The Facts, my Friend, are Blowin’ in the Wind
Cory Doctorow is reknowned across the net (and beyond) as an author of science fiction (you should check out his works, some of them are quite good and all are freely available – some as podcasts on his site). He’s also a well-known critic of DRM so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to read that he’s not too happy about the way in which Bob Dylan’s new album, Modern Times, has been released and packaged on iTunes.
The CD version of “Modern Times” comes as a 14-track disc that includes the audio of the four iTunes videos; also included with the CD is a DVD carrying the four videos. In other words, if you buy the packaged good, you get the audio and the videos for the final four songs, if you buy the iTunes Store version, you only get the un-burnable videos for them.
This is a fair criticism until you actually do a little research, which Cory plainly didn’t. The CD version of Modern Times comes as a 10 track disc. The special edition CD+DVD version is identical, but includes a bonus DVD with the four videos that Cory mentions – these four videos don’t feature in any physical package as audio-only.
… the whole Modern Times package defeats the simplicity of the iTunes pricing model — $0.99/track for any track. While the $14 price-tag gets you 14 “tracks,” it’s not possible to buy singles from the disc, nor is there any discount for buying the whole CD instead of a tack-by-track purchase. And since four of the tracks are not “music” in the sense of being burnable and rippable, you’re really paying more on a per-track basis.
This simply isn’t true and again a small amount of research would have proved this – firstly, it is possible to buy the audio tracks individually at the normal price of $0.99. The bonus videos are only available if you purchase the entire album and that costs $13.99. But since you can just buy all of the songs individually you could forgo the bonus videos and the digital version of the liner notes and get the album for $9.90. Given that music videos normally cost $1.99, you’re actually getting these ones cheaper by purchasing them with the album (and they are, after all, there purely as an incentive).
As for not being able to burn the audio portion of these songs to CD using iTunes – that bit I’m not sure on. I bought Hard-Fi’s Stars of CCTV last year on iTMS with three bonus videos. I created a playlist of the album with the three videos at the end and burned it to CD, hoping that iTunes would be smart enough to create an enhanced CD. Instead I got an 18-track audio CD with three duplicate songs. But that may have been something Apple have ‘fixed’ since then.
Despite having purchased numerous tracks from iTMS, I’m not entirely happy with the DRM aspects of the format either, but if you’re going to criticise, at least get your facts straight.
Update: this seems to be the catalyst for Cory’s post and it appears that iTunes doesn’t allow you to burn these particular videos to CD as audio files. I still have a hard time mustering any indignation about this though; they are, after all, sold as videos and it’s not like you can burn the audio from the DVD versions to CD particularly easily. It doesn’t negate the fact that much of what Cory wrote about in his piece was patently wrong either.
September 3rd, 2006 at 11:52 pm
[...] I got this information from Amazon and I suspect Cory did the same. But I haven’t actually seen the molecular product, which is confusing because there are two versions as well, so maybe the same problem of unrippable music exists there. It doesn’t change much, despite what deadlocked says. The iTunes experience is lauded for its consistency and fairness, and for the ease with which iTunes customers can convert their purchased songs into MP3s. But this is a dramatic failure of the consistency, clarity and ease of iTunes. [...]
September 4th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I had hoped to post a comment on Kim’s site in response to the comment above but was unable to do so. Here’s what I was going to say:
The files are locked [this is a reference to Kim's earlier prognosis that the files were locked - Cory determined that this was incorrect and that they couldnt be burned because they are videos]; as I pointed in the post that you linked, my experience is that iTunes will normally burn the audio portion of the video to CD; this has plainly been disabled for these Dylan videos. These videos are not available as audio tracks on any ‘molecular’ version of “Modern Times” – the Amazon tracklisting appears to have been errant.
I understand that the four songs in question are older Dylan tracks and as such probably are available to purchase individually in an audio-only format elsewhere on iTMS. Cory’s article is bogus because it is fundamentally factually incorrect and only serves to damage his position on DRM as it relates to iTunes because he has demonstrated a reluctance to do a modicum of research on his own behalf. As I mentioned in my post, Cory is well-known as an anti-DRM/copyleft activist.
As to whether or not you should be able to easily burn the audio of these videos to CD using iTunes: that point is very very debatable. After all, you can’t easily rip the audio component of the DVD version either.