. . . which means you get to be a guinnea pig - will it play in your chosen CD player? Seeing as I only listen to music in my computer or in my car, two places copy-protected discs notoriously will not play, I won't be buying this.
The Velvet Revolver album is one of three releases by the BMG conglomerate that will feature the protection scheme - Angie Stone and Yung Wun are the other two. I've also seen reports that the newest Alanis Morissette album also features copy protection. These discs use some new technology through which you can only make three copies of the disc. This article explains the technology a bit better. In short, in tests on a newly-released album, I find that the protections may have no effect on a large fraction of deployed PCs, and that most users who would be affected can bypass the system entirely by holding the shift key every time they insert the CD. There are also instructions for how to defeat the Sunncomm software included in the article. This copy protection sounds really effective, doesn't it?
If you feel as sick about this as I do, there's two ways to send a message about these copy-protected discs. One is simple - don't buy them. Unfortunately, this may result in sending the wrong message to the big corporations - that either these artists simply aren't selling because the public doesn't want them, or that people are getting the albums through illicit means. The other is more difficult, but much more effective: buy the album, and then take it back for an exchange for your "faulty" disc. And then take it back again. And again - and keep doing it. If everyone did this, the message would be very loud and very clear - consumers DO NOT want copy protection.
I predict file-sharing networks will be flooded with mp3s ripped directly from these "protected" discs immediately - if they haven't been already.
(Note: I link Velvet Revolver's album below, but I'm not advocating buying it - unless you plan to follow my suggestion above and return it over and over.)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Olsen
Thanks for the (bad) news Tom. By the way, my butt is copy-protected.
2 - Mark Saleski
i continue to be amazed at the sheer stupidity running rampant at the labels.
is there nobody there who's willing to step up and say, "hey, this won't work..."?
3 - Tom Johnson
Eric, I notice you did a piece on this last week. Sorry I didn't notice it before - I was just so chafed about this I had to say something. I was hoping people might go in search of Velvet Revolver info on the release day and find this so they could change their minds.
Damn, this pisses me off!
4 - Eric Olsen
I would say this is a different story Tom, but thanks for the concern: the story I linked/babbled about only makes passing reference to this particular release - you make the point much more pointedly.
5 - BRICKLAYER
Yeah, all the kids were just chomping at the bit to rip and burn this one! Now sadly I have to wait an extra day before dowloading the Dangermouse mash up of this. I hear they will next be copy protecting the Lawrence Welk back catalog.
6 - visualsimplicity
Yup, real effective. For those of you who have heard of bittorrent, the full album has been available as of a few days ago.
Keep in mind I am not advocating dling mp3s and not buying the cds.
7 - Al Barger
This kind of nonsense will surely cost them sales. Why do I want to pay money for a purposefully defectively manufactured product?
Why do I want to actually pay the money for something distinctly inferior to what I will be able to download for FREE? I might be willing to pay the money for a physical CD just to save fooling with it, but if I can't rip mp3s to listen to on my computer (the main way I actually consumer music), then screw it.
Then again, many people such as myself would be in the range of somewhat interested in a Velvet Revolver album, but less than dedicated. Most of us will probably do the obvious thing then, and just ignore the record entirely. Are these people worth the bother?
8 - Tom Johnson
Al, that's exactly what's wrong with this. And I think it's on purpose, but a double-edged sword of sorts that only benefits the company's cause. If people respond positively and buy it, then the label can say "See? People don't care if it's copy-protected, so we can use this on everything." If they don't, they can take two routes - saying that either the band failed to ignite a spark, or that people skipped the CD and found illicit copies instead. Either way, it only bolsters their arguments.
I saw the CD at lunch, by the way, and the sticker on the cover is easy to ignore. It has a big "VR" logo on it and beneath it is some text that looks like legal mumbo-jumbo - you really have to READ this small label to grasp what it is saying. I thought it was going to be a big sticker that said COPY PROTECTED but it most certainly is not. It's there, and you notice the sticker, but the way they did it is sneaky. For $9.99, I would have taken a shot on the album, but I certainly won't now. The frustration is not worth the bargain.
9 - Jim Carruthers
The people who will be hurt the most will be retailers. Chances are this disc won't work in a lot of DVD/combo players, Macs, Linux boxes, etc. And of course the disc will go back to the retailer accompanied by a pissed-off ex-customer.
And those 300,000+ iPod owners?
BMG: Screw them, they're little people
10 - Jonathan
Already downloaded it :)
11 - Al Barger
It'll hurt retailers? Good! Everybody up and down the food chain should get some kind of heartburn for this nonsense. It'd suit me just fine for K-Mart to have 10,000 returned VR CDs to have to ship back to the record company, or for Amazon to get tens of thousands of VR returns. That would make a delightfully nuisome batch of practical problems, and a loss of money just for the extra handling and shipping of all these defective products. That'd be a pretty good, undeniable expression of consumer dissatisfaction.
12 - TDavid
Are the days of music activation coming? RFID tags, debit cards.
Pretty soon privacy will only be a memory.
Remember when ...
13 - Tom Johnson
The people who will be hurt the most will be retailers.
It may hurt them in the right now, but it will eventually hurt the labels, too, as retailers opt to not carry copy-protected discs. And really, are we all that worried about Best Buy/Circuit City/Target/Walmart/etc. hurting because the product they've chosen to sell us won't work the way it's advertised? Isn't it their responsibility to carry things customers want? Well, we want CDs that play wherever we want them to!
14 - Cale Corbett
I bought the CD today before I knew it was copy protected. How'd I find out? The hard way. I bought the disc over my lunch hour and played it in the Kenwood deck in my Jeep with no problem. Fat dumb and happy. Took it inside and wanted to rip it into MP3s to play on my Archos.. That's when the MusicMatch software keeps failing about halfway through ripping the first song. After I AutoRun the CD, I find out that the only approved way to rip the songs is some sort of encrypted WMA that my Archos MP3 doesn't support.. Fark!!
15 - Tom Johnson
Corvus, and anyone else in his situation, follow this link to see how to get around the issue.
16 - Jim Carruthers
Al, et al, the problem with the massive returns scenario is you are presuming that the majors and retailers think that far ahead. They don't.
Shipping Gold and Returning Platinum is seen as something good at distributors since they only think in a quarterly time-frame. Nothing else matters. As long as the commissions and volume discounts get paid, they don't care.
This decision to sell this VR disc was made over 12 weeks ago, and returns don't kick in for another 90 days, with the credit for the return 90 days after that. The major record business machine has no rear-view mirror.
17 - Tom Johnson
Interesting, Jim, that's something I hadn't considered (or even thought of - I just assumed it was like a normal business, but, as we all know, the music industry is anything but a normal business.)
Alright then, the only feasible option is just to not buy it at all!
18 - TDavid
The credit card companies will win if people start charging back the sales, just like they win with online purchases and chargebacks.
They'll just bang the retail merchant which in return will have to raise the price to compensate for the loss margin which will drive more people online to purchase and the wheel will keep spinning until someday there will be almost no music sold in retail stores -- just plastic or tickets with one time redemption codes.
Then the malicious hackers come in.
This is a very slippery slope.
19 - Jim Carruthers
Tom, what the record biz likes to do is point at the book biz, and say, "you think we're screwed, look at them?".
Basically, distributors pre-sell a title to retail and rack-jobbers (Walmart, etc) about 12 weeks before street date. The sales reps take commissions on those sales. So they try to sell all the units they can. The customers get discounts based on volume, so the more they order, the more margins they get.
The album finally ships. The sales rep gets his commission at the end of the quarter. Which is the end of the sales cycle.
The retailer gets the product. Stocks it. 90 days later whatever is left is shipped back to the distro. for credit. 90 days after that the credit is rolled around on the retailer's account, since they've already bought into several sales cycles of shipments. They get their spiff every cycle for volume, co-op and contra.
As long as the wheel keeps spinning, nobody cares about the records.
20 - Amanda6035
OH HELLLLL YEAHHHH!!!!! That link to fix the problem actually worked! I was able to copy the VR cd into mp3 format, and with realplayer, make another audio cd, or make an mp3 cd. YEEEEEAH. Did the music industry REALLY think they could stop us? I mean, after all, if they didnt make the price of CDs so incredibly high with the ridiculous overhead, (and we all know it only costs like $2.00 to make a cd, but yet, they charge us $15.00 for it) people wouldnt be so inclined to copy. Maybe one day they'll learn.
21 - Amanda6035
OH HELLLLL YEAHHHH!!!!! That link to fix the problem actually worked! I was able to copy the VR cd into mp3 format, and with realplayer, make another audio cd, or make an mp3 cd. YEEEEEAH. Did the music industry REALLY think they could stop us? I mean, after all, if they didnt make the price of CDs so incredibly high with the ridiculous overhead, (and we all know it only costs like $2.00 to make a cd, but yet, they charge us $15.00 for it) people wouldnt be so inclined to copy. Maybe one day they'll learn.
22 - Eric Olsen
does this work?
23 - Tom Johnson
Looks like it, thanks Eric!
24 - Shelli
This whole business about copy-protection is sickening. It makes me wonder if the overpaid record execs put any thought into the psychology of what they are doing? I mean, I wasn't planning on burning copies of this particular CD until I found out that they were trying to make it "impossible". Now I am burning copies of the VR CD for all of my friends and relatives (LOL). Well, actually just my sister...Came out good, too!
25 - Metal Slim
Thanks for this story. I agree totaly. I have been posting to Velvet Revolver's Message board under the heading; BOYCOTT THIS CD !
To help, go to VR's Site:
http://www.velvetrevolverforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5199&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
GNR's site:
http://www.velvetrevolverforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5199&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0