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Making Money Selling Music Without DRM

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the actually-owning-your-stuff dept.

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica's Nate Anderson has an excellent writeup on the rise of eMusic and how they're suceeding despite their unwillingness to hop on the DRM bandwagon. From the article: 'The Holy Grail of online music sales is the ability to offer iPod-compatible tracks. Like the quest for the mythical cup itself, the search for iPod compatibility has been largely fruitless for Apple's competitors, whose DRM schemes are incompatible with the iconic music player. For a music store that wants to succeed, reaching the iPod audience is all but a necessity in the the US market, where Apple products account for 78 percent of the total players sold. Perhaps that's why eMusic CEO David Pakman sounds downright gleeful when he points out that there's only two companies in the world that can sell to them--Apple and eMusic.'"

6 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Far more than two companies that sell to ipods by DrRobert · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mindawn.com, magnatune.com, studiodownloads.net, disclogic.com, digitalsoundboard.net. There are many more. All work on the ipod. All lossess or (compressed if you want that) no drm. Admittedly the selections is small, but I'd rather have a thousand stores with lossess music and no drm than one store with a large selection.

  2. Emusic is cool but there are many great others too by linuxbaby · · Score: 5, Informative
    Credit where it's due, Emusic has been selling 99-cent downloads since 1998. When Steve Jobs announced it in 2003, everyone acted like it was a shocking new revolutionary idea. But some of us couldn't help but think, "Oh, you mean like Emusic?"

    I'm an Emusic subscriber and love them, but there are LOTS of legal services out there, these days, selling good ol' MP3s (or even FLAC/OGG) with no DRM

    We keep a full list of them at cdbaby.net/dd-partners (in 10 languages!). Though that list is meant mainly for our musician clients, it's a good permalink for a constantly-updating list of digital music sellers, with a short description of each.

  3. Don't forget Magnatune by Laurentiu · · Score: 5, Informative

    You bet eMusic is looking forward to the Slashdot effect ;)

    But we should also give credit where credit is due and mention that Magnatune (http://magnatune.com/) has been doing this for years. The buyer chooses what he wants to pay per album - in fact, if you're a cheap bastard, you may download a full album for as little 5$ in the format of your choice: MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC or AAC.

    And I love their motto: "We are not evil." Now, where else did we hear that phrase?

    --
    Just /. IT
  4. eMusic/J - Opensource Download Manager by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't waste your time with the eMusic provided *nix download manager; there is an excellent opensource alternative written in Java called "eMusic/J" (though it's developed by a third-party):

    http://www.kallisti.net.nz/EMusicJ/HomePage/

  5. E-music URL by rueger · · Score: 5, Informative

    Which bizarrely has not yet been posted here.

    http://www.emusic.com/

    --
    Three Squirrels
  6. Re:Emusic is cool but there are many great others by djmurdoch · · Score: 5, Informative

    All of MP3 may be "somewhat" legal in Russia but it is fully-non legal for Americans (or Canadians, Australians, and anybody else who is lives in a country that's signed on with international copyright laws) to buy music from them, as it says outright in their terms of service.

    I don't see any mention of Canada there, just a vague statement that it's up to you to figure out whether it is legal in your country. In fact, Canadians have a right to make copies for private use. This is what the levy on blank media pays for.