BurnLounge is a soon-to-launch online music store, currently in beta, that allows users to build their own music stores and earn points toward purchases for every sale they make. Or, they can sign on at progressively more expensive levels and earn a commission from the sales of members they sign up, and members they sign up.
It’s founded by Alex Arnold, who has a history in the multi-level marketing arena (Lexxus, which peddles Alura, a female sexual aid, and Noni Juice, a holistic “miracle” food.) What sells more than sex and dubious nutritional supplements? Music with a big DRM chain around it, of course!
At least when a customer buys some Alura, they actually own what they pay for, whether it works or not. The Noni Juice, they’re free to pour into any glass or flask, or even drink straight out of the bottle.
Those freedoms don’t exist with music purchased through BurnLounge.
BurnLounge uses the Windows Media Audio file format, which includes a digital rights management scheme — indeed, it’s designed for DRM. So when you buy a download from BurnLounge, you’re really paying for a license to use the file — you don’t own anything.
The BurnLounge DRM licenses the following restrictions to the end user:
- Your computer and any portable music device must remain in the United States of America! And that’s only the fifty states — they’re very clear that they’re not talking about principalities or territories.
- You are only permitted to download music to a primary computer, a secondary computer, and portable music devices… and you can’t leave the country with any of these pieces of hardware if your BurnLounge tunes are on the hard drives!
- You may only use portable music devices approved for use with the WMA audio format. So… tell me what I can do with my computer, and tell me what portable I need to buy, too!
- You may not “re-digitize” the files — so no fair re-recording them into MP3 format so you can play them where-ever and however you want! That would be too much like actually owning the thing you spent money on, you see.
Sound familiar? It’s very similar to the Apple iTunes Music Store TOS; also bad.
The BurnLounge scheme is so wrong in so many ways… here are two:
First, multi-level marketing schemes benefit the people on the top the most, which means that many people will shell out over four hundred bucks to become a “Mogul” of this service and never get that money back. They call these “pyramid schemes” because the few at the top benefit from the labors of the many at the bottom. Unless you’re a close friend of one of the founders, well, you’re not at the top of the pyramid… or anywhere near it.
It’s very telling that in the presentation (good luck waiting for it to download) for their product, the words “multi-level-marketing” are very carefully never used. They call it “direct sales.” However, they’re not afraid of trotting out the success of such scams ponzi-schemes programs as Amway and Herbalife as postive examples of how BurnLounge can work for you.
Second, digital rights management is doomed to failure in the long run either by emulation techniques that fool the technology, or by simple user abuse. Even the guy who (with good intentions) recommended BurnLounge to me advocated a method to bypass the WMA DRM restrictions. And sure, anyone can get around DRM with a little technical hoop-jumping. But you should not have to break licensing agreements (and quite possibly the DMCA laws) in order to use music you paid money for!
Are you allowed to restrict BurnLounge in how they spend your money? Can you tell them they can only buy things in the fifty states of the United States, or only shop at certain stores? Of course not.
The music business is dying because of short-sighted, backward-thinking policies and attitudes that are driven by terror that stems from the loss of control of a medium of expression. BurnLounge, MLM evils aside, could have taken a leap into the future by creating a service that embraced a DRM-free, positive, niche-driven paradigm. Instead, they sided with the moribund music labels, because in the short term, that’s where the easy money is.
Shame on them.
Stay away from this. Support music (and musicians) that trust you. Return that trust by paying for their music if they ask you to, and by not distributing their music if they don’t want you to. Build relationships by getting closer, not by erecting walls and establishing restrictions.
Update: If it swims like a duck…
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