The rest of the world seems to be finding your method too complicated as well. From the NY Times:
nytimes.com
The hassles downloading Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys had nothing
to do with the technology involved in extracting music from the Internet: it
was the security systems (created so record companies get their money,
artists receive their royalties and the music cannot be copied and passed
around free) that made the processes daunting.
I like to think of myself as pretty competent with technology. I can set
alarm clocks, program VCR's, make bids on items in Ebay and mix
cake batter without getting any on the walls. When it comes to listening to
music on the Internet, I'm what statisticians call an early adapter, working
with an Internet radio station blaring or downloading free songs onto my
MP3 player with customized skins and cool visual plug-ins.
So it was with a light heart
that I set about downloading
the rap group Public
Enemy's "There's a Poison
Goin' On" last weekend. The
album is the first new record
by a major artist being sold
through direct Internet
download before being
made available in record
stores. Or, to put it more
sensationally, it is what
companies from Sony to
I.B.M. to Microsoft think
will be the future of music.
Last year the music business
has been sprinting faster and faster toward selling albums on line in this
manner: meeting behind closed doors, forming alliances with competitors
and generally making a mess of things in the same way that cleaning up a
house requires throwing it into greater disorder first.
The quest to download Public Enemy's "There's a Poison Goin' On"
provided a firsthand example of this mess. As I write this, three days
have passed, I have spent 12 hours on the computer, I may or may not
have spent $16 on my credit card for the $8 album and only moments
ago I had the hard-earned privilege of hearing the first of its songs.
I began the process with my home computer, which is connected to
America Online via standard phone lines. I went to Atomicpop.com, a
Web site, and followed the path to the album. I clicked on an icon to
begin the download at 12:34 P.M. Four hours and 23 minutes later the
album had supposedly arrived on my computer. All I had to do was find
the file I had just downloaded on my hard drive and fill out a form with
my e-mail address, street address and credit card information, and then
the company would send me a password that would free the music from
its security system.
I followed instructions, received the password three minutes later, typed
it in and clicked on the unlock icon. Then I waited, and waited, and
waited. Nothing happened. I searched for the Public Enemy album or a
song from it, and there was nothing. Even the unlocking program itself
had disappeared. After an hour of fruitless searching and phone calls to
computer-savvy friends, I called and sent e-mail to Broadcast.com, the
security company, for help. No response.
I decided to cheat to see if I could find the album free online. There were
three methods at my disposal: I posted a request for the album with
several newsgroups, downloaded a program intended to circumvent the
"unboxed" security system and went to the site mp3.lycos.com to search
for the album. I probably could have gotten the album through at least
one of these means, but my eyes were glazed over and I decided to stick
with the original plan.
The next night I used a computer with a stronger
Internet connection -- T1 lines -- and tried my
luck. It took three hours for the album to
download. I filled out the forms with my credit
card information again, and waited for a
password. It never came. I e-mailed and called.
No response, again.
While waiting until the next working day to call I
returned to the site Launch.com, which was
offering free copies of a new Beastie Boys song
and donating a dollar for each download to
Kosovo relief charities. The company had
packaged the files in a newer secure system
(Windows Media Technology), and this was its
downfall. Several days earlier I reluctantly signed up for a free Launch
membership to get the song but couldn't download the music. This time
my e-mail received a response, a form letter explaining that there was a
problem in Windows Media Technology's security system, called
Reciprocal. "Launch will be making the donation for each new member
that comes to the site," the e-mail reassured me, "regardless of whether
or not they get the download, so don't worry about that."
This time the Beastie Boys song downloaded successfully. Flush with
success, two days later I called Broadcast.com to try for an encore with
Public Enemy. A nice woman who identified herself as the only
troubleshooter at the company answered my call, and after fiddling with
what she described as "a very slow computer" and "a stupid search
engine" solved one problem. She had no explanation for the first failed
attempt, but the second attempt did not work, she said, because her
computers had rejected the order as a duplicate.
She gave me a new password, I typed it in and the album was unlocked.
I waited about the amount of time it would take me to walk to my local
record store, and the album transferred to my hard drive. The songs
were suddenly laid out in a folder for me to select and play on my
computer, but the thrill was long gone.
The hassles downloading Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys had nothing
to do with the technology involved in extracting music from the Internet: it
was the security systems (created so record companies get their money,
artists receive their royalties and the music cannot be copied and passed
around free) that made the processes daunting.
Going to a record store suddenly seemed like a very easy and
progressive concept. And unless record companies decide to abandon
the Sisyphean task of trying to find a secure delivery system on the
Internet (which is about as likely as record companies' abandoning the
practice of passing gay singers off as heterosexual), the future of music
probably still belongs to the future.
Family Values Tour
The Family Values Tour started last year by the slob-rock band Korn is
following in the footsteps of Lollapalooza, the Ozzfest and the Lilith Fair
to become an institution with a short but prosperous future. Though the
Firm, the management company that handles the tour, did not return
phone calls in time for publication, it is believed to have as headliners
Limp Bizkit, with the rappers Redman, Method Man and DMX
performing along with the rock bands Filter and possibly the Foo
Fighters. The tour is to begin in the fall. |
