Music File Security
February 7, 2010
One of the most unpopular subjects on a music site is; music file security. When an Artist uploads their music to a music site and they indicate that some files should be available for download and others should not, I am sure they believe that their music will be secure. Sadly, that is not the case and many exploits exist that allow a dishonest person to capture the music file intact and share it with their friends and possibly the world.
The simplest of these is to capture the audio by rerecording it. this is simple to do and there is no protection against it. It is all to simple to create an mp3 from captured audio and post it online. This means that when a file is not made available for download but is available to listen to, there is a certain group of people that will listen to and capture the music and not respect the Artists choice of it not being available for download. In the real world, we call these people thieves.
On this subject I fall solidly on the side of the Artist and do not want to contribute to the culture of corruption that is the music serving website group. I can easily gain access to the root file from most music sources and as far as I can tell, I am about the only programmer on the planet that cares about protecting the copyright of an Artist. In my recent review of music delivery technology I was alarmed to find that almost every system makes the file easily available to the web browser.
I will not go into the details because obviously someone that doesn’t know would read them and use that information but If you are an Artist you need to face the reality that in most cases your music is not protected. The systems that do protect music files are complex and difficult to make workable on large scale sites. Since for the most part, Indie artists are not protected by an agency such as RIAA, copies of their music move freely across the Internet far beyond the few people they have been sent to, the rule is, if it is online, it is available to everyone. This realization is what lead to Rhapsody being a log on only site. this way they could track their users actions. Sites like last fm and ilike, the music can easily be grabbed as soon as it is played by many methods.
This is both good and bad. Wide scale distribution is necessary to reach and maintain listeners as well as to compete with label music that is spending millions to manufacture Artists and music. It is in these positives that a realization can be made. If you intend to put a file on the Internet, make it available for download. Do this because it eliminates any reason to propagate thief methods which will slowly make them less widely known. Also you can load your mp3 with tons of id3 information including your website address and a picture. this means that any file out there becomes an advertising entity for you. If it is copied and distributed, chances are the id3 tags will stay intact. In 2010 it will become obvious to most artists that record sales will not fuel their careers sufficiently to make a living. It will be live events that fuel the future of music. Most artists sell their music at live events and can reduce the price of a CD to make it nearly impossible to pass up since no shipping is required. Fortunately we live in a world where a live video of your performance has unquestioned copyright and they are easy to remove from the Internet but it is inadvisable to do so unless the audio is horrible or there is a bad costume moment on stage 
What all this points to is the need for Independent artists to have an effective association that makes live music opportunities far more available than they are now. Independent artists also need an effective association that helps to control the technology of distribution as well as tracking web and other exploits and securing against them but there are some common sense things an artist can do to limit the duplication of their music.
Do not put your entire CD on the Internet as mp3 tracks. select a certain number of songs and go with those as your advertising set. make sure your other songs are just not available. Do no place your album art in a high res file on the Internet. The combination of album art and all the tracks makes it all to easy for people to duplicate and sell your music without your permission especially in distant countries. While artists have to give examples of their music for advertising reasons, the only thing that happens when you make all your songs available to listen to is you eliminate the reasons for people to buy music, which we know, creates new music.
Just to go on record, I firmly believe in the artists copyright, I also believe in free music as a form of advertising. All I am saying is, don’t think anyone including me can protect your music online because it is just not possible. Even if I implement every conceivable protection on the server, your music can still be captured. The truth is, there is no way to prevent it. The good news is that if you look at the data, there is still about 85% of the listening public that will not steal music. These people take the downloads they are offered, get familiar with an artist and if they like their music, the do something really cool, they buy it.
One last thought, if you produce a CD and never put any of the songs on the Internet it doesn’t mean someone else won’t. A person can buy a CD, make mp3’s and upload them many places. The simple fact is that unless people get serious about protecting your rights and apply technology to do that, the music industry will continue to sink beneath the waves and the independent artist will continue to be pulled under with the ship as it goes.