MP3tunes Offers Music Service Without DRM

ThinSkin writes "Former MP3.com chief and Lindows CEO Michael Robertson will reenter the music world next week with MP3tunes, a service that promises music without DRM restrictions. MP3tunes hopes to attract users who are fed up with restrictions on copying music from sites that use digital-rights-management techniques, such as iTunes."

Comments

Cool... but success depends on the labels

[Gob Blesh It]

Robertson said he's not worried about the record labels and their requirements for rights-management technology. ... "I think the labels are interested in one thing: selling," he said. "If you build the audience they will come.

I think he's probably right, but I wonder if the bigwigs at the record labels are willing (or even care) to listen to his argument. It's not as if Apple didn't try:

When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. ...

And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions.

I think the general consensus is that even though Jobs and his "Ph.D.s" knew DRM is always crackable, Apple still needed to implement some form of DRM in order to convince the record labels to open their catalogs. For the record companies in April of 2003, ever chary of the Internet, DRM was non-negotiable.

My question is: what's changed since then that would cause them to reconsider? After all, iTunes has shown that a service offering DRM tracks can be wildly successful. So why would the record labels want to open their catalogs to a DRM-free solution from some dude who made his name pawning a Linux desktop?

Anyway, this is definitely something to watch. I sincerely wish him luck. I just hope he can get the labels to open their catalogs.

Already Available

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a new concept. It's already alive and well over at emusic.com. The selection is not great, but you get 50 to 80 high-quality MP3's with NO DRM for a flat monthly fee.

Actually, in Soviet Russia, the music frees you!

[MarkWPiper]

AllOfMP3 uses DRM-free files for all of their content. Moreover, many files support online encoding, in nearly every useful format that exists, at your choice of bitrate.

I wish more music services would follow this example.

Of course, I also wish every music site out there used their pay by the megabyte approach, at ridiculously low rates. I actually end up spending much more on music, because I'm not afraid to waste a dollar getting a few new albums. It's proof that cheap, DRM-free online distribution can work.

Seen it, Done it

[poptones]

It's called magnatune and I've been shopping there for months.

How long until Michael offers us "mp3 lockers" so he doesn't even have to pay his own artists for downloads anymore?

Re:Hope he's proved right

[thryllkill]

Because we all know there are no drm free music services around that offer legitimate and legal in America music downloads.