Music Bluehyppo – the Malaysia iTune Store Wannabe
TMNET, the Malaysia main ISP, has launched an online music store for fellow Malaysians called “Music BlueHyppo“. It is a good idea as Apple iTune store is not available here. However it does not have an ideal website.
Table of Contents
First Impression
Screenshot of Music Bluehyppo website
Music Bluehyppo is using a blue theme. The website looks dim with blue background. A lot of auto rotate images… I don’t like them. :( There are different music genre listed, but I see mostly local music on the front page.
Music Bluehyppo is a website builded for Microsoft Windows. Internet Explorer is required to preview and purchase songs. Windows media player is required to play your purchased songs. Of course, the song format is WMA.
How to crack WMA DRM music?
How to convert WMA DRM music to MP3 and import to iPod?
I discovered an interesting answer at Music Bluehyppo’s FAQ.
Q： Can I play my music on an iPod?
A： Our music is in WMA with DRM protected format, the most popular and legal audio format that is being used by music download site. Unfortunately, iPod does not support this format. Alternatively, you can burn our music to CD first, and use Window Media Player to convert the music to MP3 format and copy to iPod.
First of all, as far as I know, Apple iTune Store is the current most popular online music store. It had sold over 1.5 billion songs (September 2006), more than 80% of worldwide online digital music sales! [wikipedia] So, claiming WMA is most popular format is wrong.
In the answer, it is stated that we can burn downloaded WMA songs to CD, convert to MP3 format, then copy to iPod or other MP3 players… If we can do it this way, isn’t DRM useless?!
Once the song converted to MP3 format (which does not have any copy protection), you can freely share the purchased songs with anyone and make unlimited copies. OMG!
Other Asia online music stores
Do you know that Creative also has a online music store called “SoundBuzz Music Store“? Also, the first online music store in China — A8 (read my review)?
I dont think this is a very good idea…. Malaysians are stil not too use to e-shop, dont need to say buy songs alrdy….
NEh… I think BlueHyppo knows our style! Good thing they know and bad news for other business… Dude… You’re half way ruining their business… lol~! Good catch!
Sorry for my ignorance but I wasn’t aware that iTunes isn’t available in Malaysia. Well, all the best to BlueHyppo I guess.
You can do the same thing with songs purchased from iTunes & play them on any WMA device.
i think they are only targeting the top 10k community in Malaysia – and of course, their off springs. No average teenager in Malaysia can afford or has the necessary medium to purchase music online, really bad business planning – typical Telekom :)
i love BlueHyppo men….
Ya, u guys rite, who cares to download digital tunes from here, ppl these day dun care bout copright infringement, ppl prefer to torrenting around for music and movies, as this activity has become a traditions for them, and majority of them are not aware of this illegal download issue.
Well .. i do think the business will pick up eventually. without knowing the facts right you assume that iTunes is selling the biggest bulk of music digitally.
But in truth; Itunes is ranked 4th, with Walmart Music being the biggest music store in the US surpassing even Itunes. Walmart is selling their songs in WMA format. To enlighten you guys out there why bluehyppo runs on WMA format; most major labels trust DRMed WMA (ie Universal, Warner, Sony BMG, EMI) as the prerequisite to run an online music store. The Apple AAC DRM format is not being licensed freely to be used by other music stores as Apple only allows this technology to be used on their Itunes.
Coming back to the DRM technology (Digital Rights Management); its a cat and mouse thing. When somebody creates a new lock; somebody else out there is creating a new pick to open it. In saying so, DRM is a deterrent, it would never stop piracy in a holistic way, but eventually it might prevent the spread in a controlled manner. The same way we are making a fuss on what is the use of DRM if you can burn it to CDs and rip them back to mp3 and play them on another device; well look around you mate-are the CDs at the store protected or have DRM in them? You can still rip them right?
Speaking of the music.bluehyppo.com site – its a bit dull and not lively enuff, that i agree. Music content is concerned-it is quite comprehensive actually.If you guys have any queries on the digital music biz-just ask :)