This might make an impact on manufacturers that rely on Yamaha styles to make their otherwise unimpressive arrangers' styles less of a buying factor...

As long as 'open' arrangers piggyback on the work of legitimate companies, with little if anything payed for the hard and expensive work they payed for, I think you are going to see more and more of this. I have said for quite a while that, if everyone copy-protected their styles, while still leaving them open for USER styles (make the ROM uncopyable), we would see FAR more in the way of excellent styles released for our arrangers in between product cycles.

And that, even though we would have to pay, would be a good thing, IMO. It is a rare thing to find a user style that blows away the factory ones...

1. Copy protection has been tried on virtually every type of music and video systems for decades, (They were even tried on vinyl and cassette) but all were cracked in next door to no time, so you might as well forget that option.
2. Why should manufactures force users to buy their keyboards just for 1 or 2 styles? (It’s like forcing you to buy a different DVD player to watch each studios film)
3. Styles like sounds are a personal choice. (Just because one person likes his keyboards styles doesn’t mean to say that others will or that they are the best)
4. All manufactures have there own onboard styles and sounds, however the main difference with open keyboards is that they allow you to use other sounds and styles more easily, so as to supplement NOT Replace the existing sounds and styles.
Remember the saying; “One mans meat is another mans poison”
Anyway back to the style issue, I still think there should be a universal standard like there is with Midi, not to replace existing manufactures styles but as an addition too.

Bill


[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 07-09-2008).]

But let's face it... what possible incentive is there for a major manufacturer to release new styles in any decent quantity and selection, if they know that no-one (other than the first buyer) is going to pay for them...?