wma licensing
I didn't orginally post, but had to look this up. Looks like wma costs:
- $0.10 per unit, up to a maximum of $400,000
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
About Me
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- Name: David Caulton
A Zune contributor by day, I'm also an avid hiker, biker, and father of three, I also work doing industry analysis and strategy. In previous lives, I've been a backcountry ski patroller, worked on the Windows Media Player, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Team Manager 97, been a researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience, a grad student, and a kid.
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14 Comments:
Interesting. All the complaints about how much better the other technologies are cost-wise, and wma comes in by multiples less than them for licensing.
adam, but remember Microsoft's licensing is discriminatory. You cannot license it if your using open source software (the other formats have no such restriction). If you want to support another OS (other than windows) you have to pay additional fees.
Also, it's not possible to license or play WMA DRM on the Mac OS.
David, it looks like you are just quoting the cost for the Windows Media DRM layer. So, for two channel WMA audio encoding and decoding, you need to add $0.25 per unit.
After all, the DRM layer doesn't do you any good if you can't encode and decode WMA.
So, to support the encoding and decoding of two channel WMA wrapped in Windows Media DRM, it would cost $0.35/unit.
neuroklinik- I think the idea was to consider the licensing fees for non-DRM deconding for portable devices (such as Zune or iPod). No one can license FairPlay from Apple and there are no DRM capabilities for MP3, so the apples-to-apples comparison is for unprotected content decoding.
Furthermore, the devices themselves only need to support decoding, not encoding. So $0.10 is accurate. Including DRM would raise the fee to $0.20. Supporting direct licensing over WiFi would increase the fee to $0.30. Add $0.15 to any of these if you decided to allow encoding on the device (such as from a Line-In or radio input).
adam, where have you seen such an arguement?
I thought everyone knew that Microsoft absurdly and artificially set their price extremely low to get into the market. You didn't think they got several companies dependent on it based on quality, did you?
stillanonymous, just a few points I'd like some clarification on if you don't mind.
I'm curious what is absurd or artificial about the pricing? First, I don't understand why it's "absurd", it actually seems highly logical and you can clearly see the reasoning behind it.
Second, I don't find it any more "artificial" than any of the other licensing schemes. The only light I can see it being artificial in is if a majority of licensees have to pay more than the stated price, in other words a bait & switch, which I serious doubt. I would honestly be surprised if any of the major companies pay the public listed prices for any of the codecs.
Third, you deride the quality of wma vs. mp3 and aac as if this is an obviously known, reproducible, scientific fact yet from what I understand the jury is still out across all three formats. Each one can be made to shine or suffer based on a number of variables. When the "experts" in the field can't agree, and I've read and talked to quite a few whose opinions run the gamut, then I don't think you can make such a declarative statement.
Your comment seemed out of character as you usually seem to be in search of the facts, regardless of any bias, and willing to stand corrected when there is proof to back it up.
Personally I still rip everything to mp3 as it's the only format I know will work across every single device I own.
This is not to slander your work, and from what I've seen of others at MS, the engineers are great people.
That said, what StillAnonymous is hinting at, I believe, is the practices of predatory pricing and price dumping, to have prices substantially lower than what the market can bear in order to drive out competition. That was part of what Microsoft was found guilty of in the antitrust case involving Netscape.
As for sound quality, I can add data points I found. I do not profess to understand them fully, so draw your own conclusion. But I do have some questions. Which one does XP and Vista encode to by default, WMA 9.2 standard or 10 professional? If the former, does WMA 10 professional encoding even come as a free option in WMP?
To heck with this. I'm going back to vinyl LPs.
Blain, "XP" or "Vista" doesn't encode to anything by default. If you mean, "What does Windows Media Player 11 rip to by default?"... the answer is "normal" WMA 9.2 CBR. It can also be set to WMA 9.2 VBR (Quality Based), WMA Professional, WMA Lossless, Uncompressed (WAV) and MP3 CBR. These are all "free" options to you.
Since this is a Zune blog: The Zune software rips to WMA 9.2 CBR by default. It can also be set to WMA Lossless and MP3 CBR.
(Side note: It's a shame WMA Pro isn't more common. It's a great codec, and the Zune device supports it natively... even though the Zune program doesn't let you rip with it.)
grommet, what percent of devices support wma pro? 2% of music players. .0001% of all music playing devices.
Yeah, great option.
seanbarnes said:
No one can license FairPlay from Apple...
Motorola managed to get FairPlay decoding for their ROKR cell phone.
This post has been removed by the author.
stillanonymous, that was pretty much my point... it should have been more common, since it's superior to Microsoft's original "backwards compatible" WMA and has been for years. As it is, it's a niche codec and not viable for widespread consumer audio use.
neuroklinik, the ROKR was an (awful) product designed in co-operation with Apple. In fact, Apple announced it at their dog and pony show. So, it's not exactly Motorola licensing it in the traditional sense.
There are many media vendors that would love to support FairPlay, including Roku and Sonos. But they can't.
It's not that simple. If you want your WMA device to be supported by non-Windows users then add on at least $210,000 in licencing a year and significant development costs since you can't pull some open source code off of Sourceforge for it like you could with AAC or MP3.
And on Windows, if you're lazy and are just using WMP for your device, why support AAC when Microsoft don't. And why support AAC on the Mac either when Apple don't provide you with a plugin architecture to which you can add your device to iTunes.
You can see why the lazy bottom feeding me-too device manufacturers don't support anything but WMA and MP3 and it's a pox on both Microsoft and Apple for being so childish.
shawn oster, I missed your earlier questions, but noticed them. I don't want you to think I'm ignoring them.
First, I'd almost prefer to ignore the technical quality issues (and other pros/cons) for this debate (although I could get into it, it can get ugly)... However, I do think we can make firm judgments about technical merits; most test comparisons compare particular codecs which don't directly address the technical merits of the formats.
But...
I think what you miss it that I am not disparaging wma as technically inferior. I am saying that it has no technical merits that distinguish it enough to rationalize its rapid penetration into the Windows world and its considerable marketshare. There is no technical merit to it at all. It was purely the result of Microsoft's business decisions.
Second, pricing. It is absurd and arbitrary. Or rather, they arbitrarily decided to undercut the competition by 75% or so. This was their only consideration in pricing: not their costs, not the price their partners would pay... what would hurt the competition.
There is nothing arbitrary about mpeg pricing. It gets fought over by the patentholders for months, if not years; each one hoping to recoup their costs and make a profit. This goes through many committees. Most patentholders are also consumers, buyers of the licenses. Then when they release pricing, the consumers have responded with complaints or acceptance of whether or not the price is fair, if it allows them to make a profit. So we've actually seen several instances where consumers have revolted and pricing schemes were revised, but ultimately balance was achieved and a fair price was set.
I hope that answers your questions.
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