If he does it online ...would the files be DRM laden ?

Posted On: Wed, 2008-12-03 14:56 by mattl
Mike McCarty sends in his horror story of being a Prince fan, as a reminder of some of the tricks being pulled on music fans in this DRM age. Mike wins one of our T-shirts and a DRM-free album from Magnatune.

We begin with the demise of Prince's DRM-music service, New Power Generation.

Act One. Prince's music service: Defective by Design
Luckily I only purchased one of MANY DRM-laden album from Prince's now defunct New Power Generation website, Xpectation. It came in the DRM-encumbered Windows Media format, but this was before I was ever aware of the horrors of DRM. Ironically, I EXPECTED the files to work pretty much forever, maybe not forever but at least a few good years. However, I guess the joke was on me as I misplaced the files on an external harddrive a year or so ago and recently located them only to find out there's absolutely nothing I can do with them.

This is pretty common with digital files, but many of the DRM-free providers such as Magnatune and eMusic allow you to redownload your purchases directly from them.

Act Two: Prince's war on the Internet
Prince's war with all things internet has left me with quite the sour taste in my mouth. Pointing my browser to the website I purchased the album from confirms that the address cannot be found. No surprise. I think it's been gone for at least a year or two now. A while back I had heard the site went under and that Prince had begun using his MySpace page. This has since been shut down as well.

As The Register noted last September:

Teaming up with Web Sheriff, the firm currently known as "Europe's leading internet policing specialist," the Minnesota-born pop star has already ordered YouTube and eBay to remove hundreds of supposedly Prince-infringing web items, and he's intent on filing suit against the two web behemoths - not to mention Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay.

Mike continues his story:

Searching Prince fan sites such as Housequake, prince.org and a few others have led me to the fact that there pretty much is no way to contact Prince OR his camp in ANY form whatsoever. Also, there was never any mention to his fanclub (which I DID pay $25 to join) that they would no longer be supporting the DRM-laden files when the NPG Music Club went under. No other fans, or what Prince likes to call "Friends", knew what to do about the files either. The only suggestion I was given, which isn't possible now that the files cannot be played, was to burn the files to a cd and rip them back to mp3 if I want to put them on the ol' mp3 player. Well... the files won't play, so how am I supposed to burn them? It's just not possible.

Ah yes, the burn-to-a-CD-defense. This is a pretty common reaction to the problem that DRM causes. Of course, buying DRMed media, burning to a CD, and ripping the CD, all takes time and effort and means losing quality. Often DRMed music makes it hard for you to burn it to a CD -- you have to use specific proprietary software to do a job that is much better done elsewhere.

Act Three: You wouldn't treat your friends like this...
I used to be a massive Prince fan -- I won't say friend since I certanly wouldn't treat a friend the way he's treating his fans, but his adamancy about people stealing or sharing his work has alienated me and I'm sure quite a few others. Sure he gave away Musicology when you saw him in concert a few years back, but I still PAID for the Xpectation album and feel that I should be able to listen to it as long as I keep the files handy. I WILL NOT purchase another DRM-laden file ever.

Thanks Prince, for absolutely nothing except a good old-fashioned lesson in what not to do in future.

for all the trouble it's caused many people [not me, my files are fine]
it sure didn't stop the files from being illegally shared.

i've seen the npgmc albums and files on many torrents, blogs, uploads
and streams. in fact, if i had never payed a single cent for them i'd
still have been able to get each and every one of them illegally.

so it seems brutal that a lot of people who did pay for them are now
unable to listen to them whilst people who are more computer minded,
or know where to look, now have those files free of charge.

than again, if you've managed to sign up to the npgmc and download
the files in the first place it's your own bloody stupid fault if
you can't navigate your way to the files through google or such if
you've lost the legal versions and want to acquire those files once
more.

Wahhhhh! I couldn't be bothered to burn my Prince stuff so a CD, so I lost it forever. And it's all Prince's fault. Wahhhhh!

Boo fucking hoo.

Genesia said:

i know, right? what's the big deal? anyone that can work google could
have located those files all over the place.

by now they're all swiped up by the web sherrif, no doubt bu they've
been banging around all over the place for years whilst people were
crying and bitchin about their lost files.

IstenSzek said:

There are still places you can find the stuff online. And if you have friends who are Prince fans - especially friends who were also NPGMC members - and you aren't a totally whiny douche (like this guy), they'll probably be glad to hook you up.

Genesia said:

this line says it all:

"No other fans, or what Prince likes to call "Friends", knew what to do about the files either"


in other words: nobody gave a fuck

DRM was basically the technology of the day. It was used (and still is used) by most services delivering music.

Prince didnt invent DRM. He leveraged it to deliver an amazing experience that has changed the industry forever. He leveraged it because thats what his technical advisors told him to use.

Before music downloads, how many times did you misplace or scratch a CD or did your tape player eat the cassette. You want the music? Buy it again.

And please dont tell me you are grousing over $25 your spent YEARS AGO. Truth be told, you know who Prince is. You know his reputuation and you have first hand experience. You can now choose to deal with it, or take your ball and go home.

PRINCE CREATED HIS ART. He owns it. He gets to say how its distributed. He gets to say how and where his videos are posted. He pretty much gets to say who can listen to it.

His art is not for the fans. Its for him. We are simply lucky enough to be allowed to participate in the experience because he has found a way to share. Those are the rules. Deal with them.

People kill me. They make posts where they wish the man would leave his God for crying out loud. They say things like that because they say his products have lost something since his conversion to JW.

Prince is a man (In my opinion a genius). He aint a prophet. He isnt an alien. He is a man. If you tickle him, he will laugh. If you prick him, he will bleed.

Men evolve over time. We change. We grow - If something isnt growing, its dead. (Prince taught me that) If you dont like the way he is now choosing to express himself based on his life experience - Use your God given right to choose.

But the audacity - The tamarity of deriding how he chooses to worship and express his love for his higher power - frankly is disgusting.

I realize you the above regarding religion really addresses another post, but here is the bottom line.

If Prince goes online it will involve technology that is more complicated that going to Best Buy, purchasing a CD and sticking it in your favorite CD player.

This means that you will get more out of the experience if you learn to take advantage of whatever technology is used to deliver the music. This may require some effort on your part.

If you take the same energy that you used to write that well organized bitchfest post on the achieving your goal, you will be fine.

puhleeze

itsmrhappy said:

although i agree with some of the other things you posted i find the above
statements absolutely rediculous.

if such things were the norm, no one would create anything anymore. instead
anyone with a talent would become a maniacal recluse, hovering over their
own creations with deathlike talons, never allowing anyone to see or hear.

if we are "lucky enough to be allowed to participate" than the artist is in
turn lucky enough to have us to share with, and to care, and to give them $
for the things we want and love.

just because it's prince doesn't mean he has more rights than a starving
artist who sells you a drawing or a kid who sells you an album of his own
songs online on his myspace site.

people should indeed stop their fucking crying over spilled milk already,
i agree with that. but it's not like we should thank god on our knees and
crawl up prince's ass because he's been so christlike in sharing his new
music with us every time.

without people to listen to and buy his music or go to his concerts, he
and any other artist would be nowhere, working from 9 to 5 in a regular
job like the rest of us. that's the reality.

there's a difference between being really glad with new music from prince
and being willing to buy it contrary to having to thank prince because he
is soooo fucking kind and special to make something and offer it for sale.

itsmrhappy said:

well until i read all that i had a raging hard-on, it's dead now, like poor old celibate Prince's.

thanks a bunch!

My cassettes don't play in my iPod, either! Thanks a lot, Prince!

NDRU said:

Yeah! Damn him, anyway!

LondonStyle said:

pssst...

There are ways around this.

Orgnote me to learn more.

herb4 said:

like burn em to cd with the licences and rip the cd back to your computer, then you can keep them forever as mp3's to do with them what you want? like keep them to yourself or share them on P2P sites.

that wasn't too hard.

DRM Works!

yeah but most all that shit online that was originally drm is a horrible transcode.


put that thing on a audio spectrum and the quality is horrendous

Now imagine that 128 diagram lower] than 1600, that would be one of his shit drm files if put back to an mp3, depending on what bit rate.

IstenSzek said:

I was being ubsurd to make my point. Obviously he sells his music to make a buck. But starving artist or not, I still believe that he gets to control how HIS music and HIS image are distributed.

Its his choice. And in some cases, if he cutting his own throat.. he is an adult and we have to let him.