Hey Mr DJ, as Madonna once said, wanna put a record on? Or something like that anyway. DJs have been with us for some time and its become quite an art form. Loads of music lovers who are already musicians or who never got to grip with traditional music production have embraced this art form as way of making their mark on the creative process. 

The impact a DJ can have on a venue, due to the DJs taste in music and feel for the room is crucial to a venue or club’s success. Additionally once taken to a new level, completely new pieces of music can be born from the clever use of turntables and DJ equipment, from delays, samplers and the like.

Activision it seems loves DJing too. So much in fact, thats its next big music game, following Guitar Hero, will be DJ Hero! For me it makes total sense, more so than Guitar Hero. Over the last few years DJs have already been ‘mixing’ MP3s connected to controllers which didn’t actually have a record on them. You can even get a piece of hardware which takes the motions from a traditional set of decks and uses them to control MP3s.

Hence, there is no reason why the game can’t do everything these existing systems allow for the professionals. Except It will do more as its a game. It will be competitive, allow for Net play in some way and perhaps use the video and microphone elements of the consoles. However, what it will also mean from the perspective of the content owners, is that its a new download store. Thats right, if you have already bought music on Itunes, or Guitar Hero I bet youll need to buy it again in the new DJ format (mind you if you could use your OWN MP3s or Guitar Hero tracks that would be awesome). What would be available? Music videos I would imagine - it could actually reboot the market for music videos. In fact you could have a video mashup section too, which only worked with images.

Lastly, it would offer a much lower difficulty access level for wanna be DJs, and bring more people into music on a creative level, which cant be a bad thing. The new Nintendo DSi is already seeing this trend and embedding it into its design. The DS lite despite being a huge success, can’t play music (what can’t nowadays?!), so with the DSi upgrade Nintendo have implemented this missing feature. However, is it just another IPOD? No, Nintendo have also taken the DJ route. Its more of a creative tool than a ‘dumb’ player. Music can be slowed down, sped up and even have its pitch changed. Like Activision, Nintendo can see that people want to be able to do things with content, whether it be their own, or someone elses. 

So, it would seem we are now ALL going to become the DJ.

Wanna put a record on?

There is a great article on CNET here, on a new site called Bopaboo which allows people to sell their MP3s on. My initial view is this is bonkers and a paragraph of the article states why:

“Patrick Ross, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, a watchdog group made up of artists, producers and other content creators, chuckled when I explained Bopaboo’s business model.

“Clearly a first-sale defense won’t apply here,” Ross said. “In the case of a book or any other creative work, you no longer possess the work once you sell it…It’s also hard for me to imagine the model succeeding because if somebody wants to pay for works they will pay for it at a legal site and see that creators are compensated. If they are willing to break the rules, they would just go on (P2P service) Lime Wire and get it for free. I hope (Bopaboo) crashes and burns before it gets sued. It seems like a flawed business model as well as an illegal business model.”" From CNET

However, surely it COULD be given the green light if it was only done with files with DRM, and if somehow the DRM was transported with the file. Clearly, DRM is on the way out, so its not really relevant, but for those with tons of files with DRM it might be legitmate question. Actually, DRM is on the way out for Audio but not for TV and Film downloads, so for this market it may be very very relevant. 

When selling CDs the music industry has always stated that what you are buying is not the physical product, but the license that goes with it. Hence, if the license states that you can only listen to the audio on tuesdays, whilst standing on one leg wearing women’s underwear, then you have to not to be in breach of the license. Accordingly labels have tried to limit the license so resale is not allowed, and are stating that case with digital downloads.

Yet, first-sale rights exist before the license comes into play which is why second hand sales of physical products exist. So even though there are clear issues (as the quote above points out) with digital media, it could be argued that there is an issue here that needs to be resolved somehow. Someone could build up a huge library of tv shows and films and then decide if they want to sell them on. Additionally, what happens if someone sells a computer, with all that content still on the machine (but perhaps it was backed up on a separate Hard Drive). Thats clearly theft too, but one can see that kind of setup happening as people try to add value to their second hand hardware (the same with IPODs etc). 

In fact there are many shops in the US/UK that sell second hand IPODs, even Amazon and Ebay do. Surely if they are pre-loaded with music, films and tv shows then they too are aiding and abetting breaking copyright as much as Bopaboo?

Its been rumoured on a number of sites now that Itunes will be dropping DRM. Well hurrah if they do. Lets quickly go through the pros, and cons of this decision. 

Cons -

From Apple’s perspective they loose a reason to buy an IPOD or to keep buying an IPOD. Traditionally music bought was tied into that piece of hardware. It would not play on anything else

Music which is exclusive to the Apple’s, Itunes Store can be copied and shared with as much ease as any other material.

Pros - 

For the last two years, people have been able to buy music, legally, without DRM from a number of players in the market. That music would work on an IPOD. So Apple’s business model had actually become a barrier to them growing the Ipod market, as consumers would soon become use to the idea of music download interoperability (remember in the early years, Apple were not the only company with closed DRM).

It should also be noted that the Ipod has now grown beyond its original functionality. Its now a phone, a games machine and slowly becoming a business smart phone which is competing with Blackberry. Hence, there are lots of different ways Apple can make sure it still has content exclusively tied to its hardware by having the best business applications and games to play (adapted uniquely to its hardware). 

Apple still has the Itunes store, and for many that is of value in itself. The Apple hardware, with a dedicated ’streamlined’ (some people think that the Itunes Software needs a MAJOR makeover) software application for purchasing and managing content is a major plus. There are still very few competitors with a fully joined up experience such as Apple’s (Sony are slooooooowly getting there with their PS3 and PSP platforms).

All we need is the record labels to allow Apple to lift DRM across its entire catalogue. Does this mean Apple was always telling the truth when they said it was the Record Companies that forced DRM on them? Well I suspect, that yes, in their continual fear of anything which is not some form of physical distribution system they did insist on DRM. However, I reckon that Apple then saw how they could make it proprietary and use it as a way of making sure no one could ride their success in developing the Ipod platform. 

That market reality has now gone, and now we look forward to a world where, music at least, has no locks on it. The question remains will the Movie Industry follow suite and also allow Apple to unlock the films and tv shows? That would be superb boost to the world of legal digital content, and would result in many more people embracing it.

After all EMI recently stated that since they had lifted DRM via a number of download sites they had not seen an increase in illegal sharing. Those that want to break the law always will, and for the rest of us, if the price is right, if we feel we own the content and can use it across all our hardware without being punished - well we always buy it.

After all we can STILL buy it on CD/DVD and rip it with ease. If companies were THAT concerned with stopping Piracy they would have stopped making CDs and DVDs by now!

Web User is reporting that many of the music retailers, who sell music downloads which are not encrypted with DRM, will be adopting a universal logo to highlight this fact. It will be a ‘MP3 compatible logo’ and will make it clear to the user that the files purchased from this store can be used on any digital device without restrictions.

Now we have discussed the issue of DRM many times before on our podcast. We recognise that IF as a label you fear the internet, then yes it does offer a degree of protection. This in turn makes it easier for you to bring your content to the marketplace, which is good for the consumer. However, taking into account CD has no protection, the question is why have the fear in the first place? Yes, it is easier to copy a file than a CD, but not that MUCH easier. 

Hence we have been applauding those companies pushing content without DRM, and I want to applaud this initiative, as not enough people know that there are alternatives without DRM out there. In fact why not have a logo that says, ‘legal, paid for and DRM free’. That way we have education about why people should pay wrapped up into the message too.

Talking of which; I saw the new Bond movie the other night. A lot of fun it was too. However, preceding the movie was not the normal ‘dont copy or you will go to hell’ message, but instead a very very short video of Daniel Craig asking us not to film it (with our camera phones!) because without people paying to see the movie, all of ‘these people’ would not get paid - with a video of all the real people behind the movie playing as he spoke.

What a great idea. More of this please. Its not a battle between us and them. It should be much more about regular communication and education of the public. Let the public see the faces behind the product, not just get the corporate letters threatening to sue them.