WMA and licensing?

farss wrote on 9/22/2004, 4:39 PM
I've just realised this is potentialy a much better format than mp3 for many of the projects I'm working on and there's enough space to fit both onto the CD.
Now before I get the client all excited I need to know are there any issues with using this format for commercial releases? Do uStuff get a royalty per copy or what? I'm suspecting not but if we're going to make a 'thing' of this I guess the client would like to use the appropriate uStuff logo, what issues does this involve (apart from the bleeding abvious)?
Yes I know I need to do some of my own leg work on this but I'm hoping maybe someones already been down this path and could relate their experiences dealing with the uStuff juggernaught.

Bob.

Comments

farss wrote on 9/23/2004, 7:03 PM
I've searched the uStuff site on this but all it seems to talk about is the DRM side of things which we're not interested in.
Primary interest in using wma as opposed to mp3 is for track markers so we can avoid the 'pause' between tracks when they're individually encoded as mp3.
Kind of hoping someone knows what the situation is with distributing content encoded using wma and licencing.

Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 9/23/2004, 7:23 PM
Farss, I've only got knowledge of what I've read, no first-hand knowledge at all....and I'll assume you've read what I've read. I'm a big wma fan, somewhat anti-mp3 for obvious reasons...
farss wrote on 9/24/2004, 12:48 AM
SPOT,
Let me just explain a little. This is classic radio comedy material that's been on the market for years as a multi CD set. The client finds it hard to sell as you've got to charge at least $100 just to cover costs and leave a small margin.
Repackaging it using mp3 compression means they can fit it easliy onto 2 CDs and sell it for much less. However mp3 isn't 100% the same as what you can do on a CD, namely have track indexes with no breaks in the audio.
Now I've just learned that you can do this with wma. Of course wma isn't as widely usable as mp3 so we'll still be including the mp3 tracks on the CD. This does however give the listener a choice of being able to use a wma enabled device to listen and jump to a particular point in the program without suffering pauses in the program at every track break.
The DRM side of wma doesn't seem to be of much use for CD based content and the client has no interest anyway as the material is probably available free off the net. Despite that people still buy this content, probably each library alone would buy a copy so that's quite a few sales.
This is one area where sales of CDs are actually increasing surprisingly enough. Biggest problem the client tells me is finding talent who can do 'readings' and I can see why, reading a 500 page book out load is quite a chore.

Bob.