I’m a big fan of the Dave Matthews Band, especially the sense of community that I feel at a show by the band. There’s a lot of the feeling that the Grateful Dead had in their heyday.
So I was surprised, to put it mildly, to learn that the latest DMB album, Stand Up, incorporates digital rights management that makes it difficult to rip into digital format for playback on a PC or portable music player. This is apparently an especially big problem for anyone using an iPod with Windows. Judging by what I’ve read on the band’s site, it’s no problem to rip to a Mac using iTunes, and it’s no problem to rip to a PC using secure WMA format. But the process for getting tracks into iTunes on a PC means ripping them into secure WMA first, then burning a CD, and then ripping the burned CD using iTunes.
This is, to put it mildly, bullshit. The band trusts its fans enough to allow them to tape live shows and exchange the tapes for free. It makes a fortune off its live performances. Most of the taping community enthusiastically supports the band by buying its “official” live releases and studio CDs. And most importantly, this form of DRM simply doesn’t work. All it does is turn off the band’s most loyal fans. I won’t allow DRM-protected tracks on my PC.
Microsoft isn’t the only corporation in bed with this band. AOL Music did an exclusive webcast of the live DMB show from New York City’s Roseland Ballroom earlier this month. I had no problem playing it back in Internet Explorer (after installing an AOL ActiveX control), but Firefox refused to play the archived show even after I installed the required plug-in.
I won’t be buying this CD. And observant readers will notice that I didn’t link to the CD’s Amazon.com listing, which means I won’t be selling it, either. Dave, you need some new technical advisors.
Ed Bott 
Ed: I agree 1000%. I love DMB for all the reasons you cite and was horrified when I got my copy of the new disc and not only had to accept a click-through license on my Tablet PC when I popped it in to rip it to my MP3 player but then had it crash!
I’m really disappointed in the band. I don’t know if it’s their label that’s behind the decision to do this or not but you would think they’re a big enough act that they could exercise some artist control over BS like this.
FWIW, I have a CD of the Roseland show which is better than the studio disk anyway ;^)
E-mail me and I’ll send you a copy.
Boing Boing picked this story up when Matt Mullenweg posted about this last week. Now when you do a Google Search for Dave Matthews Stand Up Matt’s post about the DRM is the number one search result, even ahead of Dave Matthew’s own band website.
Remember, Dave Matthew’s was also the same guy who asked the Internet Archive to take their music offline after having a so called liberal band tape trading policy.
No thanks.
I ripped my copy (one of those DualDisc CD/DVD’s) fine using Exact Audio Copy. I have not tried in a lesser ripper like iTunes, so I can’t say for certain if mine is “DRM-less”.