EMI — Ditching DRM is Going To Cost You

33rpm writes "EMI has told online music stores that selling its catalog without DRM is going to cost them a lot of money. 'EMI is the only major record label to seriously consider abandoning the disaster that is DRM, but earlier reports that focused on the company's reformist attitude apparently missed the mark: EMI is willing to lose the DRM, but they demand a considerable advance payment to make it happen. EMI has backed out of talks for now because no one will pay what they're asking.'"

Comments

Until I see...

[beckerist]

Someone needs to show me a study that incorporates similar (if not identical) stores and similar (again, if not identical) pricing on a DRM version and DRM-free version of the SAME song. My money is that the DRM-free version makes a lot more money, simply because of its ease-of-use. Hell, I'd even be willing to fork up that extra $.99 (if the song they did this with didn't SUCK.)

Re:DRM costs to much already.

[ThatsNotFunny]

Or they were idiots and purchased phones that, at least in the US, you're unable to upload your own ringtones and can only purchase the ones provided by the mobile carrier. I'm looking at you, Sidekick!

Re:DRM costs to much already.

[danpsmith]

Funny, considering one of the main reasons I won't buy DRM products is it already costs more to do so. If I want my favorite Britney song from Itunes, it costs 99 cents. If I want a ringtone of the same thing, Verizon charges me up to a couple bucks for a much smaller clip of exactly the same song. Why would I pay twice for something I can rip from my (wifes') CD and create myself anyway? Don't they see it's costing THEM more money in the long run to include this garbage?

Exactly. And if the prices were sane, I would definitely buy DRM-Free MP3s. Definitely. But they'd have to be DRM free. I'm not buying .wmas and putting them with the rest of my collection, it's just not happening.

I think what companies don't yet realize is that, look, we already have collections of MP3s. Everyone under 30 probably has a large collection, and I'm one of the few that has a HUGE collection. However, there are times when I want an album and you can't find it on bittorrent and it's not available other than going to the CD store. Honestly, I don't feel like ripping CDs, and there's a lot of times when I just don't even buy the track rather than having to go and buy a CD and rip it to my hard drive. And it has NOTHING to do with cost. It did, at one point when I was a college student money was an issue. Nowadays, it definitely isn't. But when you have a large collection of high quality MP3s that you know will work on your player, in your DVD player, or any number of other devices you simply aren't going to buy a track and break the DRM to have it mesh well with the rest of your collection.

Yes, I'm notorious for downloading a lot of MP3s, but I would be willing to buy legitimate, if only companies would give me the chance to do so. Stop trying to change how we store our music and just mix with what we have. It's the only way you'll survive.

Yours truly,

A kind of average downloader.

A tax?

[dorianh49]

"... the charge is a tax/levy." Anyone else think it's about time to dress up as Indians or one of the other Village People and start throwing 1's and 0's into the Boston Harbor?