Hello, Switchfoot. You piss me off.
General September 14th, 2005Note: I originally wrote this at 12:30 at night, when I was pretty pissed off. I’ve gone back and edited out a little bit of the profanity that I don’t think did anything to further my arguments. One f-bomb is probably enough. ;>)
It’s been awhile since I’ve written a good old fashioned rant. But strap in kiddies, cuz I’m a bit pissed off. Probably enough to swear a little, so consider yourselves warned.
Today we’re going to talk about money grabbing. In the process you’re going to learn a valuable lesson: how to circumnavigate the Sony/BMG anti-piracy protection. If you own an iPod, consider this post a must read.
It started out innocently enough – There’s a new cd out by Switchfoot, a band I quite like. Been looking forward to their new cd, so I ran out and bought it on the day it’s released. I had a bit of problem choosing where to buy it. You see, if you buy it on iTunes, you get an exclusive track. If you buy it at Target, you get a different exclusive track. If you buy it at Walmart you get yet another different exclusive track. And if you want all 3 exclusive tracks? Why, buy the damn thing three times. That’s fan service! I thought I was buying a music cd, but apparently I was buying Pokemon Switchfoot, where you have to buy three versions of a cd to get all the songs. There’s the obvious money grab, but it gets better.
I went for the Target version – Target is closer than Walmart, and the iTunes exclusive is just an acoustic version of one of the songs on the new cd. So I got the cd home after listening to the first two tracks during the drive back from Target. Decided to load up the cd on my iPod. Problem: Switchfoot is on the Sony/BMG label, and their new cd has Sony/BMG anti-piracy protection that is, I kid you not, INCOMPATIBLE WITH iTUNES.
That means if you own an iPod (and Apple owns something like 90 percent of the mp3 player market), you can’t put this cd on your mp3 player. Sony happily suggests that you buy a Sony mp3 player instead. Fuck you, Sony.
After going online and looking at extensive websites, I found that it is possible to get around this protection. I’m going to point you to a few resources at the end of this rant, but I’m not done going off quite yet.
You see, I’m perfectly happy to pay for music. What I’m not perfectly happy to do is buy a whole new mp3 player just because Sony is in a pissing match with Apple. Sony gives a nice middle finger to owners of iPods and users of iTunes – the cd won’t even load in the cd player in iTunes on my computer. So here’s me giving the finger right back at Sony: I own a Sony stereo, a Sony digital camera, a Sony digital camcorder, etc. I’m done buying Sony. So there you go, Sony. Your money-grabbing scheme to attempt to stop piracy has resulted in you losing thousands of dollars that I would have spent on your products over the course of my life.
And here’s my other big point. Until tonight, I didn’t know how to get around this copy protection. I have no nefarious reasons to know this – I just want to load the cd on my iPod, but Sony doesn’t want me to use that brand, so instead I have to learn how to break Sony’s piracy. This information is readily available on the Internet. It’s even on Switchfoot’s forums where an increasing number of people are bitching about this problem.
From here on out this gets a little technical. Basically, you need to download one of two programs, either Audiograbber or CDex. If you go the Audiograbber route, you’ll need to update the mp3 encoder, which is simply a matter of downloading the free LAME mp3 encoder and putting the dll file in the Audiograbber directory on your computer (probably C:/audiograbber).
I prefer Audiograbber, but it had problems with the bonus track, so I had to go over to CDex, right click on the song I was looking for and choose the MP3 option from the pop-up menu. CDex then made the mp3. With the LAME mp3 converter you can choose to make mp3s at high sample rates so you don’t lose any quality.
So there you go. Sony’s creating an army of people who know how to get around their anti-piracy methods. There’s something wrong when record companies punish people for actually going out and buying music. I could have abused the system and found a way to download this music for free, but instead I tried to go the legal route, buy the cd and support the band (and, by the way, the label). Next time I’ll just use BitTorrent and send the band a check for 10 bucks.
September 14th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Hey Dave. I feel your pain. I blogged your pain. And then I e-mailed the publicist who works with Switchfoot. I doubt Switchfoot had much of a say in either choice you complain about, but it still makes them look bad. And they should care about that.
Record companies just don’t get it, do they? Somehow restricting and bullying music fans is going to make us buy more music? Yeah, OK.
Oddly enough, I didn’t have any problems with the piracy protection on the Switchfoot CD. Mine was a review copy, but it looks to be a commercially available copy of the CD, complete with the same piracy warnings on the back. I ripped it to iTunes 4.9 on my Mac without a problem. I wonder if the version of iTunes of the type of computer makes any difference?
September 14th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
Thanks for commenting and blogging, Kevin.
It probably wasn’t ultimately Switchfoot’s fault, but as you brilliantly summed up: “artists can’t just sit back while record companies screw over fans. The artists will get the fallout of fan hatred, and that’s not cool.”
I’m using the same version of iTunes, though on a Windows machine. I’ve heard there are fewer problems with the Mac (no surprise there, I suppose) and the DualDisc version in stores is also supposed to be loading in iTunes without the anti-piracy crap getting in the way.
I’m still pissed about the time I had to waste last night getting the CD into my iPod, but thanks to Sony, I know all about getting around copy protection now.
I’d love you know what sort of response you get back from their publicist. I’ve listened to about half the cd and I really like the music, and by all accounts the band members are decent guys. My hope is that they’re all as upset about this situation as the fans are.
September 19th, 2005 at 12:55 am
Fuck Sony! I bought the CD from Wal-Mart for my daughter’s birthday and she can’t play the first song in her CD player at Home and the CD won’t play the first song in my Truck CD player, a 2003! Wal-Mart is going to get this CD shoved back up their ass right now!
September 19th, 2005 at 3:37 am
also pissed off. strange, i tried your recommended software and both packages give me nothing but static when playing the new wav, mp3 or wma files…i tried ripping to all of them. can’t get it to work. any ideas?
September 21st, 2005 at 7:15 am
The lead singer for Switchfoot has put the go around on their website. He isn’t very happy about this either.
March 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Hi, I came across this article today. yeah, I know, 2 1/2 years later.
But, just saying, the band had NO IDEA that Sony put this bullcrap on their cd until they saw it in stores. They were just as angry at Sony for it as all of us were, and they went public with ways to get around it, like Biff said earlier. Sony even threatened to sue the band if they didn’t keep quiet. No fault to the band at all in this situation.
Also, they’re no longer with Sony, but are independent. Woohoo!
March 24th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Job, I’d heard they were going independent, and I think that’s great news. There’s an entire discussion there about how whether or not it’s worth being on a major label. Some of that may depend on what level of success a band is going to be happy achieving. But regardless, I’m very much looking forward to Switchfoot’s first cd as an independent band.