Following on from another thread

Question:

Would you be prepared to pay for professionally designed styles knowing that you would only be able to use them on your own keyboard? (Protected)

Or do you believe that once you have bought them, then you should be able to do with them whatever you want, (Unprotected) including giving them away.

It will be interesting to see the results

Bill

i cant vote bill as i think the options are too narrow. I would love to have high quality sounds that i could edir myself but i dont think anyone should then be abke to give those styles away

I think not protecting the styles will kill the incentive to develop new styles for sale.

Hi Spalding

I have tried to keep the pole as simple as possible, hence just the 2 options.

Regarding your answer, then it would come under the protected option.

Bill

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I did say protect them, as if they can't be protected then we end up with overpriced styles, and a lot of ordinary ones. The only thing that you must be able to do is alter the style to suit your use, could be a problem re protection.

Although Apple seem to have it beaten with apps. Imagine if you could programme styles with a guarantee of security, prices should fall and quality should improve. As a matter of fact I can't understand why Yamaha , Korg, Roland and Ketron can't come up with a universal style development that conforms to all new hardware, so you could choose what you want, at a price, and wht you don't want with great protection built in for the developers, not to mention the extra bucks that they reap...

Mmmmm food for thought.. Let's face it they did it with midi, it's a great plan, and I can't see why they couldn't see that not only would each manufacter sell styles to their own, but also to other brand owners of different makes. Some may say could be that then all we would see would be bland, I say look at iTunes/ apps, going through the roof and every day better and better, so I think that argument wouln't hold true.

As I said on another thread... If you can have an area of memory for these protected styles that cannot be read externally (only written to) then it should be no problem for the user to store his edits in the same area. So I see no impediment to normal use of a protected style.

With the exception of creating an SMF from the style. I guess you COULD, with time and care (LOTS of time!) recreate the style by recording all the chords, in all the divisions, then laboriously stitching it all back together again.

But... here's the whole POINT. If a style creator gets 100% of the sale of his styles, he needs only charge a FRACTION of what they need to now. After all, 1000 sales at $3 a pop is better than 50 sales at $10 a pop (if that, if it gets out fast enough). But, if you can BUY the style for $3, who in their right minds is going to spend a day converting a style into an SMF, and then converting it back into a style?

Protected styles is an idea which's time has come.

I would not mind protected as long as you have lifetime replacement of the USB, talking from experience you don't pay for the media but the styles and sounds that were created, the protection, which preoct from piracy does not benefit the buyer once the media goes bad,then you can throw away in the garbage which I have already done.

As far as I am aware all keyboards allow you to back up everything, (Just as you would with any computer) so there should not be any reason to loose anything.

As with all things software (Hardware arrangers have there own embedded software) Backup, Backup, Backup, with NO exceptions (If your worried about it falling into the wrong hands then encrypt it)

Bill

I wouldn't mind them being protected as long as you can copy them, Doh

LOL... yes. This is the sticky area of protected files. Backup.

This is where the manufacturers themselves need to help the process along. I know that some audio card manufacturers have a way to key the software to the hardware, and have it have a unique identifier. I have a couple of UAD cards. Software I purchase for use on that CANNOT be cracked. It is keyed to my specific card. I can backup the software, and my key, but it simply does not run on anyone else's UAD card (until I deauthorize my card and authorize the new one, so two users cannot use the same software keys simultaneously).

I know putting a system in like this will not be easy for the manufacturers, but it is the only thing going to secure the future of the arranger, IMO.

After all, what is an arranger OTHER than content? Compared to a modern WS, a pretty poor cousin! Less than stellar sounds, less than stellar editing, and few modern features at all. But IT HAS GREAT STYLES!

But they are beginning to go down the path towards alienating themselves from any player 40 years old and younger, as more and more contemporary music gets ignored. I honestly feel that ONLY protected styles and secure delivery will save the arranger from ultimate obsolescence as fewer and fewer lovers of what they currently DO make styles in survive their NH years!

It won't be easy, but it has to be done, sooner rather than (too) later, IMO.