Music DRM in Critical Condition?

ianare writes "Universal Music Group, the largest music company on the planet, has announced that the company is going to sell DRM-free music. The test will see UMG offering a portion of its catalog — primarily its most popular content — sold without DRM between August 21 and January 31 of next year. The format will be MP3, and songs will sell for 99 each, with the bitrate to be determined by the stores in question. RealNetwork's Rhapsody service will offer 256kbps tracks, the company said in a separate statement. January 31 is likely more of a fire escape than an end date. If UMG doesn't like what they're seeing, they'll pull the plug. UMG says that it wants to watch how DRM-free music affects piracy rates."

Comments

Re:Another half-ass job

[Solra Bizna]

And if they do, you'll demand that they give you uncompressed 24-bit recordings as a justification for your continued piracy.

-:sigma.SB

99 each?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I'm sure the summary meant 99 cents each, but knowing you guys would have international readers all over the world, would it kill you to add a five-letter word just to clarify things?

Universal DRM-free on iTunes

[Rebelgecko]

Surprisingly, Universal won't have DRM free music on iTunes

Re:It's not that silly, though

[JayAEU]

Heck, in the 90's even half the portable stereos, and every self-respecting cassette deck, had room for _two_ cassettes at the same time and a button to copy from one to the other.

Indeed, and they even had a feature called "high-speed dubbing", which allowed for copies to be made twice as fast.

And that is derived from ---

[Flying pig]

Latin, inter (between or among) and prehensus, to grasp or to take. To be fair, the French term "entreprise" goes back, in its meaning of a business undertaking, almost to feudal times. But what sort of undertaking in those times consituted business?

The concept of the manufacturing enterprise is largely an artefact of the Industrial Revolution (OK, everybody cites the Arsenal, but it's an exception.)The concept of the enterprise as trade (i.e. middleman) is pretty consistent. (The British Empire in India started from a trading monopoly that accidentally had to go to war to protect its interests.) From the 1300s on, any French person using the term "entreprise" would know exactly what the two root words meant, and clearly had no quarrel with that meaning. j'entre, et alors je prise, je suis entrepreneur.

Re:Music costs VERY little to make nowadays

[DupleMeter]

you miss a very important point. Regardless of how cheap some of that equipment is - it's not the same as the equipment you find in a commercial studio (I know, I own a commercial studio). Pro Tools LE is not Pro Tools HD (hence the $15K price difference). Benchmark, Lavry, Lucid all sell very high-end equipment that you will not find in most home studios. Not to mention the cost of qualified professionals...and I'm sorry not everyone who buys prosumer recording equipment has a right to call themselves a recording, mixing or mastering engineer. Good engineers are expensive, back to another posters point...they are expensive because they do what they do better than most.

I hear a lot of "home" recordings that sound like sh*t. Actually, about 99% of them do. Even many "professional" recordings sound bad these days. Sadly, along with a decline in talent in the musician pool, it is further reinforced by the decline of talent on the support end (the studio engineers).

IMO The recording industry isn't losing money because of piracy, they're losing money because no one can be convinced to plop down their hard earned cash for 10 tracks of utter sh*t. Bad writing, poor performance, terrible engineering. Hell, I can't remember the last "mainstream" CD I bought.

So, to bring this all back on topic - DRM or not...doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference until quality returns.