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EMI Says ITMS DRM-Free Music Selling Well

Posted by Zonk on from the people-like-choice dept.

An anonymous reader writes "'The initial results of DRM-free music are good' says Lauren Berkowitz, a senior vice president of EMI, at a music industry conference in New York. Berkowitz went on to say that the early results from iTunes indicate that DRM-free offerings may boost revenue from digital albums as well as individual songs."

7 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Shock! by thrills33ker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who'd have thought that treating your customers with respect and giving them what they want would pay off?

    Amazing!

    1. Re:Shock! by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Watermarking is not DRM. It's watermarking. DRM controls when and how you are allowed to use the content, and watermarking does not. It only provides a [potential] trail of culpability. If you are modded down, it will be at least half because you are simply wrong - although I have been hit hard by fanboys as well, Apple and otherwise. Right now it's the OSI fanboys modding me down for pointing out that Perens' claim to invent the idea of "open" source is false and that "open" meant something before he opened his mouth on the subject. I suspect you suffer for the same reason I do; some people mod me down any chance they get to make a plausible-looking negative moderation, simply because they recognize me and disapprove of that for which I stand.

      Er, anyway, back on topic: Watermarking is, by definition, not DRM.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Shock! by Scarblac · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Whatever encoding e-mail addresses should be called, DRM it is not. It doesn't limit you in any way.

      Let's not confuse the meaning of terms like this, that's not helpful.

      --
      I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
    3. Re:Shock! by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 5, Informative

      Let's not forget, they still encode e-mail addresses and names in these 'DRM free' tracks. I still consider that DRM.

      You may not like it, but please don't confuse the issue by calling it DRM. It's metadata, even potentially useful metadata, that discourages copyright infringement while not in any way restricting fair use. You can copy those files to any device, or even transcode them into any other format, easily stripping all metadata in the process. Totally different than DRM, where you have to actually break encryption or suffer quality loss in order to do that.

      If we're gonna love someone for providing DRM free tracks, remember Amazon is providing actual unencoded MP3s.

      Except that they haven't opened their store yet. So don't go lauding them when you don't even know that they're not going to include the user id of the person who downloaded the song in the metadata.

    4. Re:Shock! by Odiumjunkie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > The tags added by the iTunes store make it easy for you to prove that you purchased the tracks

      No! They allow you to prove precisely one thing, and that is the tracks contain a completable editable and non-authoratative item of metadata that describes certain data about you. They don't prove who owns the tracks, who bought the tracks, where the tracks have been, who's done what with them - they're a post-it note on a car saying "Dave bought this car". Anyone can put on a new post-it note saying something different, or remove the post-it note altogether.

      The amount of FUD on this topic has been unbelievable.

  2. Isn't it ironic ... by for_usenet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that with 2 earlier articles - making DVD copying even more illegal (if that were at all possible), and a "desire" for a Canadian DMCA, that we "now just find out" people are willing to pay for DRM-free content. I did my part and paid for a couple of tracks that I bought with DRM and "upgraded" to the DRM-free version, and will continue to do so as more become available, and as content I want becomes available DRM-free. Let's really show them where we willing to spend our $. Seems to be the only thing they listen to ...

  3. Re:With sales tax it's a buck-fifty !! by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sell the songs in CD (or better) lossless format, with no DRM, and then I'll be a customer!!!

    You really think you can tell the difference between CD-quality and 256kbps AAC? Doubtful. I call BS. And even if you can tell the difference, and the difference is obvious enough to you that you care, you're one in a billion. For pretty much everyone, 256kbps is near enough to lossless that you could treat it as lossless (even transcode it to another format) and never be able to tell the difference.

    And for that miniscule nearly-undetectable drop in quality, you're cutting your download time, increasing the amount of songs you can hold on your mp3 player, and maybe even increasing battery time.