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It should be noted he's not the CIO of EMI, he's the President of Digital Business. http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-interview-douglas-merrill-president-emi-digital-business/ http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2008/press40.htm

Seriously, people do like downloading files, but many more appear to be happy to browse sites like youtube and its clones for videos, and imeem and it's blossoming collection of immitators for their music needs - not to mention the various agregator sites. Why download a client, share your bandwidth and put yourself at risk from getting sued by the RIAA/MPAA or at risk from wierd viruses from the sofware you're downloading when you can just upload your media to a website and proclaim to the world that you love it? I mean the big record labels have signed on to allow free sharing of music via imeem and that in itself must take a huge number of potential file sharers out of the equation. Sure the videos aren't really dvd quality yet, and while the music may be cd quality it's still bound up in a browser, but you can't beat the price, convenience or the fact that it's instant and on demand.

You're far too quick to predict the demise of one of the biggest, richest and toughest corporate organisations in America. It's very naive.

Question: Are people sharing music by beaming songs from Zune to Zune? Do you have any way to gauge that?

Bach: People are sharing. When your installed base is a million, the benefits of sharing, frankly, aren't as wide as we hope to see in the future. One of the challenges for us is continuing to build on the install base.

Sharing is a tip of the iceberg of what you can do in the social nature of music, and what you can do when you have a device that you can connect when you're at a Starbucks, when you're at work, when you're at home. That really, over time, will change things, for Zune and for consumers.

You feed me, you feed the Troll by proxy, Moron.

CD sales dropped about 50% first quarter 2007 vs first quarter 2006. Ok, the CD is not dead, but the mortal wound has been applied. CD will go the way of record - it's only a matter of time. Download services are catching up to quality; EMI is not quite offering CD quality downloadable music, but they are beginning their push into "quality DRM-less music" in case you have not actually read the news lately: http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm
You are a fool if you think the CD is going to last much longer.

It probably goes without saying, but this isn't some initiative on MS' part. It's riding Jobs' coattails, crying "me too!, me too!", as if MS is some kind of crusader for consumers' rights around music and DRM.

I think you need to go back and read EMI's announcement. Some relevant quotes (emphasis added):

"From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality."

"EMI's new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms."

"Apple's iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI's new premium downloads."

EMI had always planned to make its catalog available to anyone that wants it, not just through iTunes and not just AAC files. The only exclusivity Apple ever had was in making the co-announcement.

If you were one of the thousands of bloggers/netcitizens demanding DRM free music, give yourself a hand. This is a win for us.

"EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice."

So if you're too lazy to convert AAC to MP3, wait a few weeks and go buy it in MP3.

A few bands...

Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Kraftwerk, and Kate Bush. These are some listed on their website EMI Records UK. I don't know if that's the label, or if it's the entire EMI Group.

If that's the case, You've got the Beach Boys, David Bowie, Coldplay, Duran Duran, Gorillaz...OK Go, Liz Phair...

Wow, I might be upgrading a few of those.

EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice.

There's also an EMI Press Release.

First of all, I haven't followed all these Slashdot comments to which you are referring and I certainly never wrote any of them. Still, here I am replying to your message. I'm not here to "eat my words", as you say. Nor will anyone else respond to do so. The reason is that, given the facts at hand, some of the above opinions were reasonable ones at the time. They may or may not turn out to be wrong (after all, the non-DRM content is not yet available), but that doesn't make them unreasonable, except in retrospect.

Well, it is indeed true: http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm

But the comments were absolutely unreasonable. To say that Jobs' statement was nothing more than a PR conspiracy and that it "didn't really want" to remove DRM was foolish.

For those who thought Jobs' statement wasn't accompanied by any tangible "action", to not understand that the statement itself WAS the "action" was also foolish.

When Jobs made this shot across the bow of the major media companies, as one of the most powerful people in online media sales, and a board member of a major media company no less, this wasn't some complicated disinformation stunt to deflect criticism from Apple. It was exactly what it was: the most significant pressure on the major media companies to remove DRM, to explain why DRM doesn't and will never work, to show that DRM hurts and confuses only honest customers, and that it will always be able to be defeated.

That's why the statement was met with such vitriol from some major media execs and folks at the RIAA.

Except Apple's plan is working. It has enough clout, and labels like EMI which were teetering on the verge of their own decisions have now been pushed over. These things don't just happen overnight, as many expected them to, but now Apple and EMI will be the first to, in any meaningful way, sell major label content on an online media store, legally, with no DRM.

And that's huge, and exactly what Jobs intended to occur when the statement was made.

Yet here you are, shouting about how you were right and everyone else was wrong. All this demonstrates is that you may have been right this once, and the tone of your message seems to indicate an unhealthy trust in Apple.

Haha. "Unhealthy trust in Apple." What does that even mean?

Anyway, it isn't hard to look at Apple's track record of innovation and forcing change in the industry - first computer, and now online media. To ignore Apple's massive contributions to computing and innovation (even if it didn't "invent" the technology/item in question) and pretend it hasn't been significant is to be utterly and willfully ignorant.

Can I predict the future? No. But it was clear exactly what Apple was trying to do, and in fact was doing, when it made that statement, and this EMI announcement is but the first of the fruits of that effort.

Do you think that every action Microsoft makes is evil, simply because it's Microsoft, and all of Google's actions are good because it's Google?

Nope, neither. Next?

Do us a favor. Learn to think and get back when you're not such an arrogant ass.

Touché.

Also, while you're at it (and just to poke some wounds): If Apple didn't want the DRM at all, then why is it that iTunes wasn't originally designed to distribute DRM and non-DRM music for those labels that didn't want DRM?

Haha. Yeah, "poke some wounds". Ouch. :~(

The answers to your questions are of course simple ones, they're just not the ones you want to hear.

To directly quote myself:

[...] the business processes that go into rolling something like this out are probably far more complex than the technical processes. This actually speaks to my point: technically, sure, it may be that "2-3 day" operation people think it should be. From a business and support perspective, it's not. There may even be legal issues in one or m

with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/1.29/£0.99. .

The DRM free music will not just be for iTunes, so they won't just be in AAC. So all players benefit, just not from iTunes which will probably still sell in AAC.

Read about it here:
EMI's press release

I wonder if indie labels will also be able to sell non-DRM'd tracks on iTunes now.

http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm

Hot off the EMI website:
http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm

Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/0.30/£0.20 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.

EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli today hosted a press conference at EMI's headquarters in London where he announced that EMI Music is launching DRM-free superior quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire and that Apple's iTunes Store will be the first online music store to sell EMI's new downloads.

On EMI's website....

http://www.emigroup.com/Default.htm

DRM-free downloads: EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads. From 1pm London time there will be a live audio webcast of this announcement.

Press Release here: http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm

On EMI's website....

http://www.emigroup.com/Default.htm

DRM-free downloads: EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads. From 1pm London time there will be a live audio webcast of this announcement.

Press Release here: http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm

ant.

It seems to me that for-profit corporations are simple creatures. They seek one thing: profit (some are better at it than others). They respond to pleasure (profit), desire (for profit), pain (loss of profit), and fear (of loss of profit). If you want them to change their behavior you must employ these carrots and sticks.

Penalize record companies for their membership in the RIAA. Purchase no music from members of the RIAA. This can be tricky as many record labels that seem to be Independents are actually subsidiaries of RIAA members. Also, you cannot reliably identify whether an album or single is published by an RIAA member just by the artist. Many acts begin their careers on independent labels and then move to majors that are RIAA. There are resources that will help you to identify whether a given album or single is RIAA-member published or not:

www.riaaradar.com
wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RIAA_member_labels

Don't buy records, CDs, tapes, or downloads published by these labels. You don't have to avoid *listening* to works published by RIAA members. Just refuse to *purchase* them.

Reward the labels that are not members of the RIAA. Purchase music from labels that are not RIAA affiliated. It shouldn't be hard. Unless you live completely in a mainstream media wasteland, some of the musicians that you like are on independent labels.

If you enjoy purchasing music on-line, consider doing so through eMusic.com. Although they are the #2 on-line music retailer after the iTunes music store, almost all their tracks are from non-RIAA members. As a bonus each song sold by eMusic comes in a DRM-free MP3 format!

If you do these things don't count on industry executives being astute enough to figure out from the sales numbers alone why their fortunes are declining. Consider contacting the Big 4 major labels and tell them exactly why you are avoiding their products and the products of their subsidiaries.

• EMI
• Sony BMG Music Entertainment
• Universal Music Group
• Warner Music Group

Then, sit back and enjoy music and the schadenfreude.

Some highlights:

• Profit before tax increased 12.9% in one year

• Group digital sales increased to £112.1m from £46.9m. Momentum remained strong during the fourth quarter, with group digital sales more than doubling to £41.2m

• Group operating margin increased by almost a full percentage point to 12.0% from 11.2%. This improvement was driven by higher revenues, a greater proportion of revenues from digital, and the delivery of previously announced cost savings

• Underlying diluted earnings per share increased by 19.8% to 15.7p from 13.1p

So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.

Summary: "But they are particularly interested in boosting their revenue from digital music sales, which...are increasing but not quickly enough to replace the continuing drops in compact disc sales."

That's funny..

http://www.emigroup.com/news/pr285.html 16th November 2005 - EMI Group delivered a strong increase in both revenues and profits in the first half, with both divisions outperforming the market

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4420780.stm Wednesday, 9 November 2005 - With a number of major new music releases due from Sony BMG in the run up to Christmas, Bertelsmann said it expected profits to continue rising during 2005.

Sounds like they're on the verge of bankruptcy to me. Maybe we can convince Congress to subsidize the recording industry so our whole economy doesn't collapse, resulting in a great depression that will make 1929 seem like a fiesta by comparison.

This is in Britain
Most of the successful albums from here were in the 60s, 70s, and they will lose a lot of hold on these
EMI has most of the market share here
EMI would be worst effected
British jobs lost

Con Extension

Works based upon public domain stuff still have to be promoted and distributed
Music giants still vigorously control these channels
Public Domain recordings such as Classical Music are still big earners for EMI see EMI Classics in earnings breakdown.

Summary

Jobs will go, restructuring will occur and fileswappers wil be blamed

Buy.com on Tuesday launched a new digital music download service -- the site, BuyMusic.com, offers a catalog of more than 300,000 songs.

What will be next?
Will humming a tune be illigal, unless you do it in your own house?
Will singing a song, which you just heard on the radio, become illigal?
Will you be convicted for writing a letter to your mom containing phrazes used in a song?

It might be a good idea to get a pattent on every word you write/say ;-)

What's this world comming to. I live in Belgium, and over here EMI started a video commercial to make people aware that downloading music is stealing.
Well, let me tell you this, back in 1985 the price for a CD was about 17.5 and it still is now, in 2003. Somehow i don't believe that production costs etc haven't dropped like 70-75%. So where does the rest of my money go? Actually i don't care, i only care about the 17.5 I have to pay.
You can hear it everywhere, profits have dropped by 30, 40, even 50% because of downloading from the net. Well, my guess is, if the prices had dropped alongside the production costs, they'd be at about the same point.

The only mistake they made was thinking the well wouldn't dry out ;-)
Seems like the well has some leaks after all.

by a dis-interested populous

EU issues are rarely discussed on TV except on the minority news shows [i.e. the ones worth watching].

The EU parliament is seen as a bit of a gravy train for those serving. You never see your MEP in the news and I bet 90% if the people in the UK have no idea who their MEP is.

Big business is right in there, don't you worry. You'll do well to remember that the lovely people that bring us such tunes as All You Need is Love and Give Peace a Chance also help bring us such delights as the WE 177 tactical nuclear weapon and millions of the worlds landmines as well as a plethora of deadly devices.

What? EMI independent? Give me a break. They have a huge illustrious history. They had/have the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You know the dog and the grammophone? That is called His Master's Voice. It is the logo for EMI in everywhere but North America where RCA held the trademark. His Master's Voice is nicely abbreviated HMV, an international record chain. EMI can hardly be called independent.

I seriously question whether a company that calls describes itself as a group can be considered small.

What? EMI independent? Give me a break. They have a huge illustrious history. They had/have the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You know the dog and the grammophone? That is called His Master's Voice. It is the logo for EMI in everywhere but North America where RCA held the trademark. His Master's Voice is nicely abbreviated HMV, an international record chain. EMI can hardly be called independent.

I seriously question whether a company that calls describes itself as a group can be considered small.

What? EMI independent? Give me a break. They have a huge illustrious history. They had/have the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You know the dog and the grammophone? That is called His Master's Voice. It is the logo for EMI in everywhere but North America where RCA held the trademark. His Master's Voice is nicely abbreviated HMV, an international record chain. EMI can hardly be called independent.

I seriously question whether a company that calls describes itself as a group can be considered small.