UMG Fraud: audible "watermarking" of all online music

weary flake

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Sep 27, 2012, 7:07:24 PM9/27/12

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So is it true that all UMG (DG, Decca, Philips, Interscope,
etc.) supplied (to itunes, Passionato, Spotify, Amazon, etc.)
music has been subjected to audible "watermarking?"

http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

If this is true and you have purchased "online" music
(mp3s, flacs, streaming, etc.) from the world's number
one record company will you admit you have been defrauded?
Or will you hapless enough to continue to advocate the
extinction of the CD format and it's replacement by
'universal' "digital watermarking", at all costs?

With UMG's takeover of EMI under legislative scrutiny all
around the world was the issue of Universal Music Group's
willful insertion of audible degradation of all music
supplied to Itunes, Amazon, Passionato, Spotify, etc.,
even so-called "lossless" files, ever brought up to
argument, so the authorities could have fairly balanced
the issues of the proposed monopolistic merger? After all,
EMI is not engaged in "watermarking", UMG is, so it is an
easily understood practical issue to consumers whether the
laws against monopolist practices are enforced in this
case or not.

Oscar

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Sep 27, 2012, 7:14:01 PM9/27/12

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With apologies to Clint Eastwood and Moses, Get away from my CD player! From my cold dead hands!

Kimba W Lion

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Sep 27, 2012, 7:47:17 PM9/27/12

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weary flake <weary...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>So is it true that all UMG (DG, Decca, Philips, Interscope,
>etc.) supplied (to itunes, Passionato, Spotify, Amazon, etc.)
>music has been subjected to audible "watermarking?"
>
>http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

Sony does it, too:

https://www.eff.org/press/mentions/2008/1/11-0

So, once again the record companies see fit to punish their paying customers.
Way to kill off the download market.

Anyone else reminded of Columbia Records' "Copy Code"?
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Putting+a+notch+into+digital+sound.-a06507687

Steve de Mena

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Sep 27, 2012, 8:38:39 PM9/27/12

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I don't understand what purpose it serves? So they can identify that
a track came from iTunes, for example. What good does that do them? It
couldn't uniquely identify the purchaser without the seller (i.e.
iTunes) actually applying unique watermarks to each download.

Not sure I buy any of this. Maybe someone found some crappily encoded
files.

Steve

Kirk McElhearn at dot

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Sep 28, 2012, 3:38:30 AM9/28/12

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On 2012-09-27 23:47:17 +0000, Kimba W Lion

<noreplie...@norepliesbyemail.invalid> said:

>> So is it true that all UMG (DG, Decca, Philips, Interscope,
>> etc.) supplied (to itunes, Passionato, Spotify, Amazon, etc.)
>> music has been subjected to audible "watermarking?"
>>
>> http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
>
> Sony does it, too:
>
> https://www.eff.org/press/mentions/2008/1/11-0
>
> So, once again the record companies see fit to punish their paying customers.
> Way to kill off the download market.

Someone contacted me about that and sent me files; I couldn't hear
anything. I sent the files to someone in the recording business; he
couldn't hear anything either. Yet the sender swore that he could
clearly hear problems at specifc points in the files… I don't know what
to think. Watermarking is certainly possible without it being audible.

Kirk
--

Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Writings about more than just Macs
Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ: http://www.mcelhearn.com/itunes

Kirk McElhearn at dot

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Sep 28, 2012, 3:39:22 AM9/28/12

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On 2012-09-28 00:38:39 +0000, Steve de Mena <st...@demena.com> said:

> I don't understand what purpose it serves? So they can identify that a
> track came from iTunes, for example. What good does that do them? It
> couldn't uniquely identify the purchaser without the seller (i.e.
> iTunes) actually applying unique watermarks to each download.

Which they could do, generating files on the fly with the user name in
them (as iTunes does, just in a header, not as a watermark).

Steve de Mena

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Sep 28, 2012, 4:46:48 AM9/28/12

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On 9/28/12 12:39 AM, Kirk McElhearn wrote:
> On 2012-09-28 00:38:39 +0000, Steve de Mena <st...@demena.com> said:
>
>> I don't understand what purpose it serves? So they can identify
>> that a track came from iTunes, for example. What good does that do
>> them? It couldn't uniquely identify the purchaser without the seller
>> (i.e. iTunes) actually applying unique watermarks to each download.
>
> Which they could do, generating files on the fly with the user name in
> them (as iTunes does, just in a header, not as a watermark).
>
> Kirk

Kirk,

Don't you think if they were doing this we would have heard by now?
This would be big news.

Steve

Kirk McElhearn at dot

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Sep 28, 2012, 6:28:21 AM9/28/12

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On 2012-09-28 08:46:48 +0000, Steve de Mena <st...@demena.com> said:

>>> I don't understand what purpose it serves? So they can identify
>>> that a track came from iTunes, for example. What good does that do
>>> them? It couldn't uniquely identify the purchaser without the seller
>>> (i.e. iTunes) actually applying unique watermarks to each download.
>>
>> Which they could do, generating files on the fly with the user name in
>> them (as iTunes does, just in a header, not as a watermark).
>>
>> Kirk
>
> Kirk,
>
> Don't you think if they were doing this we would have heard by now?
> This would be big news.

Yes, that's my thought. The person who contacted me was hoping to drum
up some news, suggesting I write about it for Macworld. But I think
these are just corrupted files.

Kimba W Lion

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Sep 28, 2012, 7:30:48 AM9/28/12

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Kirk McElhearn <kirkmc (at) mac (dot) com> wrote:

>> Don't you think if they were doing this we would have heard by now?
>> This would be big news.
>
>Yes, that's my thought. The person who contacted me was hoping to drum
>up some news, suggesting I write about it for Macworld. But I think
>these are just corrupted files.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/01/sony_music :

Microsoft is betting on watermarking's future, winning a patent for a
"stealthy audio watermarking" scheme called El Dorado in September.

According to the patent, El Dorado is, among other things, "designed to
survive all typical kinds of processing, including compression, equalization,
D/A and A/D conversion, recording on analog tape and so forth. It is also
designed to survive malicious attacks that attempt to remove or modify the
watermark from the signal, including changes in time and frequency scales,
pitch shifting and cut/paste editing."

Universal and Sony declined to discuss who developed their watermarks and what
they would do with the information they cull from their analyses.

Art Brodsky, of Public Knowledge, was quick to provide an answer.

"They'll do anything they can to get ammunition, including submitting the
information to Congress, publishing research and whatever, so long as they can
blame everything on piracy," Brodsky said.

EFF's Von Lohmann speculated that watermarks could even enable ISPs to filter
out peer-to-peer traffic when they detect a copyright work in transit.

It's no secret that the Motion Picture Association of America and the
Recording Industry Association of America are working with ISPs toward the
goal of network-wide piracy filters. Representatives from AT&T discussed that
at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Kirk McElhearn at dot

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Sep 28, 2012, 8:02:57 AM9/28/12

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On 2012-09-28 11:30:48 +0000, Kimba W Lion

<noreplie...@norepliesbyemail.invalid> said:

>>> Don't you think if they were doing this we would have heard by now?
>>> This would be big news.
>>
>> Yes, that's my thought. The person who contacted me was hoping to drum
>> up some news, suggesting I write about it for Macworld. But I think
>> these are just corrupted files.
>
> http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/01/sony_music :
>
> Microsoft is betting on watermarking's future, winning a patent for a
> "stealthy audio watermarking" scheme called El Dorado in September.
>
> According to the patent, El Dorado is, among other things, "designed to
> survive all typical kinds of processing, including compression, equalization,
> D/A and A/D conversion, recording on analog tape and so forth. It is also
> designed to survive malicious attacks that attempt to remove or modify the
> watermark from the signal, including changes in time and frequency scales,
> pitch shifting and cut/paste editing."

That was 2008. So far, there are no major uses of the technology. My
point was not about whether it was being used or not, but whether it
has an effect on the sound of the files, which some people claim.

If Universal is using it, given the quality of their download store,
there are clearly no more than a handful of those files circulating.

weary flake

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Sep 28, 2012, 1:36:37 PM9/28/12

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Kirk McElhearn <kirkmc (at) mac (dot) com> wrote:

> point was not about whether it was being used or not, but whether it
> has an effect on the sound of the files, which some people claim.
>
> If Universal is using it, given the quality of their download store,
> there are clearly no more than a handful of those files circulating.

The charge is that audible watermarking is used not on
UMG's store, but in files, including "lossless", to third
parties: itunes, passionato, spotify, amazon, etc. so the
quality of UMG's own download store is not relevant here.

Steve de Mena

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Sep 29, 2012, 4:34:36 PM9/29/12

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Their own store is the only one they have control over (to uniquely
watermark each file).

Steve

weary flake

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Sep 30, 2012, 11:48:00 AM9/30/12

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UMG aren't alleged to use unique watermarks, but to supply
degraded, and audibly degraded files, to online stores that
are not it's own, re:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=89818

The argument that Universal doesn't have a good purpose in
doing so is not a rebuttal that they don't do it, and UMG
does not disclose the practice so even calling it
"watermarking" is speculative.

a few quotes from the thread:

"have two FLAC files for the same classical track (Tchaikovsky's 5th
Symphony, Markevitch, on a Philips label). One was purchased from
Passionato, the other was purchased from UMG's web site. Although both
are supposed to be lossless copies of the data on the original CD, the
FLAC file from Passionato actually has a clearly audible sort of
"flutter" in some quiet, sustained passages. It is not the same as the
UMG file. The difference isn't subtle."

"just picked an album at random - Cristóbal de Morales: Music for Philip
II - Requiem - and checked a few of the samples on Passionato's website,
to see if there was any sign of that vibrato-like artifact even in the
samples.

Sure enough, it very much sounded like there was, so I picked track 07 -
where it seemed very pronounced - and downloaded it from both Passionato
and UMG.

I posted the first 15 seconds of each file to mannheim's original upload
thread.

As the kids say these days: O...M...F...G.

The music is just massed male voices, and the vibrato artifact is
incredible, especially around the 0:09 mark.

As expected, the UMG file is perfectly clean, and while I'll leave it to
the end user to do an inverted mix paste in his or her audio editor of
choice, the remaining artifacts are identical in sound to the ones
created from mannheim's sample files.

If that is indeed watermarking being applied by Deutsche Grammophon,
it's shameful - indeed, scandalous, as Wombat said - and whether it's
their fault or not, Passionato really has no right calling those tracks
lossless."

"W/r/t the Universal FLAC issue, Universal audio files purchased from
Passionato are received as FLAC files from UMG. Not all distributors
offer their audio to us in FLAC (some offer WAV or AIFF and we then
convert to FLAC). I strongly suspect the audio artifacts you are hearing
are present in the files we've received from UMG. I will try to pursue
an answer from someone within Universal but I suspect a response will be
unlikely. If I do hear back, I will post a response here."

"AIUI, the audible watermark is only present on digital versions UMG
licenses to other distributors. The OP says the download direct from UMG
itself does NOT have the watermark."

Steve de Mena

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Sep 30, 2012, 5:00:18 PM9/30/12

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Someone made an encoding mistake. Simple as that.

Steve

Kimba W Lion

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Sep 30, 2012, 7:17:31 PM9/30/12

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Steve de Mena <st...@demena.com> wrote:

>Someone made an encoding mistake. Simple as that.

You haven't listened to the examples, have you? I have never heard compression
artifacts that sound like that. And the sound of this watermarking technique
is VERY obvious.

Steve de Mena

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Oct 1, 2012, 2:06:50 AM10/1/12

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Right, so who in their right mind would use a watermarking technique
that audible, and what possible use would it have for Universal, and
why isn't everyone talking about it?

Some boxes got checked in their software or some other technical goof
occurred. Everything is not a conspiracy.

Just my two cents.

Steve

Dave Cook

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Oct 1, 2012, 5:34:22 AM10/1/12

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On 2012-09-27, weary flake <weary...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Or will you hapless enough to continue to advocate the
> extinction of the CD format and it's replacement by
> 'universal' "digital watermarking", at all costs?

There's nothing to keep them from putting the watermark on a CD.

I wonder if the Universal 24/96 files that HDTracks sells have the
watermark.

Dave Cook

Kimba W Lion

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Oct 1, 2012, 11:06:06 AM10/1/12

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Steve de Mena <st...@demena.com> wrote:

>Right, so who in their right mind would use a watermarking technique
>that audible,

Using the phrase "in their right mind" to talk about major record labels?
In this group?

And I guess you don't remember Copy Code.

>and what possible use would it have for Universal,

I'm thinking in terms of the new business trying to get off the ground, in
which people re-sell their downloaded MP3s. Or some other paranoid idea on the
part of UMG and Sony. Remember, their customers are their enemies. Who in
their right mind would put a rootkit on an audio CD to screw up people's
computers so they could try to track copying and other usage? (Answer: Sony.)

>and why isn't everyone talking about it?

What sort of argument is that? People are talking about it. With diagrams and
audio examples.

>Some boxes got checked in their software or some other technical goof
>occurred.

And Microsoft patented it. Right.

operafan

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Oct 1, 2012, 11:42:55 AM10/1/12

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On Oct 1, 5:34 am, Dave Cook <davec...@nowhere.net> wrote:

> I wonder if the Universal 24/96 files that HDTracks sells have the
> watermark.

Do you have any? If so, you might check. It's quite audible as a
fluttery quality to the sound during quieter passages.

O

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Sep 28, 2012, 2:23:49 PM9/28/12

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In article
<wearyflake-0B87E...@c-131-121-196-216.gonavy.usna.edu>,

If that's so, then it would be possible to see it or to write a
computer program to determine it. Simply compare the bitstream of the
CD to the "lossless" version. If they are not 100% identical, then
it's there.

-Owen

vhorowitz

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Oct 5, 2016, 11:46:18 AM10/5/16

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Reviving this old thread because I think Universal IS doing this, and continues to do so. I can't speak for digital downloads, but I can tell you MANY DG titles on Tidal streaming are horribly affected by this fluttering issue, and from what I'm seeing from some old descriptions, it's intentional.

See this: http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

Try the Kempff Schumann stereo set, and the Symphonic Etudes opening. It's not subtle and it renders whatever advantage Tidal "HI-FI" Flac quality streaming might make. I complained to Tidal directly with no answer at all. On the Roon Labs forum I actually DID get a response from someone at Tidal, who said (months ago) that they were "awaiting redelivery" of the DG catalogue? Ok, I've waited, and I'm still waiting....no change. How it is these guys get a pass on this kind of nonsense?

If they are using different types of watermarking depending on the provider, that would also explain the different experiences and reactions to this issue. I can vouch that Tidal got stuck with the worst versions. Back when I had a trial of Apple Music I compared some of these tracks and did not find the same problem, so despite the difference in actual bit rate the Apple Music version was more listenable (at least on this one level).

Mark Zimmer

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Oct 11, 2016, 10:17:50 AM10/11/16

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The movie studios for a while were trying to combat filming of movies off the screen by including a periodic series of visible red dots in the image of first-run films; apparently that was a code to identify the particular theater where it was being shown. It was very obtrusive and annoying (I remember Master and Commander with Russell Crowe being one of the offenders) and I boycotted movie theaters for about two years until they knocked that crap off.

So these media conglomerates are more than willing to intentionally degrade the experience of the viewer/listener to combat piracy. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's fact.

tonym...@gmail.com

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Nov 14, 2017, 8:34:57 AM11/14/17

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On Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 10:17:50 AM UTC-4, Mark Zimmer wrote:
> On Monday, October 1, 2012 at 1:06:50 AM UTC-5, Steven de Mena wrote:
> > On 9/30/12 4:17 PM, Kimba W Lion wrote:

vhorowitz

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Nov 14, 2017, 2:08:09 PM11/14/17

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I’m glad this is audible to someone else! NOTHING has changed even though somebody at Tidal must be aware of it. On the Roon Labs forum I got a reply once from somebody at Tidal who seemed to blame it on Universal and said they were “expecting redelivery” of titles from them.....well, that’s been about a year and a half now and nothing has been fixed! I’ve tried to get some support from a few with more visible media profiles but haven’t gotten any particular response. This is so frustrating!

msincl...@gmail.com

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Apr 28, 2019, 4:21:45 AM4/28/19

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Bit of an update for those wondering. It seems UMG has reuploaded most of its releases and the watermarks are gone now. Downloaded FLAC and inverted the web release over the CD release and its just silence. All the tracks having the watermark that I downloaded no longer have them.

You can try the method in this video for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfuSasfld7A

This was posted just last year so this reissue is recent.

vhorowitz

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Apr 28, 2019, 4:07:07 PM4/28/19

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Are you speaking of Tidal? One thing I can confirm if when I last checked Tidal, back when Qobuz launched in the US several months ago, some track that were still watermarkered/fluttery on Tidal were fine on Qobuz. Made my decision to switch much easier.

Invocation

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Apr 28, 2019, 5:57:02 PM4/28/19

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在 2019年4月28日星期日 UTC-4下午4:07:07，vhorowitz写道：

> Are you speaking of Tidal? One thing I can confirm if when I last checked Tidal, back when Qobuz launched in the US several months ago, some track that were still watermarkered/fluttery on Tidal were fine on Qobuz. Made my decision to switch much easier.

Qobuz has made it clear it will not allow watermarked tracks.

russ...@gmail.com

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Apr 29, 2019, 7:24:57 PM4/29/19

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Qobuz has watermarked tracks from UMG -- For example Krystian Zimerman's recording of Chopin Ballades.