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EMI May Sell Entire Collection as DRM-less MP3s
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.'"
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, 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.
One of the big four has to be first. Maybe if one takes that big first step, the rest will realize the folly of DRM and follow.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
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.
I have never bought online music simply for the DRM. If this is available (at a good bit rate)
and the price is fair, there are a lot of songs I've wanted to buy. I only liked one or two
songs from the album so I was never going to go buy the whole CD anyway.
You want my money? You sign up with eMusic and so will I. Deal?
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
"My father sold his entire music collection to the public in MP3 form without Digital Rights Management restrictions... ONCE."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I thought I heard someone say something about one of the music majors actually wanting my money. Well, you know, without tying me down with a bunch of crappy DRM. Which I can't use anyway since I'm dumb enough to be a Linux user.
I'm confused, and I think my wallet's a little frightened. I might actually be able to spend money on new music. How strange.
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.
Not according to the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/business/media/
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!"
iTunes was critical for iPod to become dominant and fend off challengers, but now that both iPod and iTunes dominate in media players and media downloads, iTunes is more of a limitation than a defense for iPod.
Apple will greatly benefit from the destruction of the iTunes "one price, everything DRM'ed" model for music. As Jobs pointed out in his essay, only a tiny fraction of music on iPods is bought from iTunes. If iPod is to continue to grow as fast as it is now, ripping CDs will become a bottleneck. A multi-supplier, competitively priced, flexible, compatible, user-friendly download business is needed for the media-player business to reach the next level of expansion.
What will prevent piracy? The same thing that made phone phreaking obsolete: Music, like long distance phone service, will become too cheap to steal. $0.10 to get a high quality digital recording vs. swapping sketchy rips with sketchy people - the choice is easy. The other side of the coin is that $0.10 is too little money to support the customer service required when people migrate a DRM'ed music collection from one computer to another or one player to another.
I wrote parts of this stuff
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.
He made a statement that Apple would sell music without DRM if the labels would let him and people accuse him of being a cheat, looking out for his own interests. How would selling DRM-free music benefit Apple at all? It wouldn't. It would level the playing field on both online stores and music players. Apple has about 70-75% of the market with DRM. How could they sustain this market with DRM-free music? I don't think they could. So for Jobs to say he wants to drop DRM is a big statement.
I hope EMI follows through on this. Without DRM, now we'll have real competition. Stores will differentiate on quality of music, artists available, and price. I think in the end, FLAC will become the format of choice so player compatibility won't be an issue at all.
And I still think Apple has something up its sleeve. Now that they've settled their feud with Apple Corp., they are free to enter the music business. At some point, they will have an agreement with a major artist to sell the artists music on iTunes without one of the Big 4 labels being involved. This could signal a major shift in artists way of thinking. Who needs a label if you can distribute your music through iTunes?
This will also start a new industry of marketing agencies whose primary business will be marketing recording artists. They will become the promoters instead of the record labels. In 10 years, the labels will either be transformed into promoters or be out of business.
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
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.
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.
He did exactly that:
I agree, please mod parent clueless.