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