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EMI May Sell Entire Collection as DRM-less MP3s

Posted by Zonk on from the and-away-we-go dept.

BobbyJo writes "According to the Chicago Sun-Times, EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ... without Digital Rights Management protections. According to the article, several other major music companies have considered this same route, but none as far as EMI. The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes. Those competing retailers include RealNetworks Inc., eMusic.com, MusicNet Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. People familiar with the matter cautioned that EMI could still abandon the proposed strategy before implementing it. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as today.'"

5 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Competing with Apple??? by ryanduff · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes.
    Not according to the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/business/media/0 9online.html:

    EMI, which releases music by artists including Coldplay and the Beatles, has discussed various proposals to sell unprotected files through an array of digital retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Real Networks and Yahoo, said the executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
    Don't be confused by the submitter's opinion. Moral reasons vs competition was mentioned nowhere in the linked Associated Press article...
    In the manner of Steve Ballmer "FUD! FUD! FUD!"
  2. Re:MP3 eh? by Ansible42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wish they'd start offering music in FLAC format. If you have a good stereo you can tell the difference. I'd like to see higher-than-CD bitrates too, there's no reason to stick with CD or less quality. I'd pay a little extra for a better format.

  3. He did exactly that by The+Amazing+Fish+Boy · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think steve missed a critical moment in his letter. He should have pointed out with a LOT more punch that they are all ALREADY selling their ENTIRE music collections without DRM in physical stores... and that we're simply talking about making the same possible on online stores.


    He did exactly that:

    Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That's right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.
  4. Re:Recent EMI News by the_womble · · Score: 2, Informative

    The statutory mechanical royalty rate is paid to the music publisher, not the artist. In most cases of music EMI sells, they would be the publisher.

    The statutory rate can be overridden by a contract and is, in effect a maximum rate, not a minimum, see http://www.joelmabus.com/royalties.htm

    Other costs of selling downloads are much lower than CDs.

    Lower costs could raise volumes.

    The type of people who regard big media as evil, are exactly the people who would see a company that dropped DRM as good. The rest do not think about it.

    EMIs sales would have the advantage of being completely non-infringing globally.

    I think that EMI will get the average slashdotters money. I am sure that, far more importantly, they will get the average music buyer's money. They will certainly get mine.

  5. Re:Recent EMI News by Bright+Apollo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most of you probably know all this and I'm likely just stating the obvious.

    RIAA uses an old but effective technique to keep their royalties coming: information hoarding. A fully-transparent accounting of costs per CD, traced back to what the artist gets and including taxes, etc, would neuter most of the arguments or at least put them on the same playing field for fair comparisons.

    Once this is done, it becomes easy to look at artist output as the sum of recording studio time plus expenses, then promotion costs, and so forth down to distribution which, then, becomes very small as a line-item cost. Once the cost components are transparent, effective arbitrage pushes these costs down as well.

    -BA