I'm sure most of you know about this, but for those who don't:
http://www.osnews.com/features/11.99/flourescent.html

This is absolutely incredible!!

DiGNAN

Just imagine what this could mean for the empeg! Laptop hard drives (depending on compatability) with this kind of technology would make storage capacity on the empeg a non-issue!!

DiGNAN

hehe


Read the bottom of the page:
------------------------------
Colin Cordner is a suspected human (of sorts) who's rarified version of reality (such as it is) has sometimes been known to coincide with our own (for the most part). On those rare occasions when it does, he is most often found at his day job at Fall's Edge, or else moonlighting at The High-Performance PC Guide.

I'm pretty amazed by that storage capacity for a single disc. (My grandkids will wonder how we ever got along with only 1.4 terabyte discs though). Seems like when we start dealing with bigger numbers like that there should be a focus on increasing the sustained transfer rate too. Seems transfer rate is not increasing at the same rate as capacity. However, capacity seems a little more important for most people that speed. Transfer speed doesn't matter for music files like the empeg uses but certainly for HDTV video storage like they mentioned. Isn't HDTV something like 19.2 Mbps? They mentioned 1 GBps read transfers but I wonder what write speeds would be like?

Alex Lear

Who cares? as long as it's faster than what we have now it doesn't really matter, does it?

DiGNAN

You do have a point. However, you eventually have a huge storage space but cannot access it as fast as you would like. As an exagerated example, the internet is a huge storage space. However, anyone still using a modem knows its not reasonable to access some services through a modem. My point is, as capacity increases, the size and type of files we use (like multimedia) increases. The transfer rate needs to accomidate it. In the example of the internet, usually new services offered are controlled by if people can access them fast enough.

Alex Lear

They mentioned 1 GBps read transfers but I wonder what write speeds would be like?

When we're talking about terabytes of storage, the write speeds become irrelevant. You and I are not going to be generating terabytes of information that has to be stored... all we need to do is be able to read those terabytes of information, and 1 GBps would be more than enough for any current use, or even any near-future use.

As to how the terabytes of information would be installed on the disk... it wouldn't be written byte by byte like a floppy drive. More likely it would be stamped (or whatever the flourescent equivalent of stamping is :-) analagous to the way a CD is produced.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

"You and I are not going to be generating terabytes of information that has to be stored..."

I'm afraid history will contradict you. Back when diskettes ruled the earth, people said things like,

"You and I are not going to be generating gigabytes of information that has to be stored..." :)

Believe me, I completely understand where you are coming from because I have no idea what I would store that would require that much space.....yet! When I bought a 13 GB hard drive I thought there was no way to fill it up but these days I'm constantly full. I'm sure there will be a time when a terabyte may not seem like as much as you once thought.

Alex Lear

It would make the empeg obsolete. Without question.

Calvin

Just think of Bill Gates new windows-version: Doors 2010 (He thinks in bigger dimensions then). You'll need 1 GB for the Boot-portion, the system itself will need a minimum of 50 GB disk space and 1GB Memory....

Then you'll have to install a Quark Xpress 6.3 which will need another 40 GB and a Photoshop 7 with 80 GB and so on and on...

What about the good old Dos with everything on a single 1.44 MB - diskette...


TeeMcBee

1Gig drive/ 1Gig Memory? Isn't that the current requirements for MS Office (assuming you don't install any of the alternative Paper Clips)?

I said 1 GB for the boot portion - what I meant was - the stuff like msdos.sys, io.sys, ntldr, just the things that are needed to load the windows... aaahhhh .... doors...

OK - mybe I'll have to upgrade my memory from 1GB to - 32 GB ...

TeeMcBee

Ahhh, you should be fine as long as you don't want to run Doors2000.

Erm, why? It's a storage medium, you still need something to work with the data and present a UI!

Rob

It would make the empeg obsolete. Without question

You've gotta think that if this technology goes somewhere, they'll definitely be putting hard drives based on it into laptops. If the empeg could read these drives (which it presumeably could if they were backwards compatable), a simple software upgrade could do it.

Of course, I don't think we have much to worry about. This type of storage will probably not be readily available or in an accessible price range until the Mark III comes out


And about the size. Just remember that it goes the other way too. I remember when I had a 500 MB hard drive and my dad said I couldn't put whole songs from CD's onto the computer because half the space would be taken up. Now look what we've done. We've made audio files 10 times smaller, and we have bigger spaces to put them in.

DiGNAN

I think you better make it at least 64 GB of memory so you can run something besides just the O/S :)

Laura

I live to launch.

The empeg was put together because you can't put 700, or even 700,000 hours of music on a CD. If this technology comes out, and you can store the capacities they are talking about... then never-mind mp3, because people will be able to burn their entire collections onto 1 CD without any lossy compression at all. All it would take is a CD player to play these things. The empeg is there to address limitations of CDs, CD changers and the like. I seem to recall that while manufacturers can come out with MP3 playing head units, it is still limited by the number of mp3s you can fit on a CD, and even then, you still need to swap cds. and even then, you have to wrangle with music quality issues. So basically, if you can store all the music ever recorded for the last 100 years on 6 of these cds, then why would anyone need to bother with ripping, encoding, emploding, etc? just put a 6 cd magazine and that is it.

it would probably cause an interesting shift in the music industry as well, if all the music ever publishable can be put on a handful of CDs -- music would have to switch to a subscription model where you can get these uber collections for free, and you can purchase the music unlock code from a music store and punch them into the head unit to make stuff available.

Calvin

You're not looking far ahead enough. A jump in presumedly cheap storage technology like this will blow away any need for an empeg. If you can store enough music on ONE of these super-CDs to play continuously for one year? then what? Since the basis is on CD technology, what if the head units to play these cost $200 each? What then? What if you don't need to use lossy compression?

If >1Ghz technologies miraculously appeared in the DOS days, or even the C64 days, what would you do with it? Run DOS much much faster? Make the 1541 disk drive run faster?

Anyway, this is all speculation, but to me, a CD technology like this won't be out for years and years, and even longer based on the sorts of committee red tape that spawned DVD and writable DVD formats --- but when it does I think it will relegate the empeg as it is today into some dark corner somewhere.

Calvin >;)

If you have 100,000 songs on a disk, you're going to need a "super-empeg-turbo" to provide a good enough UI to access those!

You seem to have got the idea that the empeg is an MP3 player - understandable at the moment - but we've always refered to it as a digital audio player. I doubt MP3 will be popular for more than a couple more years, but we plan to be right there with whatever is the latest technology.

If that technology happens to be lossless, so much the better. The technology in the car player is all about playlists and caching, not any particular file format.

Rob

I think you're missing something here. I believe that in addition to the fact that they are cheaper, many people buy the CDROM-based units because they can still easily play their CD's without another head unit or additional portable device.

It appears that while DVD devices can read normal CD's, this techonlogy doesn't use the same type of laser, and therefore might not be able to read normal CD's.

I don't believe that an artist will want to put more than 14-17 songs on a CD. I can point out several lenghtly albums that get a bit tiring by the end of a listen. There's just so much good song writing that a group can do for one album.

I don't know if you read my post well enough. I was talking about disc drives based on this technology. What this stuff is is simply storage in the 3rd dimension, and this is the way we are headed in the future. Who knows, maybe the empeg will be able to use this stuff some day.

All this is really moot, because by the time this stuff becomes affordable, the empeg will be obsolete anyway. This stuff won't do that to it.

DiGNAN

OK, Calvin...

You've got your Flourescent Disk Player with 3,000 hours of uncompressed music on it -- every song you've ever heard, or think you might ever want to hear.

That's going to be about 60,000 songs.

Please play for me "Red Barchetta" by Rush. While you're rummaging around through 60,000 songs trying to find it, I'll just go home and listen to my own copy of it.

As the guys@empeg have said, the hardware is not the most important thing about the empeg. Any deep-pocket electronics company (Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, etc.) could knock out an empeg clone in a few weeks or months. But it wouldn't have the functionality required to deal with such a large amount of music without the UI to make it accessible. By the time you add that to your FDP, you've got yourself another empeg. And a good workable UI like emplode is not a quick and easy project -- just ask Mike Crowe! I'll bet that there are several man-years in the empeg software to date, and it still isn't done. And this kind of software development is pretty resistant to being expedited by throwing large sums of money at it. (Bill Gates -- are you listening?)

If this Flourescent Disk technology takes off, you can bet there will be upgrades offered for existing empegs, or possibly it will be the impetus for the Empeg Mark III.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

You guys are all forgetting that this fluorescent stuff is read-only.

Even dual-layer DVDs have to be mass-stamped. I don't think there's even a such thing as a DVD burner that will do dual-layer discs. As I understand it, the layers have to be mastered separately.

Sure, there are lots of read-write-capabale, non-winchester storage technolgies on the horizon that'll blow away hard disks. These will all use some kind of 3D storage technology, too. But the description of the fluorescent technology makes it sound like a read-write option isn't in the cards for it.

I could be wrong, of course. They've surprised us before. Like that thing with the scotch tape rolls. I still laugh about that one...

Personally, I want to see Molecular Electronics up and working. All the big players (such as IBM) have divisions working on it. Give it 5-10 years, and we'll be able to fit ten thousand empegs into a wrist watch. But like Rob said, someone's still gotta write the UI...

___________
Tony Fabris

A big CD (and currently, the technology is only worm - you can't write anything back to it) is all well and good - but if it's that big, why bother making it removable at all? I mean, it'll get loaded once and left...

Well before this happens you'll be using an empeg descendant to play your music from a central store somewhere on internet - via bluetooth and your 3G mobile phone. Your music lives somewhere on internet, and you can get it anywhere. Rent a car, it finds your cellphone & ID and carries on playing where you left off on another continent...

Hugo

I'm pretty sure that there will be an empeg (or descendant thereof) about in the future. We've got lots of ideas which are slightly too outlandish for current tech, but you can bet we'll always be working on the cute "must-have" sutff ;)

Hugo

Are there any other products that you have just on the horizon after the empeg?


Alex Lear

However, if they start making really smart toasters, I will still buy an empeg and maybe even save up for a new toaster. :)

Alex Lear

Hmmm... a Talkie Toaster? Two Red Dwarf references in the same day???

(if there's a discount on the Mk3 for owners of a Mk1 & Mk2, I'll still buy one )

Geoff
---- -------
Got one of the first Mark 2 empegs...

...Like that thing with the scotch tape rolls. I still laugh about that one...


??


tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

The thing with the scotch tape rolls was as follows:

Somebody figured out how to use a laser to write and read data in three dimensions on the surface of the layers of rolls in some kind of adhesive tape. I can't imagine it being very reliable, but as a science experiment, it was cool.

At least, that's the way I recall it. Anyone have a link to the article?

___________
Tony Fabris

I once had a 1581, it was quite large...

TommyE

You guys are all forgetting that this fluorescent stuff is read-only.

Even dual-layer DVDs have to be mass-stamped. I don't think there's even a such thing as a DVD burner that will do dual-layer discs. As I understand it, the layers have to be mastered separately.

I think you're forgetting that this is an entirely new technology. I believe the article says that it doesn't really use a laser. They also planned things like wallet sized cards that hold the same amount as a dual layer DVD, and I'd think that these would be writeable.

DiGNAN

It's not *that* close on the horizon - but it'd be silly to think we weren't contemplating what a mk3 empeg would look like. As with anything in technology, you can put a purchasing decision off forever because the next one is always better (computers, audio gear, cameras, etc!)

Hugo

As far as I understand this particular sort of high capacity storage is read only, so as far as making storage drives in the sense of a hard drive, then it probably won't happen. Like Tony said, the possibility of making a consumer burner for something like this is very well and far off in the future. With storage of this capacity, and I assume it would be cheap (because if it will not be cheap then what is the point?) -- then it has a good potential for upsetting the current way that things are done. The way I see it, the economics and technology being what it is, and the existence of mp3 and the internet, it will soon be more economically viable for artists to sell direct and distribute direct to the consumer. For this to happen, things like the empeg need to exist to upload discrete songs, and organize these songs. So the customer goes on the net, buys a handful of songs, and puts them onto the unit.

The empeg in this case is the vehicle for taking a song from the home computer, storing it, organizing it and eventually playing it back. Key to the empeg software is the ability to take a song, transfer it, and then organize into playlists.

Now, if technology magically appears capable of storing 100,000 hours of music on a medium that costs 10 cents? What then? And this technology is read only, and the mechanism for producing it is only within reach of larger corporations like the music giants, then what?

Obviously, the need to organize and play back the music still exists... but the ability to synchronize the music over to a music player, and organize playlists in the same manner will no longer be there!

What's more is that the economics of making a single super-cd with 14 songs versus 10 million songs will be pretty much the same! Encryption technology exists to lock down all these songs, so surely record companies can distribute uber-collections where the consumer can purchase very cheaply, unlock codes to play back specific songs. See, consider, is it currently faster to transfer 100 gigabytes over a ISDN link or is it faster to save 100 gigabytes onto a few backup tapes and put some stamps on them? When a leap in cheap storage occurs like this, it might well cause a shift in distribution.

So what I'm getting at here is CURRENTLY it is cheap to take a CD, rip it, encode it, upload it to the empeg, organize it, play it back. OR download a song, upload it to the empeg, organize it, play it back. But if it becomes the case that you can get this uber-CD and the uber-CD player *for free* (because why wouldn't it be free?).... and all you had to do was surf the net and download unlock codes to free up music, then it obliterates the need to download the music, rip the music, encode it, worry about mp3 lossiness, or go to a store, or whatever! The empeg as it exists today wouldn't be set up for subscription based music, so in that way, the empeg would be obsolete. Which is not to say maybe a little bit of it might carry over to an application like this but most of it will be lost on a concept like this. A concept like this is possible only when price for storage is super cheap, *and* the capacity rockets up faster than available bandwidth and/or makes music easier to obtain than ripping.

The big assumption here is that this sort of technology "magically" appears, which it won't for a while.

Calvin "speculating"

The technology -and- paradigm shift in music IP are both some considerable way away. I'd be quite surprised to see either within the next 2 to 3 years.

We specialise in developing state of the art consumer music systems, and when new technology comes along, we'll be working with it. Nobody knows for sure what our products are going to do in 2-3 years (although we have some ideas!) but we're certainly not going to stand still.

This new media (which is one of any number of such projects that I've seen reported over the last 10 years or so) is still going to need some software to do anything useful, and that's where we come in! You'd be surprised how many mainstream audio products will be running empeg software over the next 6 to 12 months, and many of these already break away from the car player storage philosophy.

Of course this shouldn't stop anyone from buying a car player, unless you want your music needs to go unfulfilled for the next few years!

Rob

The way I see it, the economics and technology being what it is, and the existence of mp3 and the internet, it will soon be more economically viable for artists to sell direct and distribute direct to the consumer.

Technically, that is possible now. That's exactly what Courtney Love was talking about in that Salon article. It's not something that will be possible in the future, it's whether or not artists will take advantage of it in the future.

I'll state it again, I don't see this new technology affecting the recording industry any more than what is here right now. No album would be released on a disc like this, because it wouldn't be utilizing it to its full potential.


You'd be surprised how many mainstream audio products will be running empeg software over the next 6 to 12 months, and many of these already break away from the car player storage philosophy.

You are such a tease!

DiGNAN

I once had a 1581, it was quite large...

I remember a friend who had a Vic20 and we'd all race over there to play the games until another guy's Dad got a C64. We'd hang around (almost chanting) waiting until the cassette loaded. Usually only to find that the the load was bad and we had to do it again.
Then they got a 5&1/4 inch disk drive (about the size of a shoe box!) which developed a faulty cable. So we'd hold the cable in some mystical way inorder to invoke the spirits of the successful load.
It was agony if the power got turned off cause you knew the pain of loading it again.

Or there was Dad's ZX80! With the power supply that was thicker than the rest of the machine.....

Ahh kids these days don't know what they're missin'!

Murray 06000047
____________________

And don't forget the monochrome screens!! Ah, how I used to love to play boulderdash and dash the little green guy past the little green falling rocks to get to the little green goal...ahhh.

DiGNAN

Now we go to more recent history...
Apple II
Amstrad 6128 (ours was only green)
Others?


sorry tfabris et al, the topic police seem to be hypocritical.


BTW i loved that game

Murray 06000047
____________________

Link to dicussion/article on the scotch tape project:)
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/18/1218250.shtml

-mark

...proud to have owned one of the first Mark I units

I have to agree with alot of what is said here (and add my own $.02 ) - even when a better/larger read-only storage medium comes along, the artists/record execs will be very slow to embrace it. Why should they? They can get away with charging 10-20$ for a CD that has 10-15 songs on it now - why would they want to give more value to the custumers?

Ah - but this brings up a point i've had before - they don't need to put more songs on it, they just need to be more innovative with the data that they put on it. You're already seeing enhanced CD's that contain visual/computer stuff related to the cd that you're purchasing, I think if the record companies did embrace larger storage mediums, it wouldn't be for audio, but for bonus materials.

On the other hand, you're already seeing devices such as the diamond rio player shipping with a cd full of mp3's.. (10 hours, basically) - this music IS compressed, but there really isn't much of a potential for it - a song just gets lost among that much music. Honestly, I think I've only listened to 5-10 songs on that particular cd...

In order for songs to stick out, they need their own packaging. It doesn't matter how much storage you can throw at the medium, the consumer is still a gullible consumer that'll purchase 5 flashy cd's from his favorite artist before he'll purchase one - 5 has better value then 1 right? I think to Joe Doe's eyes, it does...

Here's another scenerio - you're already seeing subscription services pop up from places such as mp3.com where you pay a monthly fee, and have access to X amount of music. I think what you might see is a ready-only, self-desctructing subscription service which allows you to access X amount of music on the new compact-disc-like-as-common-as-but-much-larger-technology-medium , but which would self-destruct at the end of the month, at which time the subscription vendor would send you a new disk. Come on - bluetooth/wireless music is great and all, but what's joe-mountain climber going to do when he wants to hear his music and is on a trip? I think you'll see this type of medium passed out such as game-demo cd's are now.

-mark

...proud to have owned one of the first Mark I units

Link to dicussion/article on the scotch tape project:)
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/18/1218250.shtml

Unfortunately, the article itself gives a 404 URL error when I tray and access it. I can get some idea of what it was about from the comments, though...

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

You're still thinking in terms of the old music distribution economics. Artists will not be selling a CD with 10 songs on it. Record companies will give out CDs with 100,000 songs on it for free. The costs associated with marketing 10,000 different albums, trucking out all these, mailing out all these, packaging all of these will simply go away. Also, the cost in materials will also go away. So basically, the record companies will advertise artists, or artists will advertise themselves, via tv, cable, satellite, internet web pages, whatever. The consumer when they want one particular song, will pay 15cents and they will get a permanant unlock code. And this unlock code might have the customer's personal IDs encoded in it, so the codes can't be distributed without the buyer being responsible.

When it comes down to it, artists currently are interested in distributing their music via mp3 on the web -- but still, this stuff is compressed and lossy! And what's more, if somebody wants to buy 10 uncompressed songs, are they willing to download 650 megabytes over a 56k link? forget about it! What if they just click to buy, select the songs, and recieve an unlock code for the songs they bought? It won't even be an unlock code for each song they buy, but one unlock code that gets updated for all the unlocked songs each time they buy. Anyway, back to the point: by giving these CDs out through physical distribution channels, it circumvents the lack of bandwidth that exists for most consumers. By buying a small unlock code on the net, they can download hundreds of gigabytes of music in less than a second.

There are many assumptions built into this, for example, if bandwidth increases significantly, then it would make just about any storage medium obsolete.

Calvin

You're still thinking in terms of the old music distribution economics. Artists will not be selling a CD with 10 songs on it. Record companies will give out CDs with 100,000 songs on it for free.

Okay, I think you're a little too technically minded here.

For one, are you implying that artists, with this new technology, would not be constricted by limited space and that this was the only reason there are no more than 10 to 15 songs on most CD's? That is completely ridiculous. For example, Led Zeppplin's IV only has 8 songs for approximately 43 minutes of music. That leaves about 30 minutes. Do you think I feel ripped off because they "deprived" me of 40% of of the total possible listening time? Of course not! Artists have the right to craft their work and let us hear what they want us to. It's the record companies that rip you off with the price.

For their last album (No. 4), Stone Temple Pilots had about 30 to 40 songs worked out. I don't want all those on an album. Neither did they. Most likely because honestly, they knew some of them sucked! I don't want a song that sucks or doesn't sound right. I truly appreciate a well-crafted album. It shows that they put some thought into it.

Now, if you were saying that with this technology, record companies could distribute numerous artists' songs on one CD, then think about that prospect for a second. Do you know of any band that would want to share a CD with 1000 other groups? I don't think so.


Just remember, it takes a long time for the creative process to work. It took my favorite band, the Screaming Trees, 6 years to make their last album. They did not have 10,000 songs.

DiGNAN

I would suggest that it would be an absolute certainty that someone would crack the encryption sooner or later. If nothing else, someone at the distributing company would pirate the software for making the keys. If all the disks were identical then the keys could be shared anyway.

Rob

OK, the artists with egos will probably complain, but that's a very small minority.

Debauch, you haven't ever actually spent any time around artists, have you?

___________
Tony Fabris

If buying a song/album/sleeve artwork/other goodies is as quick as clicking a button on a web site (and it will be, because all you're doing is enabling/decrypting a product you already have), then I can't see how any sensible artist would object.

Okay, I appologize for that part of the argument. So you were talking about this as instead of downloading songs from the internet. I can see some reason in that idea (although I agree that sooner or later they'd be decrypted). I still think that the artists would rather stand alone. You would also get a bunch of new groups naming themselves things like ABBA or...Aaliyah (quick search on allmusic.com) just to get at the top of the alphabet. Who knows, we might see some groups naming themselves simply "~"

I still stand by my point that no artist would/should/can put more songs on an album than they're able/willing.

(ps-great job on the geek site rob)

DiGNAN

Who knows, we might see some groups naming themselves simply "~"

The artist formerly known as "@"?



___________
Tony Fabris

Exactly!

DiGNAN

Certainly it's possible to generate a unique and valid key for one person only. For example, the input parameters will be the list of songs to unlock, some identifying information about the customer, and the bit necessary to validate the unlock. This information is then encrypted and can be unlocked using some public key on the CD itself. So generating these could only be possible from a private key at the sales source itself. This way every person gets their own unique key.

But sure, it might well be cracked, but then when you shift away from a music as a product to a distribution method for music there will be ways around everything. The advantages outway the piracy that will inevitably occur anyway.

Calvin

Sorry, you're missing the point. Artists don't give a crap about limited space or how much space. Artists 1) want to be heard 2) want to be paid. If a distribution method exists to expedite 1 and 2, then why the hell not? If it doubles their profit I think they will go for it. I think you are arguing something else.

The point here, is if I as a consumer can buy and listen to music (a.k.a instant gratification) and this music does not expire, ever, and the medium is painless and given to me for free, doesn't require download, with no compromise in quality.... and the cost to me is CHEAPER because I don't have to pay for packaging then that is completely brilliant. It's even better if I don't have to pay for the crap that comes on a CD for the 2 songs that I really wanted!

If to the record company/distributer it circumvents the packaging and production costs, such that all costs are spent towards advertising and sales then that's pretty brilliant as well. In fact no need to produce a CD each time. Just maintain a database of songs. In fact if alternative pricing schemes, such as stepped pricing for popular songs, and sales prices for the b tracks -- or whatever, if it's possible to raise prices on the top 100 and sell off everything else at a penny, so much the better -- more sales, more profit! the consumer is happy because they no longer pay for the crap!

The artist will also be getting a bigger payoff as well.

There is nothing technically minded here, except that if a leap of technology like this occured, it certainly has the potential to upset the current methods of distribution. The current method of distribution is CD product sales verging on internet distribution. If technology keeps going as its going, it may well be internet distribution. (by the way, according to your stated argument NO artist will ever want to distribute on the internet because their egos state that they need packaging.) However if a alternative medium exists to circumvent the bandwidth limitations of the net, then I think it'd better swing that way.

Does that make sense?

Calvin

The record labels do NOT want to reduce the cost to the consumer, only their own costs. I think EMI have proven this by selling a portion of their mainstream catalogue online at prices equivalent to CD singles in the highstreet. They say this is fair because the money they save on distribution and packaging goes into the cost of encoding and compressing the music. Yeah, right.

Rob

Certainly it's possible to generate a unique and valid key for one person only.

Yes, but it's only fully secure if the distribution medium is user-unique. If the distribution medium is mass-produced, then one person's key will work for every one of those mass-produced discs. Sure, you can put a lot of software layers (such as internet validation) between the user and the unencrypted music, but in the end, such a scheme is always crackable because the full data set (including the decryption software) is there for the hacker to reverse-engineer and/or brute-force. It's still the same old thing: If it can be executed with the copy protection in place, it can be executed without the copy protection in place.

Doesn't matter if it's software or music, it's still copy protection and it can still be cracked. Just like when CD-ROM games are copy protected. The difference is, in a scheme such as the one being discussed here, the crack wouldn't decrypt just one game, it would decrypt an entire record company's catalog. Imagine the embarrasment if a record company mails out a million a holographic ROM discs with their entire catalog on it, and then two weeks later a 10k .exe file is distributed on the internet, DeCSS-style, that unlocked the whole disc. OOPS.

Personally, I see a much more rosy future for online song-by-song distribution than I do for a massive code-locked CD.

___________
Tony Fabris

the crack wouldn't decrypt just one game, it would decrypt an entire record company's catalog.

Most people wouldn't bother -- they'd pay the 15 cents for the song they wanted, and once it was decrypted, they'd figure out a way to copy that one song and give it to all their friends. Or, maybe not. If a song were only 15 cents, it would be easier, less time consuming, and probably less expensive to just spend the 15 cents and buy it yourself.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Sorry, you're missing the point. Artists don't give a crap about limited space or how much space. Artists 1) want to be heard 2) want to be paid. If a distribution method exists to expedite 1 and 2, then why the hell not? If it doubles their profit I think they will go for it. I think you are arguing something else.

I still maintain that you are missing the fact that NO artist is going to create their own album that has 1000 songs on it. Just think of the recording careers of ANY artist. NONE have recorded 1000 songs. Probably not even Madonna.

I allready said that an idea like a sampling CD would be a neat idea, but I want to buy the result of a creative process. There is a process of streamlining an album to get it shaped the way you want it. Just think. If you have 8 songs, you're most likely going to remember 2 to 4 of them very well and the others you'll recognize easily and because the artist has weeded out "sub-par-for-the-album" material, you'll most likely enjoy them. If you have even 40 songs, you'll still like about 3 to 6 of them, recognize 10 to 15 of them, and the rest you'll either dislike or forget about.

and the cost to me is CHEAPER because I don't have to pay for packaging then that is completely brilliant

Okay, the truth comes out. This is about you not wanting to pay for the extras. Well let me tell you, the extras don't actually cost that much. It's the price that the record companies are putting on them that they cost that much. I happen to like the cover art, but how much do you think that actually costs? huh? 3 cents for the plastic, 2 cents for the paper, and a regular fee to the art designer (usually someone associated with the band, not the label). So where does the actual ripping off occur? Not the artists themselves!

It's even better if I don't have to pay for the crap that comes on a CD for the 2 songs that I really wanted!

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but I'm willing to bet that you aren't that percentage of people who use Napster and still bought the CDs, are you? I am, and I never even used Napster.

1) want to be heard 2) want to be paid

That's a rather jaded view of things



I'm standing ground on the fact that this grouping (hell, herding) of artists is not going to be looked favorably upon by the artists themselves.

How would you like to be just another folder on some disc?


DiGNAN

it would be easier, less time consuming, and probably less expensive to just spend the 15 cents and buy it yourself.

I agree completely, but isn't that why the wackos out there create viruses? just to see if they can do it? It's a challenge, and alot of people out there would probably be up to that challenge. Scary when you think about it

DiGNAN

That's more like it. I think that the artists wouldn't mind putting music viedeos and such on their albums. I'd love that (although they usually only make them for the hit songs, so I guess they wouldn't be able to predict that.

I agree that the extras would definitely be a great use of the storage capacity. And 3D holograms? Cool. It looks like the company who's developing this stuff is doing exactly that. Check out their section on the 3d cameras they've got. The pictures are kinda creepy... www.c3d.com

DiGNAN

although they usually only make them for the hit songs, so I guess they wouldn't be able to predict that.

Heh, you think todays artists don't know their hits from their filler before the album is released?

Most hits you hear on the radio are manufactured, I'm afraid. Carefully and methodically. By your own example: The music videos are always made in advance, to coincide with the album's release, and the hits will get the high-budget treatment for the video. It's a giant marketing machine, and the videos are the TV commercials for the album.

There are lots of exceptions, of course. There are plenty of artists who make committed albums rather than manufactured hit/filler packages. But even those artists know which songs will "make it" and which ones won't. All artists know what their "A" material is.

___________
Tony Fabris

I still maintain that you are missing the fact that NO artist is going to create their own album that has 1000 songs on it. Just think of the recording careers of ANY artist. NONE have recorded 1000 songs. Probably not even Madonna.

You're still missing the point. Artists don't create albums, record companies do. And record companies have access to ALL their musicians music and that's certainly more than 1000 songs. "Just think of the recording careers of " ALL ARTISTS in a recording company.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but I'm willing to bet that you aren't that percentage of people who use Napster and still bought the CDs, are you? I am, and I never even used Napster.

I'm not sure what your analogy refers to, I've never used Napster ever. I don't have a computer at home, and am firewalled. Sorry bud, but an argument stating that it would be great to pay only for songs you like is not related to Napster. I've never used Napster but I suspect Napster is mostly used for music piracy and doesn't have a system in which you pay for items am I correct?

I think artists DO want to be heard and want to be paid. Is this jaded? Nope, it is reality! Find me an popular, respected artist that DOES NOT want to be heard and doesn't want to be paid. >:)

Ok, see if you can tell me the difference between these two scenarios:

Log onto the Internet, browse through a record company listing and pay for 4 songs by your favorite musician, then wait 4 hours to download the songs, then listen to them?

Contrast that to browsing through the Internet, looking at a record company listing, and then purchasing 4 songs by an artist and listening to the music right away?

What would you prefer? In both cases you can get the song lyrics online, the album cover online, all of that?

Calvin

Yep.

Calvin

Ok, you got me Tony! That certainly is a powerful argument against.

OTOH -- these days, the point of encryption and data security is not to make things so secure no hackers will crack through -- but to make the process so annoying and difficult to crack through that no one will bother. 128 bit encryption is not undefeatable, but it is complex enough that nobody is going to reasonably bother for a very long time. It IS the basis of nearly all the e-commerce on the net now, but the idea is to make it so annoying to bust through it few people will bother and so far that's held true.

Calvin

Calvin

Does anyone remember those Sam Goody music stores a 10 or 15 years ago? They used to sell individual songs. They had a vending machine you pick out the songs you want, and the machine will record those songs onto a tape and it'll pop right out. :) And it was cheap! Comes out to a couple of dollars per tape.

Okay, I'm not going to say much else here, because you aren't understanding my points and what I am arguing against.

The Napster part wasn't an analogy. I was saying that you don't seem to be the type of person who listens to any whole albums. I'd say that I enjoy and listen to about 95% of all the songs I own, and that's why I buy albums.

You're still missing the point. Artists don't create albums, record companies do. And record companies have access to ALL their musicians music and that's certainly more than 1000 songs. "Just think of the recording careers of " ALL ARTISTS in a recording company.

You see, I was talking about one album by an artist. This was a completely separate point from your packaging idea, and I was saying that because you seemed to be saying that with more storage space, an artist could conceiveably put 1000 songs on one CD. I was saying that nobody would do this for obvious reasons. That was COMPLETELY separate from the multiple artist database idea.


As for that, my point was simply that you would still have to pay alot for each song you wanted to buy, because the money isn't spent on the packaging and shipping of the CD's, it's spent on the executives.

I totally understand that there are people who don't want the big clunky album with filler that they know they only want a couple songs for. My point of view on that is that if I only like 1 song someone puts out, the artist is a waste of my time because they're either a one-hit-wonder or they don't care enough to make good music. But that's my opinion, and I know it sounds a bit crazy.

I only considered your response to sound slightly jaded because you seemed to imply that the only reason anyone and everyone creates music is to get paid. I'm sorry, but you are just plain wrong about that.

DiGNAN

Most hits you hear on the radio are manufactured, I'm afraid. Carefully and methodically. By your own example: The music videos are always made in advance, to coincide with the album's release, and the hits will get the high-budget treatment for the video. It's a giant marketing machine, and the videos are the TV commercials for the album.

Okay, sadly I agree with you in the majority. I was forgetting that I don't listen to "popular" music anymore. I definitely think that groups like the backdoor boys and and all the rest are complete marketing and record company tools, and don't have any control over what they do. Then again, do I feel sorry for them? Can't say I do. And in these cases I'm astonished that these groups can have singles before the album comes out. It boggles my mind.

There are lots of exceptions, of course. There are plenty of artists who make committed albums rather than manufactured hit/filler packages. But even those artists know which songs will "make it" and which ones won't. All artists know what their "A" material is.

This is true, usually, but sometimes...just sometimes...in a blue moon...artists actually wait for input on which songs their listening public will like and enjoy.

DiGNAN

128 bit encryption is not undefeatable, but it is complex enough that nobody is going to reasonably bother for a very long time. It IS the basis of nearly all the e-commerce on the net now, but the idea is to make it so annoying to bust through it few people will bother and so far that's held true.

Although the concept you just stated is fundamentally correct and applies to copy protection as well as e-commerce ("encryption can be cracked, the question is how much trouble will the hackers go to"), there is a big difference between e-commerce encryption and CD copy protection/unlocking.

E-commerce encryption is only designed to prevent eavesdropping on the in-transit data stream, and it depends upon each transaction being unique and having hidden keys generated at both ends. It's useless if you have access to the machine at one end or the other.

CD copy protection/unlocking, on the other hand, has all the necessary data, code, and keys on the client machine all at once (at least at some point during the transaction), and has a fixed (non-unique) encryption for every session. This makes all sorts of hacks possible, from reverse-engineering to brute-force decryption.

___________
Tony Fabris

It IS the basis of nearly all the e-commerce on the net now

Really? I thought it was porn

DiGNAN

All I can say here is that my argument is consistent all the way through each of the posts. Your argument is self serving, and I am not arguing what you are arguing. You are simply talking about something not at all related to what I'm talking about, in this way, you're missing my point.

Also when did I say the ONLY reason anyone and everyone creates music is to get paid? I never said that, ever. I suppose I can argue your way:

You see, I was talking about consequences of raising the bandwidth ceiling, the desires of artists and albums is a completely separate point from your album theory, and I was saying that because you seemed to be saying that no artist will ever want any money because they produce music for the good of all mankind and the happy shininess within them that drives them to sign contracts with recording companies--of course, you're still missing the point--artists blah blah, and as for that, my point was simply because since blah blah blah executives still want money they will get it and that I understand that there are people who don't want single songs since most people such as you want 95% of music on albums, so in short, it's better to buy full albums? I suppose. But that's only an opinion, and it does sound a bit crazy. blah.

Calvin "clipping and quoting DiGNAN out of context in order to create a run on sentence"

Even porn uses ssl.

Calvin

CD copy protection/unlocking, on the other hand, has all the necessary data, code, and keys on the client machine all at once (at least at some point during the transaction), and has a fixed (non-unique) encryption for every session. This makes all sorts of hacks possible, from reverse-engineering to brute-force decryption.

I'm no privacy expert here, but I won't rule out a method :) -- for example, you assume all the necessary data, code and keys are on the client machine all at once. What if some of the necessary data, code and keys are on the client machine? What if NONE of the necessary code and keys are there? These are rhetorical because I don't know the answer, and I don't doubt a system can be put together that either cost wise, it would be too expensive to bother picking the locks or cost wise, people can just very cheaply buy personalized keys outright.

Did you see that movie Gone in 60 seconds? How come people just don't built a manufacturing plant (or get in the know with someboyd at one) and obtain master keys to cars and steal them at will? Surely some people can and do, but yet people continue to buy and sell cars right? I think a lot of the 2000 and 2001 generation cars have interesting features in them like chips and extra notches and odd shapes, none of which are beyond the technology to duplicate but it's such a pain in the $*&( to do it that people don't bother.

Calvin

Artists will not be selling a CD with 10 songs on it.

This is what I've mostly been arguing about, and based on what you've said afterwards, I'm guessing that you didn't word this correctly for the point you were making. I gathered from this statement that you thought an artist would release a single album with a greater number of songs just because it was possible.

This is what you said, and this is what I've been arguing about.

And how are my arguments self-serving, exactly?

DiGNAN

Murray, remember my old luggable Amstrad PPC640? With a whole 640KB of memory, two 720kb drives and a 2400baud modem? I optimised the way that thing loaded stuff into memory and its performance (faster video BIOS replacer programs and memory timing tweakers...) until it creaked.

And you're talking about Andrew's C64, aren't you?

*laughs* Those were the days...

I heard an interesting opinion that kids these days don't know about debugging and problem solving the way we used to. When all you have to do to get a playstation working is throw in the CD, what would they know of the tricks of debugging cable connections, floppy disk firmware and memory usage? Or POKEs to run cheats on games...

They don't know what they're missing ... eh, altman?

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

I just figured out the ultimate use for this technology!

Not for mass/easy distribution...
Not because of "not enough space" problems...

AHA!

For PaulWay to make and store a really big mix!

Kureg

It seems to me that you have a particular statement to drive home, however, your statement is not a valid argument against my argument but is instead, a statement of its very own. However, by reading my argument and reading things that I never said, or intended to create a different argument to make your statement clearer, you're effectively serving yourself and not arguing my original line of logic. For example:

This is what I've mostly been arguing about, and based on what you've said afterwards, I'm guessing that you didn't word this correctly for the point you were making. I gathered from this statement that you thought an artist would release a single album with a greater number of songs just because it was possible.

Your statement above seems to imply that at some point I stated that artists would want to release a single album with 10,000 songs say. However, if you check all the posts I made in this thread, I never, ever, EVER stated this. You invented this in order to serve your own statement, hence it is a self serving argument. I'll imagine that every statement I made about releasing a uber-CD will also have "record company" nearby. Also I used uber-CD to describe the concept in the beginning to emphasize that it is not a single cd, a single release or album by a single artist but rather a higher order CD that encompasses many other CD's (hence, uber-CD).

Calvin "annoying, aren't I?"

Are you not reading my posts? Here, I'll make it simple.

Again, here is what I quoted from you:

Artists will not be selling a CD with 10 songs on it.

What I'm saying is: "Yes they will"

It's that simple.

DiGNAN

Hell, it doesn't matter. The record industry isn't going to change anything quickly. Even if they could do this tomorrow, it would probably be 10 years before they changed anything--if at all! Hell, we all remember how long it took for the cassette->CD changeover. Changing technology in a non-technology-related business is probably the slowest process on earth (next to all those events in Geography that Toby knows so much about ).

I thought this cartoon was fairly appropriate for the discussion:



DiGNAN

next to all those events in Geography that Toby knows so much about

Yeah, and Geology, too.

___________
Tony Fabris

D'oh!!

DiGNAN

Sorry, I just had that on the brain. I just had breakfast with my mom at her work this morning. She works at National Geographic.

DiGNAN

;)

Calvin "made you look"