Muxtape Reimagined

The most interesting thing about Justin Ouellette's revealing post regarding the RIAA's take down of Muxtape is how the RIAA acted independently of the labels that the organization represents.

Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over.

As Ouellete points out, the labels understood the inherent value of Muxtape -- viral marketing and mouth-to-mouth promotion of music, which creates a consumer generated community organized in a central location on the internet. The fact that the RIAA moved autonomously of the labels signifies that the organization does not understand the cultural value its content has for consumers, and instead views this content as nothing more than "product."

This fundamental misunderstanding is also evident in their ongoing anti-piracy campaign against 12-year-old kids and grandmothers. Not only is such a campaign doomed to failure, but the industry is targeting its best costumers. The only such case to go to trial, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, awarded damages of $222,000 to record labels. Thomas had shared 24 songs on Kazaa, a once popular peer-to-peer network. The ruling has been challenged, the punishment criticized as unfair, and the judge in the case has expressed doubts about the court's decision. The really interesting part about this case is the RIAA's efforts to solidify "attempted copyright infringement" into law. The RIAA doesn't understand that the "product" is much more than a cut of wax, a wound up analog tape, a plastic disc, or a series of digital bits to fans.

The emotional connection that people have with music goes back far in history, before copyright law and "intellectual property." Music transcends boundaries in ways that other mediums cannot. People have "played" with their culture continually throughout human history -- through sharing, modifying, or creating new works from existing works. The recent extension of copyright term limits has cut off people from these previously exercised abilities just at the same time that technology makes it easier to do so.

Muxtape served this emotional purpose well -- music fans were able to share their favorite songs to any interested party like never before. And on the business side of things, Muxtape provided the best possible form of promotion -- mouth-to-mouth advertising. People are more likely to make a purchased based on the recommendation of a real person, friend or stranger, than from record label advertisements on glossy magazine pages. All that potential, wasted. As I have said before, the RIAA is only hurting their own industry with these actions.

I think Muxtape will demonstrate the positives of sharing music through its new focus on the band feature. I find it unfortunate that Ouellette didn't try to reach out to independent labels exclusively and strike licensing deals while also barring major label participation. I think that such an action could have the effect of showing major labels that repressing people's natural desire to share will only hurt their businesses, while also helping out smaller labels experience more recognition and (hopefully) increased sales for their artists. (I'm confident that sales would increase; however, there's little solid data surrounding this issue. This could have been a great test case.) Perhaps this will occur anyway through the band feature. Only time will tell.

Don't Punish Legitimate Customers

Yet, that is exactly what entertainment industries do when they implement intrusive and inconveniencing DRM schemes. Rob Fahey, of GamesIndustry.biz, wrote a few months ago:

The response from the videogames industry to piracy has, thus far, been utterly asinine. Not, of course, that videogames should be singled out here -- the music and movie businesses, too, have done their fair share of asinine things in the last five to ten years as they desperately struggle to understand the changes which internet piracy is causing to their market. Only the music business, which has been struck hardest by online, user-driven piracy, has begun to learn its lesson and adapt its business intelligently. It remains to be seen whether movies and games are condemned to repeat the same costly mistakes, or whether they can learn from their sibling industry and avoid the traps.

The core of the response of both games and movies (although our focus here is on games, obviously) to internet piracy -- the response which leads me, with absolute confidence, to describe these efforts as being asinine -- is to treat their legitimate users as though they were criminals. Almost every single effort which has been made by these industries to protect their products has had the result of inconveniencing, frustrating and disenfranchising honest, paying customers.

[...]

There will always be a core of people who can't or won't pay for things, and who will go to incredible lengths and inconvenience themselves awfully just in order to get stuff for free. However, it's a stupid and useless dogma to claim that all piracy happens because of that impulse. The reality is that when pirates are offering a better user experience than you are, your business model is broken -- and rather than punishing your loyal customers, or whinging to national governments in the hope that they'll cover your backside with unpopular, civil liberties infringing legislation, you need to fix your business model. Or find a new job. [emphasis mine]

Another key thing that Fahey mentions, regarding music, is this:

Lo and behold, consumers aren't actually against paying reasonable prices for music - they're just against having to go out and buy CDs with spyware on them, or having to download tracks that are crippled, locked up and liable to be unplayable as soon as the company you bought them from goes bust. [emphasis mine]

This is exactly the problem with the new trend of game developers requiring gamers to be connected to the internet to play their games. What happens when the developer goes out of business? What happens when the publisher and/or developer cease to support their older titles? The only conclusion I can draw is the same one that Fahey draws -- the games will be unplayable, utterly useless.

I recently installed Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. This is an expansion to the first game, Company of Heroes. The Opposing Fronts expansion pack came with some hefty DRM, unlike the original game, which came DRM-free. It took me several hours to install the game simply because of the DRM. My experience was one of frustration.

First, the expansion required that the original game be uninstalled before installing the new DRM-laden expansion. OK, did that, no problem. The expansion took a very long time to install, even on my Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. After installation, I went to run the game, but was unable to do so because of a required patch installation to play online. I wasn't even interested in playing online; however, I was required to install the patch to play at all. Every time I tried the in game patching process, the game failed to connect to the internet and download the patch (and yes, I had created a firewall exception for Company of Heroes). I was forced to shut the game down and hunt for the patches online (which wasn't easy), download them individually (there were at least a half-dozen), and install each patch individually.

After I had completed this time-consuming endeavor, I opened up the game again. This time, I was prompted to log in with a user name and password in order to play the game. The DRM with this expansion required either the DVD in the drive or an internet connection to play. I had my DVD in the drive, so I was a bit puzzled why the game would require me to create a login. But even this didn't work correctly -- the button to "create" a profile was shaded, meaning that I couldn't access the profile creator in-game. I was forced, yet again, to shut down and create my profile on the developer's website and then start the game back up again. Finally, many hours later, I could play!

To a more casual player, it's likely that s/he would have given up at some point during this ordeal. Perhaps this person would recommend to friends that the game isn't worth the time it takes to install. Perhaps this person is now less likely to buy a future title from the developer. Perhaps this person is likely to return his/her legal copy and instead download a pirated copy because the pirated copy is easier to install. Perhaps this person is now more likely to pirate future games from this developer. Company of Heroes has plenty of pirated copies available on the internet, so all this DRM has done is inconvenience a legitimate customer, potentially encourage a former legitimate customer to pirate games, and/or drive away a legitimate customer from PC gaming to more convenient, legal gaming systems like consoles (PS3, XBox 360, Wii).

Further reading: Cory Doctorow's DRM talk, which discusses all of these issues at great length.

Another Reason the RIAA Doesn't Get It

I just discovered that Nothing Nice to Say came back a number of years ago (I had stopped reading the comic after I thought it had ended), and I came across this gem:

You May Not Share Your Culture

During the first week of April, I discovered the website Muxtape.com. The site allows people to create free accounts to put together online “mix tapes” to share with others. Muxtapes are limited to 12 songs, and users are not allowed to upload more than one song from a single release or artist or have multiple muxtapes. Muxtapes are not available for download and all submitted songs are accompanied with a link to Amazon.com’s mp3 downloads section. I thought that this website was a great compromise between music fans who want to share music via the internet and a music industry that is increasingly hostile to such sharing. I also just wanted the chance to make my own virtual mix tape to share with other people!

One of the songs that I selected for my first muxtape was from the mostly unknown Philadelphian band FNU Ronnies, titled, “Silver Bullet.” I had only first heard about the band a week prior from a close friend, but was nonetheless impressed with the song. I recorded the streaming audio on my computer as the song played on the band’s Myspace page, much the same way I used to make cassette tapes from songs recorded from radio. Up went the song onto my muxtape.

A little more than two weeks later I got an email inquiring about the song. The author of the email wanted to know how to get a copy -- I only mentioned that I had recorded the song from Myspace, as I was still waiting for my copy of FNU Ronnie’s debut 7” from Parts Unknown Records. About a week after responding to the email, I received a strange comment on my blog. The post was about Yoko Ono’s lawsuit against the producers of the anti-science film Expelled for their use of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” In the post, I discussed the copyright issues involved. The comment on this post asked me how I felt about individuals “illegally trying to sell” music “ripped on the internet”; a strange comment, considering its lack of relevance to the post. That tipped me off to search around for information about the commenter.

After a short Google search, strong circumstantial evidence led me to believe that the comment came from FNU Ronnies, as did the email I had received a week prior. This turn of events puzzled me. My experiences with music subcultures, specifically those rooted in punk rock, have given me an anti-copyright impression. Many of the bands I have known and have been involved with never considered actually copyrighting music. Labels I have known and have been involved with were never concerned with file-sharing or lost sales. Furthermore, my close friend who introduced me to FNU Ronnies informed me that the debut 7” is nearly sold out. Clearly, my inclusion of “Silver Bullet” cannot be cutting into sales, right?

I must admit, though, that this all is likely to have been in jest. FNU Ronnies is a part of a new musical movement -- Skull music -- which combines early ‘80s American hardcore (YDI, Black Flag) with the strange-yet-hard-sought-after punk classics (Mentally Ill, The Eat, Remo Voor) released on the Killed by Death (fan music blog link) record label. Self-described Skull bands, such as Clockcleaner and Homostupids, engage in a sort of confrontational performance art along with their music. Clockcleaner’s Nevermind album (a re-appropriation of Nirvana's second album title) was named as such to enrage listeners -- guitarist and vocalist John Sharkey stated in an interview with Dusted Magazine, “I kind of wanted people to react like, ‘What balls! Who the fuck are these assholes?’” The fun doesn’t stop there, either: legend has it that Sharkey pissed all over the merch of rival band Bad Wizard at one show and intentionally knocked over a kid with cerebral palsy at another performance (I know; I was there). So my confrontation with FNU Ronnies is likely to be a part of the Philadelphian humor; however, the incident did get me thinking further about copyright issues.

Sites like Muxtape allow people to share music (hopefully) without the fear of a “Cease and Desist” letter from their ISP or a lawsuit from the RIAA. I was a bit shocked that an artist would take offense from a fan putting one of his/her songs on a muxtape for other people to hear. My intentions had been to share the music that really resonates with me. That’s how I’ve almost always discovered new sounds -- someone I knew made me a copy of some new music and gave it to me for listening. This is classic mouth-to-mouth advertising, arguably the best advertising one can get.

There is one critical difference, in the eyes of the industry, between mix tapes/CD-Rs and digital file-sharing -- scale. Sharing music online is easier and faster than sharing has ever been. But how different is a site like Muxtape from a radio broadcast? What about a Myspace music page? Why are these digital streams viewed as different from their analog counterparts?

What are Muxtape and a Myspace music page, ultimately? They are both platforms for distributing music digitally. Instead of a corporate, computer generated play list that is simulcast throughout tens -- even hundreds -- of radio stations, fans and artists are put in the DJ seat. Those who enjoy the culture of their music are participating in that culture by sharing it with others. In other words, they are in a position of control at the individual level of the culture they enjoy.

And that is the difference -- control. Radio broadcasts happen on federally licensed airwaves. Only a select few have access to these avenues of distribution. The content providers have a vested interest in their distribution model succeeding because of the vast amount of resources spent. The internet appears to be the great equalizer in this equation -- it provides a democratic distribution model. Anyone, anywhere, can share music with anyone, anywhere. The music industry is used to being in control of their distribution model and now the industry is trying to apply that system of control to a distributed network based upon protocols. The end result of this is technological quick fixes that have no way to enforce a control model -- DRM (Digital Rights Management) and copy-protection is easily hacked, bypassed, and subverted.

What does this mean for the future of music and file-sharing? The music industry is already of the opinion that file-sharing is the equivalent of lost sales. The data on this varies by who you ask -- in 2004, a study conducted by Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard University and Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina concluded that file-sharing increased CD sales for top selling albums. The RIAA will point to research by Edison Media Research which claims that file-sharing has decreased CD sales; however, Jupiter Research conducted two studies (in 1999 and 2002) which concluded that music fans who shared music files for six months were 75 percent more likely than average online music fans to purchase more music. If file-sharers are the industry’s best costumers, how can they be the cause of a loss of sales?

Instead of attempting to circumvent possibly the best form of advertising being offered on a silver platter by fans, the music industry should embrace these technologies which can bring music to people’s ears faster than ever before. Music fans are so rabid about their favorite artists that the industry wouldn’t have to do much to promote those artists. But this is a risky new democratic model, as it could lead to super-smash hits being relegated to a lesser role and will remove the control the industry has relied upon to make low-risk investments in new artists. But couldn’t such risk stimulate an environment that feeds off of creativity and innovation, rather than following a tried-and-true model?

The New Sound Is Robot Music

I posted earlier this week about an article in Word Magazine and promised some follow-up commentary. The Word Magazine article shed some light onto the other factors, besides the loudness war, that are effecting the way that music is recorded nowadays. I was particularly interested in the the discussion about the practice of cutting and pasting track clips instead of recording a track in one take, as well as the use of Auto Tune.

What does this mean? No mistakes. No variation. No style, period. How can I tell the difference between two guitarists if both are picking the best played riff of their track and looping it throughout the song? Where are the quirks, or slight variations to distance musicians' sound from one another? And with Auto Tune, I'm guaranteed a pitch-perfect sound. This program removes the human-factor in live recordings. I might as well be listening to a sampling machine; musicians might as well just program their songs into Pro Tools. What's the point of a live recording?

I see this new trend of recording, mixing, and mastering as removing the musicians from the picture. The only thing keeping them there, as of now, is the live performance. If fans didn't continue going to live shows there'd be no reason to keep the flesh and blood around. Musicians would be programmers, and fans wouldn't know the difference because they'd just be downloading the music from iTunes to be the soundtrack of their morning commute.

And with this new robotic method of producing records we have the loudness war. Doesn't seem like much of a war to me, though, as pretty much all the mainstream acts and labels are going this way. I mean, who's fighting this at the top? So it's really the loudness trend, since there are no signs of it slowing. In doing further research, I came across this blog post that chronicles the change in sound of Rush records over the years.

A long and informative commentary, especially near the middle of the post where the author makes an excellent point through use of example. The point the author is highlighting is one that has been stated numerous times in the past -- that by increasing the volume, listeners will being to fatigue. That's exactly what happens when, as in the post's example, a reader is subjected to large, bold text in all caps for an extended period of time. The writing is devoid of any form of dynamics, just as the heavily compressed audio file is stripped of all of its dynamics. Too much of this and the brain is unable to process the sounds -- there's nothing left of make any of the sounds distinct.

The music industry only appears to be interested in continuing this trend. Mainstream records are increasingly unlistenable, aside from the actual music, because of the way the sounds are recorded, mixed, and mastered.

Music is no longer something that is listened to alone. That is to say, music is background sounds for many people. People listen to their iPods while commuting to work, walking the street, or exercising. People listen to music more in the cars than at home. The point is that the act of listening is not the primary action taking place -- it is secondary to the other things that people are focusing on.

Not only that, but music now has many more forms of entertainment media to compete with than in years past. Cable/satellite television, streaming internet media, video games, and DVDs are only a few of the new entertainment media that music must compete with for the attention of its listeners. The industry has deemed it necessary to make records louder in order to be heard over all the other noises vying for our attention. This is why I don't think we're going to see dynamics brought back into mainstream recordings.

Fidelity is dead.

The New Distribution Model

Music is undergoing some radical distribution changes lately.

First we had Radiohead's In Rainbows, which was released in a pay-what-you-want fashion via digital download. While the results of Radiohead's experiment are still unknown, we do know that the physical release of In Rainbows in CD and vinyl formats sold 122,000 copies in the first week. While that isn't as well as Hail to the Thief sold in its first week (300,000), it certainly wasn't a flop. And don't forget that Gigwise reported that In Rainbows sold approximately 1.2 million digital downloads, which is significantly more than the debut of Hail to the Thief.

After Radiohead's experiment, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails revealed that he would release Saul Williams' The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust for free or for $5 for higher quality mp3 files. And now Reznor has taken it a step further with his own Nine Inch Nails release of Ghosts.

First, I want to mention that Ghosts is being licensed under the Creative Commons License, which is a significant departure from current copyright laws that govern most of our culture. The Creative Commons License allows the ability to copy, share, distribute, perform, and display a work. The license also allows any derivative or transgressive works to be made from the original work. All that is required for such freedom is attribution to the original artist, non-commercial use of the original work, and that any derivative or transgressive works be licensed under the Creative Commons License. This kind of license really puts the culture back into the hands of the people and not solely into the hands of authors and producers -- this is how we can encourage creativity while also making creative works financially rewarding.

A four volume music set, Ghosts is being offered through a variety of distribution methods. There's a digital download for the first volume, which has been made available for free. Reznor has also taken it upon himself to upload this first volume to bit torrent, which is revolutionary. Here's what Reznor said on the subject:

Now that we're no longer constrained by a record label, we've decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

I think this would be the first time that a major, mainstream artist has voluntarily uploaded his/her music to bit torrent him/herself.

Alternatively, music fans can purchase the entire set in higher quality mp3 files for $5 via digital download. There are several options for the purchased digital files -- 320 kbps LAME encoded and fully tagged, FLAC lossless, and Apple lossless. All digital files are 100% DRM-free. The digital download also comes with a 40 page PDF file and other digital extras.

The two CD set comes with everything from the $5 digital download plus a double CD in a six panel digipak with a 16 page booklet. Then there's the deluxe CD set, which has all of the above plus a DVD with the multi-track session for all 36 Ghosts tracks in .wav format. This will allow people to easier create derivate and transgressive works from Ghosts. In this set, there's also a Blu-ray disc of the album which has an accompanying exclusive slide show for the music.

Finally, there's was the ultra-deluxe limited edition set (already sold out!), which came with all of the above plus a four LP vinyl box, a book with 48 pages of photographs, and another book with two exclusive Giclee prints. This set was personally signed and numbered by Reznor.

This is quite an amazing array of format options. I think that Reznor's methods are far superior to what Radiohead did first, and I'm really impressed that Reznor is utilizing bit torrent technology (though, I shouldn't be surprised.) This could be the direction that the music industry goes, and I think that it leaves room for existing labels; however, they will have to relinquish some of their existing copyright standards. Reznor's decision to include the DVD of wav files for derivative and transgressive works is at odds with how the industry generally runs itself -- very protectionist and obsessed with content control. Furthermore, Reznor's decision to license under Creative Commons is also at odds with the music industry. If this album is successful, and I think that it's likely to be, I hope that we'll see more artists take similar action.

The RIAA should be pissing its pants right now.

Copyright Protected Music Files

Today I had my first experience with a copyright protected digital music file. A little background; I've stayed out of Apple's iPod world -- the idea of my entire music collection on a portable hard drive hasn't seemed very appealing to me (though, I will add that I'd be interested in one for my car, which has an iPod connector built into it, simply because burning CDs gets tiresome.) One, the quality would not be anywhere near my vinyl (128 Kbps? Psh. If I have to go digital, FLAC or bust); two, I rather enjoy the act of sitting down and really listening to music -- there's something about music predominately being the soundtrack to my life that detracts from the music itself; and three, I've always felt that the digital/CD format allows too many shitty artists to put out an album. Let me explain that a bit. I'm not so much worried about the fact that digital music can democratize the production and distribution of music; in fact, I think that that's great. My problem lies with the mainstream music industry -- the one that peddles us one-hit-wonders with shitty filler albums for $20 a pop. It seems that people are more willing to buy a CD than an LP with one good song on it for the simple logistics that it's easier to skip ahead and listen to your favorite song on a CD.

A little more background; I'm currently a part of a music email list that calls itself "The Last Record Store." It's a lot of fun and a great concept -- randomly selected music lovers on the list submit songs to compete against each other once a week. The person who submitted the song with the most votes at the end of the week gets to submit a second song for the next week's competition. So far I've heard some interesting stuff, and I like the exposure to new music.

My first experience with a copyright protected digital file (.m4p and .aac) comes from this week's competition, which also happens to be the same week that I was randomly selected to challenge the current champion (my submission was Wolf Eye's "Stabbed in the Face," from their Burned Mind LP on American Tapes. The champion has pitted me against Delta 5's "Mind Your Own Business." Noise v. Funky Post-Punk. Wooo!)

The champion's song was originally submitted with an .m4p file extension. I had never seen this before, but I assumed that my trusty Winamp would be able to play the file -- no dice. I checked out what program Windows assumed files with that extension were associated with, and I discovered it was iTunes. I installed iTunes and loaded up the file. I was ready to hear some Delta 5 when iTunes informed me that my computer did not have authorization to play the file. What? That seemed rather strange to me, and after some more research I discovered that .m4p and .aac files are digital music files loaded with DRM (Digital Rights Management) software.

My problem with this is that .m4p and .aac files (and by extension, DRM) is problematic for a dying music industry. Throughout my life, most of the music I listen to was first recommended by someone I know, then after hearing some songs I purchased the record. After listening to that, I discovered what music influenced the record I just bought and curiosity spread like a virus. My point here is that someone shared some music with me, and that caused me to go out and discover new music and purchase new records. Many of my friends are the same way, and I suspect that many other people are too. Both .m4p and .aac files put a wrench in that whole process.

With more and more music listeners going digital, and more and more artists allowing their material on DRM files, how can people continue to share the music they love with others? And the efforts of DRM seem fruitless, since it appears to be rather easy to side-step the .m4p file by converting it to a .mp3 file (as the champion was able to do.) The tech savvy among us will be able to get around this, but many others may not. Why shouldn't they be able to easily share the music they love?

Last I checked, making cassette tapes of LPs in the '80s didn't bankrupt the music industry. If anything, that type of sharing increased the size of the listening audience. We wonder why the music industry is tanking -- it seems to me that they are doing it to themselves.

[UPDATE]: Is this the future of media?

[UPDATE 2]: For further reading, this DRM talk is very informative.

Vinyl Is Back!

I'm a little late to this, but Wired magazine wrote on October 29, 2007 that vinyl is on the rise. They even reported that Amazon.com has created a vinyl section on its website! Good news indeed -- although I doubt that Amazon will have the kind of records I enjoy, at least I can now put music back on my wishlist.

What did the record industry have to say about this? The typical bullshit:

"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.

I'll bet that the record industry wants to play down this growing trend of vinyl enthusiasts because the major record labels have invested a lot of money in the production and promotion of CDs, and that's not something they want to just throw away. This highlights the major record labels inability to keep up with new music and trends. Their business model just isn't suited to be that nimble.

And Wired does explain why the RIAA numbers are way off:

But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.

eBay.com is possibly the greatest site ever. Through eBay I've found most of my best and favorite records at, usually, reasonably prices (I still think $76 dollars for No Trend's 1984 Too Many Humans was a good deal! Really!) Just yesterday, I found Sightings' debut 7" and the Violent Ramp 7" -- pre-Wolf Eyes noise rock -- on eBay for "buy it now"! Of course, I scooped those right up.

Wired also writes that "the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD." As I've written before, Polyvinyl Records has already started offering a free mp3 download of any release purchased on vinyl. Here's to hoping that this practice becomes the norm -- ripping my entire vinyl collection to mp3 will be quite the daunting task!

Radiohead Update

It's already been reported that Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows, has sold approximately 1.2 million copies. Gigwise speculates that the average price paid has been about £1; however, an internet survey conducted by music industry newsletter Record of the Day found that the average price paid has been about £4, according to an article by The Times.

This means that Radiohead has made between $2.4 million and $9.6 million of pure profit on this album. There's no record label or contract that splits up the revenue.

So when will some other major label acts follow in Radiohead's footsteps? Can you imagine a world in which the cash cow artists that record labels depend upon abandon the labels -- a world in which the capitalism is taken out of the art?

I'm looking forward to see how this story unfolds.