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Sony Japan to Abolish Copy Controlled CDs
Gridle writes "In a complete reversal of their policy and on the heels of Avex's partial cessation of copy protected CDs (translation), Sony Music Entertainment in Japan has announced that it will abolish its Label Gate CCCD format (translation) beginning in November 2004 and move back to normal CD-audio format discs for all future releases. Reasons cited are music users' increased consciousness about copyrights and maintenance of legality (conformity to the CD-audio format specification). In related news, Sony also released a slightly updated HD walkman (translation) due to pressure from the iPod, but because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback."
This is a good move by Sony. Discs with the protection are incredibly annoying. Sure, people will pirate stuff and do things with non-protected discs illegally, but this is becoming less frequent, and for people who actually buy their music honestly, it is an incredible annoyance to not be able to do what you want with your own personal music. Thanks Sony.
to face reality. It sounds like the war between its content producing arms and consumer electronics groups has been decided in favor of the electronics group.
It was inevitable- "MP3 players" is the *name* of the categorty and the defining feature of compressed audio devices.
If you cannot rip a CD to mp3 its value to the consumer is lessened considerably and they will be more likely to turn to p2p alternatives. A losing proposition all around for Sony.
It may be too little too late- kind of sad as they could have owned they category if they had only been unhampered by their content divisions (and had some better human interface engineers for their software).
Sounds pretty stupid to me... for many not-particularly-tech-savvy (NPTS) people, mp3 is still the compressed music format of choice, and these people will be most of Sony's market for this device.
NPTS Customer: Hey that looks cool, does it have mp3?
Salesman: No, but it has...
NPTS Customer: Ah we'll leave it - what else you got?/p?
More like... nerdular nerdence!
our consumer electronics business is worth more to us than our music business.
Keep your customers happy so you don't alienate them and make them go to the dark illegal copying side, then combat the problem of those that are ripping you off.
Damn straight. The customer should be the number one priority for pretty much any corporate entity, though sometimes they do seem to lose the plot a little.
Now if only it was easier to buy a DVD disc without region encoding, I'd be happy. As a Brit living in Australia, I'm pretty hacked off with the hassle of playing UK bought DVDs in AU and vice versa. And I thought this was if-not-illegal-then-definitely-dodgy restraint of trade?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Yeah, I possibly should go buy one, but :
1. can I get a region free DVD drive for my Dell laptops? no.
2. what about my compaq desktop? maybe.
3. shall I just replace the set-top player I've already bought? considering it.
I watch DVDs on my laptop(s) quite a bit, and it's my laptops I travel with, meaning I'd much rather have region-free there, where there's a more pressing need.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
"Sony also released a slightly updated HD walkman (translation) due to pressure from the iPod"
With businesses, pressure generally comes from companies with comparable marketshare... Ford might feel pressure from GM, Apple might feel pressure from Rio... Sony is so far out of the main music player game, that it is ludicrous to think they are feeling "pressure" from apple... that would be like saying Be was feeling pressure from Microsoft... This is just a result of Sony fatally mis-predicting the market.
I read it more as: We suddenly realized that another part of the company sold ATRAC/MP3 players, so whichever way we play it we win, and this way we get to look good as well.