Windows Media Player sends music site silent
Say hello, wave goodbye
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A music-sharing site popular with small and independent artists is suspending operations because of incompatibilities with Microsoft's latest version of Windows Media Player.
Weedshare, home to 10,000 musicians and 100,000 tracks, will go offline next week after four years because Windows Media Player 11 does not play music files that have been updated to enable operators to charge consumers.
Weedshare's owner, Shared Media Licensing, inserts its own information into the music's tracking data, so that downloaded tracks can be played three times before charging.
However, Microsoft's security improvements in Microsoft to WMP 11 read files as having been illegally tampered with and refuses to play them.
John Beezer, Shared Media president, told The Register his company called time on WMP after spending six weeks trying to fix the problem. Shared Media rectified a similar issue in Windows Vista using a documented Active X fix.
"We are moving away from Microsoft because of the cost and frustration," Beezer said.
Shared Media will resurrect its service during the next six months with an offering less reliant on Microsoft. A service is planned for MP3, Flash, Open Mobile Alliance DRM version 2.0 and Microsoft's newly announced PlayReady format. "We are repurposing the system," Beezer said.
Microsoft was unavailable to comment at the time of writing. ®
COMMENTS
‘Windows Media Player sends music site silent’
Meda player 11?
Who the hell needs that???
Bullshit
They never rolled out a Vista fix.
The whole system worked fine with Winamp and RealPlayer and RealJukebox.
A lot of people invested a lot of time and money in this program and SML is just cutting their losses and running.
Missing the Point
I used to work for this company. I'm vocally cut my ties in response to the closure. I'm a Canadian and think the technology that backs this corporation would be better off in the hands of a non-profit public agency like CBC.
Their tracking data only links to email addresses. Everything remains anonymous. The tracking data is what allows customers to earn money through file sharing.
Imagine a YouTube where people could produce professional videos and have them up for sale in a easily accessible digital format in a day.
The DRM Revolution isn't over... it's just in it's beta version.
There is one additional benefit being overlooked by this system in all the issues with DRM. This is the only system that allows for a new form of 'music store on a CD' revolutionizes the CD format and makes it more efficent.
Compiling 10 times as many bands onto one CD means that you've cut your plastic and materials usage by 90 percent. Reducing the Recording Industries reliance on petroleum for plastic by that much would be a great step forwards for the Green Movement.
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