Webware

(Credit: Napster)

Probably the biggest piece of digital music news to come out of CES 2008 was that Napster was planning to offer its complete catalog of more than 6 million tracks in the unprotected MP3 format.

On Tuesday, with the launch of version 4.5 of the software and store, that announcement becomes a reality. Although digital music stores such as eMusic, Amazon MP3, and even Napster itself already had MP3s on offer before this point, the collective catalogs of all three didn't even come near the volume of tracks you can find in the entire Napster library. All four major labels and thousands of indies are represented in the store, and every track will be available at the standard 99 cent price point.

Napster's Web-based store with the online media player window open.

(Credit: Napster)

In addition, Napster's Web-based store, which is all that is required for MP3 purchases and downloads, is compatible with every operating system. And--of course--the MP3s can be played on any MP3 player, portable video player, or music cell phone. Currently, 95 percent of the catalog is encoded at 256Kbps, which is reasonably high-quality for an MP3, and each track comes with hi-resolution album art (at least 1,000x1,000 pixels). Although Napster has quite an international presence, the MP3 store will only be available to U.S. residents for the time being.

Napster will continue to offer its online and To Go subscription services for $12.95 or $14.95 per month, respectively. The music associated with a subscription will remain in the protected WMA format with the time-out capability.

The company did make some improvements to its online interface. It now features a "liquid layout," which resizes everything within both the store and media player windows when you adjust the size of either window. Napster has also improved its download management system so that users can better view what has been purchased already and whether it was ever downloaded after the purchase.

Sadly, because of label restrictions, Napster will not be offering any type of trade program for customers who have a library of DRM-protected WMA files that they purchased a la carte. However, the licenses on those files will continue to be supported by the service, so no need to worry about a repeat of the MSN Music scandal. At least not for now.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Even hardcore audiophiles have to face the music--brick and mortar record stores are fading fast--and it's starting to look like the CD is on its way out. Sure, no card carrying audiophile would be caught dead downloading MP3s or iTunes, the sonic sacrifices are too drastic. Well, what if there was a site that offered bona fide CD quality downloads, would audiophiles go for it? That's HDtracks' prime directive, but I don't think the high-resolution download store is just for audiophiles.

Then again I never understood why anyone would pay more or less the same price for a low quality download as for a CD. Well, now that iTunes has become the #1 U.S. music retailer I have to admit the answer must be that buyers put a higher value on convenience than sound. Well alright, HDtracks offers three higher-resolution download alternatives: "CD quality" UNcompressed AIFF and lossless FLAC files or 320kbps MP3s. All three are DRM free. Oh, and when you buy a complete album you also get the cover art and liner notes as a PDF. Complete albums go for $11.98, individual tracks, $1.49.

True, iTunes isn't in any immediate danger of losing market share--HDtracks is just starting up--so you're not going to find Radiohead, R.E.M., or the Rolling Stones' music there just yet. HDtracks' selection is quirkier, less mainstream, with folk, gospel, blues, jazz, Latin, pop, R&B, rock, classical and soundtracks from a wide spectrum of independent labels. HDtracks is adding new labels all the time.

HDtracks was started by David and Norman Chesky, who will continue to run their audiophile record label, Chesky Records. HDtracks will in the coming months begin to offer ultra high resolution 96-khz/24-bit files, which will sound even better, much better than CD quality downloads, for a limited number of titles.

In the interest of full disclosure: I have worked for Chesky Records as a producer and writer, and written for HDtracks.

Rob Bennett knew people were going to be angry.

Bennett is the Microsoft executive who notified former customers of the now defunct MSN Music service on Tuesday that the company would no longer issue DRM keys for their songs after August 31. This means that, while former customers can listen to their music on authorized computers for as long as the hardware lasts, they won't be able to transfer songs to a new PC after that deadline.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Bennett said that continuing to support the DRM keys was impractical, that the issue only affects a "small number" of people and that focusing exclusively on Zune was the best way to go. He also noted that it wasn't Microsoft's decision to wrap music into digital rights management.

The reason for shutting down the DRM-licensing servers was "every time there is an OS upgrade, the DRM equation gets complex very quickly," said Bennett, general manager of entertainment, video, and sports for MSN. "Every time, you saw support issues. People would call in because they couldn't download licenses. We had to write new code, new configurations each time...We really believe that, going forward, the best thing to do is focus exclusively on Zune."

Microsoft shut down MSN Music in November 2006, following a failed effort to turn the site into a legitimate iTunes challenger. Redmond threw its resources behind the Zune digital music player and its music store, Marketplace.

For the past 18 months, Microsoft has continued to enable former customers of MSN Music to move their song libraries to new computers. Discontinuing that service has been widely criticized. Critics have long said that DRM was a means to control legally purchased music at the expense of consumers. To them, the current situation with MSN proves it.

Bennett defended Microsoft. He said the company never wanted DRM on its songs.

"Had we had the ability to deliver DRM-free tracks at the time, we absolutely would have done that," Bennett said. "We talked to the labels at the time about that. As a company, we have continued to push for this. Zune has a subset in their catalog of DRM-free MP3s. Now, the industry is making progress. The labels are understanding the downside of DRM when its used the way they wanted to use it, they end up punishing the users who bought music legally more than those who want to circumvent the system."

Bennett added that Microsoft believes in protecting intellectual property, but the company also wants people to enjoy their media without unreasonable restrictions.

"No one ever foresaw being in this situation," Bennett said. "It's not something we like to do. We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what's best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune."

Bennett said that former MSN Music customers can back up their songs by burning them to CDs. But what about the loss of sound quality should they decide to rerip the music?

"We (delivered) music at 160 kbps," Bennett said. "In my personal (experience), you're not going to lose that much fidelity."

From 2007 to 2012, the market should more than quadruple for technology called watermarks or fingerprints that can endow photos, video, and audio with unobtrusive digital identifiers, according to a new study.

Digital watermarks modify a digital file slightly so that specific information can be embedded, but the techniques are subtle so people don't notice the change when viewing or listening to the media file. The technology is a less-obtrusive cousin to digital rights management (DRM), which at least in theory encrypts files so they can't be used except by those with authorization.

The market for watermarking technology should grow from about $131 million in 2007 to $171 million this year and $588 million in 2012, MultiMedia Intelligence said in a study released Tuesday.

Among the reasons for the growth, according to study author Mark Kirstein, is that companies are trying to monitor the spread of copyrighted files shared over networks or social-networking sites. "Fox has already communicated that they will mandate watermarking for early-release high-definition content," Kirstein said.

In addition, watermarking could become more popular as online music distributors such as Amazon or Apple's iTunes move away from DRM restrictions, the report said.

It's a full hand of cards for Amazon: the Web's mega-retailer announced Thursday that it will be selling music from Sony BMG Music Entertainment in its Amazon MP3 store. This means that Amazon MP3, which only sells "naked" tracks without any digital rights management (DRM) protection, now has deals with all four major music labels. Because of the lack of copy protection, any song from Amazon MP3 can play on virtually any media-playing device, from PCs to music players to cell phones and PDAs.

The DRM-free songs from Sony BMG will be available for purchase on Amazon MP3 later this month.

Sony BMG announced earlier this week its intent to drop DRM from its music, making it the last major label to do so. Amazon MP3, which launched in September, already sells music from the other three major labels--EMI, the Vivendi-owned Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group--as well as over 33,000 independent labels. Currently, there are 3.1 million songs for purchase.

A full catalog of DRM-free music files means that Amazon is legitimately poised to take on Apple's iTunes Store, the industry leader by far in digital music sales. Most of Amazon's songs, which range largely from 89 to 99 cents, outprice Apple's 99-cent standard. And as the result of disagreements with Apple, Universal Music Group has not licensed its DRM-free catalog to the iTunes Store.

In the meantime, Apple dropped the prices of its DRM-free songs from a premium $1.29 to the regular 99 cents, a sign that it was starting to feel the pressure from Amazon.

Amazon doesn't yet have the market share to start boasting, but it finally has the upper hand in a culture that has increasingly turned against digital rights management. User experience reviews of Amazon MP3 have been mixed, but there's little doubt that this poses the most formidable threat to the iTunes monopoly yet.

(Credit: Napster)

For my money, one of the most exciting pieces of news coming out of CES this year is Napster's announcement that the service will be offering up its entire download catalog in the DRM-free MP3 format. It may not be free, but it still hearkens back to the olden days of Napster. Of course, Amazon.com's digital music store has been selling MP3 files for months now (and eMusic much longer than that), but having another major online music service push for the most universal of digital music formats is just one more step in the right direction--it makes things infinitely less complicated for the consumer to have access to one type of file that will play back on any MP3 player or computer.

The change is set to roll out in the second quarter of 2008 and will apply to Napster's entire catalog of pay-per-download tracks and albums. Subscription tracks will still come in the DRM-wrapped WMA variety, a necessary evil for that type of service.

To everyone who has ever griped about music locked up in copy-protection software, it appears that the technology is on its way out.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment, one of the top four music labels, is preparing to offer part of its catalogue without Digital Rights Management software, according to a story in BusinessWeek.com, the online publication of BusinessWeek magazine.

According to BusinessWeek, Sony BMG plans to reveal its plans sometime in the first quarter. Citing an unnamed source, the magazine reported that Sony BMG, a joint venture between Sony and Bertelsmann, will participate in a song giveaway as part of a promotion for the Super Bowl on Feb. 3. The DRM-free music will be distributed via Amazon's download service.

Representatives from Sony BMG and Amazon declined to comment.

The move by Sony BMG is significant because it means that all four of the largest record companies are at moving towards digital music unencumbered by copy-protection schemes.

DRM was supposed to safeguard music but has done little to prevent widespread file sharing. But too often only the people who purchased songs legally were affected by DRM.

People who bought music at legitimate online music stores, such as Apple's iTunes, couldn't listen to their music on just any device. There was often confusion about which songs played on which devices.

Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called on the music industry to do away with DRM.

Many of the top music-subscription services, such as Yahoo Music and RealNetworks' Rhapsody service continue to use copy-protection software.

DRM and electronic books could help lower college educational expenses while at the same time improving the health of students.

Here's why: the economics of textbook publishing are broken. There's a reason that an introductory biology textbook costs $125 new, and it's not because it's printed on high-quality paper using a special 12-color press. It's because when the student is done with the book, he or she sells it back to the campus bookstore, or to another student. The publisher is thus deprived of recurring revenue on the title. So it raises book prices, heaping the revenue it would get from multiple students over multiple years onto one unlucky soul. But the more expensive books get, the more likely students are to recycle them. It's a death spiral of cost.

Peter's new Sony PRS-505 Reader.

(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)

This is how digital rights and e-books can help: what if, instead of selling paper books to students, publishers sold digital copies? Already some textbooks are available online or in downloads, but students need easier access to information than a standard 7-pound, battery-limited laptop can provide. An instant-on electronic book is just the ticket. The technology is here, or nearly so. If the textbook content was licensed to the user and not resellable, then the publisher could sell it to each individual who needed it. There'd be no secondary market and the publishers would not have to inflate their prices to make up for that.

And the health benefits? It's a lot better for your back if you're just carrying one 3-pound e-book instead of a half-dozen 8-pound printed texts.

Now, there are dozens of ways publishers could screw this up, mostly by overpricing their content, which would encourage hacking of the DRM, which would in response lead to onerous copy protection that could make e-books unworkable. But if--and it's a big if--publishers get on board and start selling licenses to their texts instead of the books themselves, everyone (except bookstores) could benefit. I would be surprised if e-book manufacturers weren't pushing on this angle right now. See the hands-on hardware and software reviews of Sony's new PRS-505 electronic book.

See also Textbookflix (book rental) and CafeScribe (downloadable texts, but limited selection).

This report was updated midday to reflect that Apple has confirmed the DRM-free iTunes price drop.

Apple has dropped the price of its iTunes Plus songs that have no digital rights management (DRM) software protection and allow owners to move song files freely from one device to another.

The 256kbps DRM-free song files were originally priced at $1.29 per song with a lower per-song average price for buying an entire album. iTunes now seems to be offering the same files for 99 cents per song, the same price it charges for its usual 128kbps DRM versions.

"iTunes Plus has been incredibly popular with our customers, and now we're making it available at an even more affordable price," Tom Neumayr, senior manager for iPods, Apple TV and iTunes, said in a statement. "We're adding over 2 million tracks from key independent labels, in addition to EMI's digital catalog, and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus."

The change closely follows Amazon.com's launch of its own digital-music store.

As of September 25, Amazon.com began offering 256kbps DRM-free MP3s for between 89 cents and 99 cents each, depending on the song.

While Apple has made no formal comment as to why it's decided to reduce its DRM-free iTunes prices, Amazon's new music store could be the reason.