wonder how much of it has to do with contracts they signed earlier on, etc. Without being a person who negotiates with record labels, I can’t say for sure.

But certainly Microsoft (and Apple) aren’t being entirely forthcoming if they claim “the record labels made me do it” when it comes to DRM. That may have been the case early on, but DRM has really given the vendors the upper hand. The fact that Apple can now dictate prices to the record industry thanks to the fact that their customers are locked into buying online from them (for larger-distribution stuff, of course, not Bleep.com) really indicates who has the edge here. DRM benefits Microsoft and Apple more than it does the labels, whether the labels see it that way or not.

By: Create Digital Music » Microsoft and Proprietary Windows Media Players: Cory Doctorow Responds

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:29:29 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Paul Davis

Paul Davis — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:22:41 +0000

David McLauchlan said “lots of folks donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t like DRM, but without it the record labels wonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t let any of us purchase music online”.

But this is patently false. emusic.com is packed to the gills with thousands and thousands of previously released music in plain old MP3 format, no DRM.

So the real truth is that specific labels will not release music they control without DRM, not all labels and not all music. The interesting question is therefore: why do some labels think that DRM is in their interest, and some do not?

The easy answer has to do with volume: if you believe you have a potential large sales volume release and that a non-DRM version would cut into that sales volume by some percentage, then you will see that sales cut as significant. On the other hand, if you’ve just decided to release Augustus Pablo’s masterwork “East of The River Nile”, originally released on vinyl in about 1978, in digital form, the presence of absence of DRM is not likely to seem like a big issue for whatever revenue you think you might see from it.

non-DRM’ed digital distribution makes a huge amount of sense for niche creatives with small and/or very loyal audiences. its not clear how to get the mainstream distribution system to see it as the right thing to do.