New Trend: Raise Music Prices by offering DRM Free Music

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 13, 2007
Updated • Jun 9, 2013
Music and Video
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2

Now if that is not a clever idea. Force DRM on consumers for several years with a pricing scheme straight out of hell and then use a huge publicity machine to make the customers believe that DRM free music is the future raising the price of music in the process even more.

If you thought that everything would be good now that many labels decided to offer drm free music albums as well you are far away from what is really happening right now.

The music industry found a way to give consumers what they want - DRM free music - which makes the companies appear as knights in shining armor that free music from something that they introduced in first place. Even if that is acceptable since it is benefiting for us, the way DRM free music is introduced is not as you are charged more to get music without digital rights management.

Sure, no one is forcing anyone to buy music online but I think it is important to let as many people as possible know that this is not really a step in the right direction. Why is the price for DRM free music higher than that of normal songs? Is the Music Industry still fearing that buyers will upload the songs to p2p networks? Don't they know that all their precious albums exist on those networks days, weeks and sometimes even months before release? How can a customer who is actually buying the songs hurt them even more?

I'm thinking that many sites who report in favor of this new marketing move should get their facts straight. They are up-selling you something that you already had 10 years ago. ArsTechnica has an interesting article worth a read entitled "DRM, lock-ins, and piracy: all red herrings for a music industry in trouble"

The new old concept is not convincing me at all to purchase music online. I will continue my boycott as long as they try to fool their customers and not listen to them. I'm listening to web radio at the moment, if they manage to shut that down I will listen to my old records and independent bands from online portals such as Jamendo. And yes, I do purchase albums from those bands from time to time. I know that they receive the largest share from my money and that is what counts..

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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