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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.'"

15 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Recent EMI News by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    First off,

    EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ...
    Not quite, they're looking to sell it to a service. If my tax dollars were paying for all of EMI's music to enter public domain, I would imagine a lot of people wouldn't like that idea.

    Recently, I learned that EMI will be allowing music videos to stream freely to UK, German & French users through AOL.

    Also--possibly in relation to this--EMI's top legal counsel, Charles Ashcroft, has stepped down after ten years with the company. There's been a lot of internal restructuring so I wonder if these no-DRM propositions are on the way in or on the way out.

    From the article linked above,

    EMI, which is the world's largest independent music company, reported revenue of £867.9m and £62.7m profit for the six months ending 30 September last year.
    I'm assuming that those profits are primarily music based so what amount would you have to offer the world's largest independent music company to be able to release their MP3s without any form copy protection? It's difficult to consider anyone being able to afford this.
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Recent EMI News by uradu · · Score: 5, Interesting

      > If my tax dollars were paying for all of EMI's music to enter public domain

      Who the hell is talking about that? You're reading things into it that aren't there.

      On a different note, if EMI is seriously considering selling unencumbered music, I would suggest they buy allofmp3's back-end software, or they develop something along similar lines along with a similar sales model, except of course more realistic pricing that hopefully actually compensates the artists. I personally consider up to around $5 an album for 128Kbps MP3 an acceptable price, any higher than than and downloads almost completely lose their attraction. Future pricing models simply HAVE to take into consideration the quality-per-buck aspect, otherwise it won't fly long term. Paying $10 an album for considerably lower quality than what you get on a CD from Target or Wal-Mart at the same price simply won't fly. Besides, offering a tiered pricing model also gives them the chance to zero in on the sweet spot of the market.

    2. Re:Recent EMI News by antonyb · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The internal restructuring is on the back of extremely bad financial results. Its also worth noting that since the CEO and CFO stepped down, a deal has been struck with a Chinese ISP which comes off the back of a failed legal action by EMI to sue the same ISP for linking to illegal downloads. EMI internally, believe it or not, has a fairly enlightened view of mp3 & DRM, but have been hampered by their old-fashioned board of directors. I think they're likely to be the first to ditch DRM and sell unfettered music downloads.


      ant.

    3. Re:Recent EMI News by psykocrime · · Score: 5, Interesting

      To get the honor system to work, they need to make it very easy to buy music. Easier than finding it for free. People will sill 'borrow' from friends, but if it is easy enough to find and buy music through them, then most people won't make the effort to find it for a lower price.

      Exactly. Personally, I'll happily pay to go to an official service, with high quality mp3 downloads, where I can quickly search by artist, song-title, album, etc. and find the exact track I'm looking for, know that what I'm getting is what is actually labeled, know what the quality of the file is, etc. As long as the files aren't DRM'd and the price is reasonable. Why waste time with p2p networks where you never know exactly what you're getting, download times are inconsistent, etc?

      Hopefully if the labels go through with this, they follow the "long tail" approach and put plenty of obscure tracks up as well... demos, b-sides, live recordings, unreleased tracks, etc. Give music fans what they're looking for and they'll pay (well, some of us will anyway).

      --
      // TODO: Insert Cool Sig
    4. Re:Recent EMI News by dave420 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If there weren't people providing quality releases to BitTorrent, where the tracks are encoded using a good encoder, tagged correctly, including artwork, etc., then you'd have more of a point. BitTorrent is great for 99% of the music you want to hear. Even the obscure stuff is available, and download speeds are more than adequate. If it's not on BitTorrent, it might not even be on the online services anywhere.

    5. Re:Recent EMI News by badasscat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've noticed that my militancy - as measured by how much and exactly what I download - has gotten worse the more the *AA stupity has gone on. In the beginning, it was stuff I'd already bought. Now it's a little wider.

      Interesting - my experience has been exactly the same.

      I want to support the artists. I think most people do. I still buy CD's most of the time. But I will not buy anything encumbered with DRM (at least not DRM that I can't easily get around).

      The more pissed off I have gotten with the RIAA, though, the more I've almost wanted to actively stick it to them. I've downloaded from Allofmp3.com, and I've downloaded through bittorrent. Not a lot, and I still try to justify it by saying it's stuff that I wouldn't otherwise buy at all. (For stuff I really care about, I still buy the CD.) But that's more of a rationalization than just downloading music I already own on another format, which is also how I started out. The RIAA has made me care a lot less about being on the right side of the law, because their idea of what the right side of the law is is both factually incorrect in many cases and also completely unreasonable. It's like telling somebody that not only can they not jaywalk (which is and should be illegal), but that they also can't cross the street from a corner with a "walk" signal. You're only allowed to cross the street in the presence of a uniformed RIAA representative, and if no such representative is around, tough. That is not an edict I'd follow, anymore than I'd follow their edicts about DRM'd music (especially their consideration of ripping CD's for my own personal use as "piracy"). Worse, the fact that they're trying to redefine the law on their own terms and enforce it themselves just makes me want to do exactly the opposite of what they're telling me to do. So now I'm going to jaywalk too, even when I wouldn't have before. I mean, if they're gonna make a criminal out of me anyway, I may as well go all the way.

      They need to seriously start repairing their relationship with their customers. Ditching DRM is a good first step, and a necessary one. But it's going to take more than that to win me back as a full-time customer and to wean me off physical CD's. They need to completely re-evaluate everything from the top-down, starting with the artists they sign and promote, then the deals they sign with those artists (the artists need to be the ones taking the lead in promoting their music - I shouldn't even know what label somebody's on), then the way they distribute that music and the value they include with it. They need to be way more customer-friendly, which includes not insulting my intelligence with a bunch of American Idol wannabes all the time, not forcing DRM down my throat and not complaining that CD's are "too cheap". They need to realize that we're the ones keeping them in business with the products we buy, so if they want to make more money, they're going to need to provide us with more value for that money. Part of that means not crippling their songs with DRM.

  2. Compression by skriefal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a good first step. Now start selling the tracks without lossy compression! 99 cents per track for FLAC downloads and even *I* might be interested.

  3. Re:tip by tomstdenis · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The sense, your comment does not make.

    I'd buy legit tracks [as opposed to just massively hording ripped cds] if I was assured they were encoded to sound reasonably well.

    I'm sure 128kbit/sec AAC sounds good on an iPod, but a home stereo with a decent speakers requires a bit more fidelity than that.

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  4. MP3 eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Cue the complaints about advocates of open source formats, but: As long as unencumbered MP3 is going to be used, why not use a format you don't have to pay to use? Ogg or Flac please. Although admittedly asking for full blown flac might be a bit scary to them, how bout some 160 or 192kps ogg files? I'd be totally groovy with that. It might force Apple to implement the fixed point Ogg decoder on their ipods, which would be great.

  5. So by AllofMp3.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe they should buy AllofMp3.com, because that store was/is rivalling iTunes in the UK and that is despite being it on an iffy legal basis and requiring giving your credit card details to a dodgy Russian outfit.

    I know the common perception is that they shoveled product at dirt cheap prices, but the prices were not that cheap (albums cost around $3) and they were easily able to get the sale price EVEN THOUGH THE P2P NETWORKS HAD THE PRODUCT FOR FREE
      Plus they were working on download managers etc. and have the experience of running a major store.

    EMI could sell their own product through their own store (allofmp3 mk2) and make their own money and even sell it to iPod users.

  6. Too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Now that I've been a pirate for more than a decade, I don't care anymore. I'm used to getting what I want, when I want, with very little effort and no restrictions on use. If you can compete with that, you still have to beat the price. Well, not beat the price perhaps, but anything higher than $0.1 per song is not even considered competitive, and that price keeps falling. Get to it, time is working against you.

  7. "Excuse me! Old man coming through!" by pandrijeczko · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Hey, EMI!

    How about you just *continue* to release albums in the best digital sound quality possible (i.e. on CD) and just make the price of those a lot more reasonable?

    Then all of us out here in Consumerland can rip the CDs to whatever format is appropriate to us and not go into fits of hysterical laughter when a Beatles album that was recorded 40 years ago appears in a shop with a £15+ price tag.

    If people want the option of picking tracks from albums in a lossy format, then let them have it - but if theire lives are so damned hectic that they cannot find the time to listen to an album from start to finish, then they are not the true, CD-buying music enthusiasts anyway.

    And if people start whining about "only 2 or 3 good tracks on an album" then suggest that they do a little more research into music and go find some better music.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  8. MP3 eh? by twbecker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While I'm really glad that some in the industry are beginning to realize that it might be smart to dump DRM, I'm a little disappointed to see that MP3 looks like it's going to be the format of choice. Newer formats, like AAC and hell even WMA, offer better sound quality at lower bit rates, and hence, filesizes. If iTMS started selling non-DRM AAC, you have to wonder whether the allegations of lock-in would really go down. AAC, although open, isn't widely supported on non iPod players, is it?

    --
    "The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
  9. Is this Apple's motivation? by genegeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    By eliminating DRM, all music suppliers whose primary revenue is a monthly subscription will have to change their business model. Napster, for example: They sell you all the music you can download and you pay a monthly fee. But as soon as you stop paying the fee, the DRM attached to your music prevents you from playing that music anymore. Thus, if music is sold without any DRM, then Napster and the like won't be able to offer a monthly subscription model. So the new choice in online music will be something like EMI music at iTunes with no DRM, or EMI music at Napster with an 'old fashioned' DRM and lower value to the consumer. Furthermore, since the lack of a DRM gives the music more value to the consumer, Apple might allow a higher per track price. This is something the big music companies have been shouting for. It might be used as a bargaining chip in Apple's next round of negotiations with the music companies.

  10. What EMI really wants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    EMI wants to release DRM free music and charge a premium for it. Now the consumer can decide between a DRMed track for $0.99 from iTunes or DRM free for $2.99 from the EMI store. Don't forget that EMI is one of the companies that is trying to pressure Apple into allowing flexible pricing on the iTunes store. This is what they mean by competing with the iTunes store.