Regulars to AAS will know that I hate DRM (Digital Rights Management). Not because it stops me getting stuff for free, though that would undoubtedly be some people's reason, but because it gets in the way of how I want to use content that I've paid for. See below for a tale of woe - I was trying to give Nokia Music Store one last chance and it let me down yet again. Oh, and did I mention that I hate DRM?....
Read on in the full article.
Just to add some extra information.
DRM licenses are stored in the phone's memory. On some firmware updates they get lost (especially those that do not have UDP). You should be able to get these back by re-downloading them (which should happen automatically when you try and play it again)...
However the problem seems to come when the DRM license database gets corrupted / goes wrong. The corruption means no new DRM licenses can be added to the phone (hence the behaviour Steve writes about)... This corruption seems to be more frequent around firmware updates (possibly caused by applying a backup from an older version).
The only way to solve this is the reformat the phone. You may also need to reformat the memory card (or at least I did).
Clearly it is not a tenable situation. Nokia must ensure that DRM works 100% of the time or not use it all.
DRM just doesn't work. Pure and simple.
I have never bought anything with DRM (and I have bought a LOT of music, etc) simply because I want to be able to play the music I have bought when and how I want to, not how some numpty doesn't get that instead of preventing piracy it actually pushed people into piracy.
Nokia need to wake up to the mood of the world and ditch DRM completely!
Sorry for your 80 pence, but that was funny. lol drm, I agree.
Yes, it wasn't about the trivial 80p, but about what would happen if I'd just bought a chunk of albums, say �80 worth. And then found that the DRM made their licenses 'invalid'.
Yeah, that DRM needs to go NOW. There's really NO excuse for it at this point.
Even Apple is ditching DRM. That's saying something...
When I bought my E71 six months back I found that it had Nokia's Music Store software preinstalled so I thought I would give it a go. Foolishly I paid for �20 worth of music to get the discount.
It was only when I tried to play my newly aquired music I got the dreaded Licence Invalid error. Several emails to Nokia later they at last admitted my E71 wasn't compatible with DRM. They had merely put the Music Store software on my phone in case they changed their mind. I should say at this point that the handbook that came with my phone gave detailed instructions on how to use the Music Store!
I'm sure nobody's suprised that I never got my �20 back from Nokia.
Two questions: 1 is it really DRM or simply Nokia's bad implementation that caused the problem? 2 is it really Nokia and not the music labels that do not want to let go of DRM? Amazon and Apple for sure have more leverage so please don't simply say "well Apple did it!" 😊
DRM sucks - it's a dead idea - nokia will have to lose it or forget a music store. CWM may require it - but the regular store does not. CWM is so full of potential annoyances, that i think I'd rather just pay anyway. The people most likely to benefit from CWM probably use bit torrent sites anyway.
That said I had no problem transferring from my E71 to my 5800. I await a firmware update with fear!
I wrote up my experience here:
http://hello5800.tumblr.com/post/74341898/nokia-music-store-in-good-experience-shocker-i
viipottaja wrote:Two questions: 1 is it really DRM or simply Nokia's bad implementation that caused the problem?
AFAIK nokia use microsoft wma DRM -nuff said 😉
DRM does not stop piracy - it merely annoys legal users
Well, I think that "pan-European" deal, which Nokia has announced is a DRM-free one...
So, I expect the DRM announcement next week:
www renegadefanboy com/2009/02/re-mwc-2009-the-countdown-begins
Overall, the DRM (and Windows+IE combination) is why I don't use the Music Store. Hope it ends soon.
I've had your same bad experience, so I asked support from Nokia.
The result? A couple of silly mails that were just waisting of time ...
In the end, forget Nokia Music Store!!!!
"Even Apple is ditching DRM. That's saying something..."
Erm... Steve Jobs published an open letter (over a year ago) to the industry stating that DRM was a bad thing, and that they would 'drop it in a heartbeat' should the record labels agree. Obviously they eventually did.
The record labels hold all the cards. They only agreed to Amazon going DRM free in an attempt to form a beach head against iTunes.
Hi
Please contact customer support who should be able to give you
more advice on what to do to get this working for you.
music.nokia.co.uk/IE/customersupport.aspx
I will also investigate this issue with our networks team today
in case it is affecting all users.
I have to agree with you about your DRM points, it is an unnecesary
evil imho and i personally believe it is singlehandedly causing the
downfall of the music industry .... well that and pirates who contribute
nothing to the music industry but happily steal music for free.
I know there are plans to get it removed, but nothing set in place
yet and it does of course require premiss
EXACTLY THE SAME FOR ME.
I ONCE (being the operative word), tried Nokia Music store on my then N82.
I selected, 'purchased' and then downloaded a Mary J. Blige track...
Phone said I had it...
Sure enough... found it in my tracks list....
Tried to play it...
EXACTLY the same as Steve, with the Invalid Licence issue.
So I thought I'd do the same, and connect over the air...
Not a chance - no joy whatsoever.
So after MUCH faffing around later, by having to log in from a real PC, then fire up Internet Explorer because the store won't let me use Firefox, after no amount of fiddling, don't ask me what I did, but I managed to get it downloaded as one of my existing purchases, direct to my PC.
I then used Nokia software to move it over to my phone.
And it still did not work.
Needless to say, that was many months ago, and I have never been within a mile of the Nokia Music Store since then.
So, if the guy who appears to be from Nokia is reading this still, that was me a lost customer for ever too...
question: now that you have legally bought a copy of the track, would it still be illegal to now download a drm-free version (from any source) to play on your phone? Or are you just buying a licence to play that particular drm'ed file?
And I agree that it's killing the music industry, who are undoubtably losing money because the files have drm and so pushing people towards pirated files. And before it does that, it will certainly kill off Nokia Music Store.
-----------------------------------
Hi Shadamehr, Steve
Sorry you had problems, and i completely understand
and agree that the current process is far to complicated
... mainly because of DRM. I hope it gets removed this
year but have no idea when that will happen.
On a positive note the Comes With Music offer --
(unlimited music downloads from our store when you
buy a comes with music nokia device) is getting
great reviews, and is much more simple to use ---
check out t3.com for review info if interested
5 things to note
1) Contact customer support for a refund they will be
able to do this for you. music.nokia.co.uk/IE/customersupport.aspx
2) You can use windows media player 10 or 11 to transfer
music to your phone as well as it supports windows DRM
transfers. (perhaps this will help???)
3) If your firewall is blocking windows media player from
accesing the internet it cannot pick up the licences.
4) I will check back on this thread from time to time
over the next few weeks so any questions feel free to ask.
5) I have noticed issues with WIFI and missing images today
and this will be investigated further. Thanks for bringing
it to our attention. This might also be what is stopping the
licences from being activated over the air. I shall keep you posted.
-----------------------------------
I don't think S60 3.1 devices are able to handle over-the-air license acquisition.
Rafe wrote:Just to add some extra information.DRM licenses are stored in the phone's memory. On some firmware updates they get lost (especially those that do not have UDP). You should be able to get these back by re-downloading them (which should happen automatically when you try and play it again)...
When the DRM license database gets corrupted no new DRM licenses can be added to the phone, frequent around firmware updates
The only way to solve this is the reformat the phone. You may also need to reformat the memory card (or at least I did).
This is exactly why I was criticizing my network operator Telenor when I was in a pilot project testing their different services.
They offered different subscriptions and online purchase solutions such as streaming TV over 3G and a music store.
As Mr. Rafe mentioned the licenses is stored into the phone memory and as I was handed a N73 by my operator to test their survices a fw update meant that I lost all my license. (Besides restoring a backup successfully was almost impossible in the early days of the N73)
What was more crucial was that the license didn't get to update itself successfully.
To make matters worse you could only listen to the music a total number of 999 times.
They did offer download of the same songs onto your computer. Here they decided to use DRM'ed .wma files which again meant that only one computer could play the tracks and that license of the song had to be downloaded each at a time. (Also here the amount of times it could be played was 999)
As a test pilot I of course submitted my report back to them regarding these issues and explained that it was totally ridiculous. And I'm glad they listened to me. (Mostly because I was probably the most tech-savy of the participants)
When they finally launched their music service they decided to get rid of the DRM in the music, however the quality was further reduced (both because of long download times, copyright and the removal of DRM)
They still offer the same tracks for your pc and now they use unprotected .aac files for the phone download and .mp3 files for the computer download.
Which I think is fine.
What really surprised me was that the tracks I downloaded as a test pilot still is there available for me to download even this day, both as a computer download and a mobile download.
They even got rid of the whole DRM system of all the tracks I previously had downloaded.
Good to see that they've understood the future.
The biggest issue of it all is the label companies that haven't understood the future yet and all the DRM exists because of them.
I don't mean that DRM is necessary a complete bad thing, but heavy DRM is.
Examples are Spore and Apple's DRM (now finally removed).
The only form of DRM that I support is watermarking of digital medias.
(And yes, I even hate the region restrictions of my purchased DVD's)
And as Mr. Steve mentioned it only harms the legal consumers as other users can benefit from totally unprotected medias.
Yes it should work fine on any n82's sold in store, unless you have flashed it in which case a firmware upgrade --might-- be needed, but im not 100% sure.
For a list of compatible devices check - europe.nokia.com/A41223296
One would like to be sympathetic, but DRM is just so horribly anti-consumer, that anyone who is still buying DRM-ed music at this point kind of deserves what they get.
Mind you, while putting online buyers through all sorts of DRM hoops to lease (you dont really own them) awful quality 128kbps files, the same major label music industry has been and continues to sell bit-perfect music on CDs for much less money and with no DRM hassle.
Like I said, if people still buy DRM files knowing this disparity, just for the "conveneince", they hey you derserve what you get. Its not that hard by a CD on Amazon, get it the next day and rip it - or buy from the many independent labels that sell mp3, FLAC and WAV files with no DRM.
<quote>skagen:One would like to be sympathetic, but DRM is just so horribly anti-consumer, that anyone who is still buying DRM-ed music at this point kind of deserves what they get.</quote>
it's the only way that people will learn how bad this nonsense is. when they fill a phone up with music and then buy a new phone and discover that no the music will not be transferrable to the new device.
when xp first came out a nerd at work used windows media player to rip all his cds to his laptop in wma format. wma as its smaller than mp3s. he had of course turned off the drm. but some service patch/crash had turned it back on at some point and he found that around half of his music wouldn't transfer. he uses mac and linux now and only 100% mp3s. 😊
Nokia Music Store is so misleading. Even if you buy a song, it is still associated with the DRM file. It gave me the impression that I can use Nokia Music to legitimately PAY and download music for my Blackberry device (former Nokia user). Please vote AGAINST nokia music. I am so disappointed. Another reason why I am never going back to their handsets. I am canceling my Nokia Music subscription. You should all consider it too.
Seems like as soon as I revert to Nokia's 2Gb SD card shipped with my E71 then everything works perfectly - can sync the track using Nokia Music software and listen to it on the phone. But... Put in standard 8Gb SanDisk SD card, that is otherwise working fine for everything else (un-protected music, navigation, docs) and no chance, forget it, can't play it - track is downloaded, you see it there, and can select it but no valid licence (just as you show in the screen shots). So far Nokia has come up with no useful solution. Seem like I've also been suckered for �20. Thanks Nokia - TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
My wife bought a Nokia 5310 Xpress Music on a 12-month contract at �35 per month, to get the 'free' music. She got it home, we loaded the software on one XP machine, hooked it up and got... nothing. For whatever reason the Nokia Music software wouldn't run.
So I loaded it on another XP machine, which is when we found out that you need to wait 90 days before you can switch pcs.
In any event the Nokia Music software still didn't work, and Nokia's response was no help at all. After a lot more wasted time my conclusion was that the software wasn't working. That was 9 months ago. Today I tried again, spending the last four hours backing up and installing the latest versions of Nokia Music and firmware for the phone.
And halellujah, I've been able to download a few tracks. Which was when I discovered that since I had upgraded the phone's firmware drm prevents tracks being uploaded to the phone.
Nokia's music store is crippled by poor DRM software - I wonder what they think they are doing? It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth to be ripped off like this.
You can imagine the reaction when I mentioned she could have had an iPhone for the same money! Luckily her contract expires soon so I think she'll be getting an iPhone next and s*d Nokia.
These songs are available for free on so many sites and I have just been a fool trying to get the licenses over and over again, ye maybe this time I'll get it. I have wasted so much money on my GPRS....would really kick the person who thought of this DRM..if I ever see him.