Will we have to pay to enjoy movies/music we purchased???

[b_panther_g]

Please bear in mind that I just want to share my opinion(s) and hopefully start a meaningful discussion…

I’m worried about the future of media. Specifically, I worry that I (or anyone) will loose the ability to even enjoy movies/music whenever or wherever we want without having to pay a fee. In short I’m worried that we will loose the right to own copies of music and or movies. Instead, we’d be forced to rent or lease everything. Or we'd have to buy multiple copies or licenses for every device we would like to play the media on.

This may sound way out there, but it’s already common business practice for the computer software industry. Per seat licenses means that a business must buy a license or a copy of a software for every employee that uses that software. For example, if your company has 20 employees who use Microsoft Word, then you must purchase 20 licenses for Microsoft Word and renew those licenses after a certain time. Even worse, Microsoft makes companies buy licenses for every installation of Microsoft Word the company performs. So even though an employee will never use Word on both their desktop and their laptop at the same time, the company must still pay for both copies.

So what does this have to do with audio/video???

It appears that media companies are learning more and more from the software companies.


There seems to be three trends emerging that make me uneasy.

1. Just about all media is going digital. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but please keep in mind the topic being discussed.

2. On demand services are on the rise. It seems that music/movie companies are moving toward a download service for all their media. Legal music download services are common and only growing. Legal movie download services are not far behind. Broadband access is becoming more and more prevalent every year.

3. Music and movie companies are working closely with computer companies. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that business leaders are thinking about making as much money as possible. If they can come up with a way to control how their goods are used what’s stopping them from charging for the usage.

Hopefully, I won’t have to pay a “renewal fee” to watch a movie I legally downloaded 2 or 3 years before. Or I won’t have to pay a “usage fee” to copy a song from my computer to a portable device. But I don’t know of anyone or anything stopping that from happening.

Hopefully I’m wrong but...

Just a thought,
B.

 

[annunaki]

I see where you are coming from here, but I do not think that people will have to purchase on a per person basis. Maybe per household. Until I can download a song from an artist that sounds as good as a well recorded CD, I will NOT listen to downloaded music. Mp3 is an audio atrocity that is ruining the roots of perceived audio quality of an entire generation of people. We as a society have basically told record companies that CD was good enough but we will settle for a lesser standard, Mp3. Why would a record company invest money in producing a higher resolution media when consumers spit in the face of CD for an inferior format. Now, record companies have been reducing the quality of audio on the CDs to compete with the "hotly" recorded Mp3s. By hot, I mean highly compressed so it sound louder. Sorry for the off topic rant but it really make me upset.

Back to the subject at hand, maybe Divx wasn't so much a bad idea, but ahead of it's time?

 

[Rob Babcock]

I think Divx was a perfectly horrifying idea, but that's another topic. I too would never consider paying good money for a compressed, bloodless & lifeless MP3. It might be worth a dime per track to download a song just to see if it's something you might like- but even then it's sometimes tough to tell when the sound is poor.

And don't even get me started on the hilarious practice of calling music encoded at the laughably low bitrate of 128 kbps "CD Quality."

Certainly the software companies have foisted an odious liscensing scheme off on us, but I doubt the masses will be as tolerant of attempts to do so with music and movies. And I think technical hurdles will keep on-demand content from being practical in all circumstances. In short, I believe there will be a market for on-demand and pay-per-listen/view, but I don't foresee it becoming the norm in the near future (ie next couple decades).

At least I hope not.

 

[Shinerman]

In some ways it's already here. I use iTunes from Apple for some purposes. My wife loves it and I really enjoy it. It's great if you just want to make CDs for your car or download to your iPod. But, there is a 7 burn limit on these songs that you buy for .99 cents and even the albums. I will probably rarely burn the same songs that many times but, I don't like the fact that there is a limit.

I think the industry will naturally move to some sort of format like MP3 in the future. CDs and even DVDs will probably fade eventually but it will only be once the quality of MP3-like formats are improved. Of course like Rob said, the record companies and software companies are getting away with it right now. Unfortunately, for people like us, 99% of people buying MP3s don't know there is a difference in quality. Who do you think these companies are going to listen to? 1% or the 99%?

I can see cable companies and Sat. providers offering this kind of service as well. I can't comment on what kind of technology would be needed to do it but, I can imagine turning to channel 99 and being able to pull up songs, movies and albums and being able to download them to the "Yamaha RX-D9900" or a computer. I don't think this will be far off. You can already order movies for viewing. How much harder would it be to buy permanent music or music files?

Shinerman

 

[Dan]

I sure hope not although the idea isn't as unlikely as it seems. I am very concerned about the future of retail audio. Tower records is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. If CD sales continue their death spiral this may become the way to save the giant record companies' profits. Please refer to related thread "The way the music died" in the steam vent. I recently heard about a guy who owned some record stores in the southeast including one in Clemson SC. In the past, owning a record store in a big college town was a gold mine. His sales dropped by over half overnight when Clemson U installed high speed internet. He was going to close up shop but was lucky enough to find a sucker I mean buyer to take the stores off his hands.

I will miss the days when ones devotion and taste in music was defined by the size and quality of the collection one had. I guess this defines old school.

 

[Gatorchong]

Music stores are dying out, I'm having trouble even finding decent used CD stores. I for one love going shopping for CD's but now I'm mostly forced to go to Best Buy or Circuit City to buy CD's. Best Buy is much better at stocking more obscure stuff but they're not that great. You still have to walk by the radio and MTV hits before you get to the good stuff. As for the digital music, I've read that some companies want to put devices in all of our media players (mp3 players, cell phones, DVD players, computers, etc.) to make sure that we are not violating any of the countless copyright laws attached to their music. The article said that a device such as this would probably add between $80 and $100 to the price of these devices. So they want consumers to pick up the cost of spying. And most people aren't really concerned with the decline of CD sales because an 128kbps mp3 doesn't sound that bad when you listen to your cd's on a $40 boombox or a cheap car stereo which is where the majority of people listen to music. And I think that if a company can figure out a way to charge per use for their media, they'll do it. A DVD will cost $5.00 but you'll have to $2.50 every time you want to watch it. I can see it happening.