Sony Announces DRM-Free Music at Amazon 293
sehlat brings us a New York Times report that Sony has agreed to start selling DRM-free music from Amazon's MP3 store. This comes days after Sony revealed plans for physical MusicPass cards that would allow DRM-free access to a small portion of Sony's library. Now that all four major record labels are on board with Amazon, some are expecting Apple to make moves away from DRM as well. From the NYTimes:
"Sony's partnership with Amazon.com also underscores the music industry's gathering effort to nurture an online rival to Apple, which has sold more than three billion songs through its iTunes store. Most music purchased on iTunes can be played only on Apple devices, and Apple insists on selling all single tracks for 99 cents. Amazon, which sells tracks for anywhere from 89 cents to over a dollar, offers the pricing variability the labels want."
Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
It didn't take dismantling of the RIAA, court-ordered cessation of their ridiculous lawsuits, or legislative intervention to protect the consumer - it took your disillusionment with the industry and unwillingness to part with hard-earned cash to pay for crippled formats and less freedom with the content you purchased.
The next step will be the determining factor in the future of media sales. Will you buy MP3s, unrestricted, for a reasonable price? Or will you continue to download it for free via Limewire?
Option A will reinforce a reasonable business model that will benefit the industry, the artist, and you.
Option B will reverse the progress that has been made.
Choose wisely, Indiana Jones...
It also took Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple already did with EMI - They were first! (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I'm of the mind that iTunes tracks have always been DRM free though, since you are allowed to burn them to CD. If you just want to use the iPod alone, there's no need. This in built burn to cd option hasn't been the case for other DRM schemes that I know of.
Try as I might, I can't hear any difference to a track I've burned to CD and encoded as mp3. Aac has its advantages (aside from the drm everyone mutters about), I do like the bookmark feature.
Re:Free market (Score:4, Insightful)
But some will believe that music isn't worth their money, but is worth the effort to torrent. they will claim that they are just not willing to reward the awful quality of music with their money, rather than complaining about money.
Or, of ocurse, they will claim that the formats you can buy just aren't good enough. They will want lossless.
But, like you say, if sales of music don't pick up, and piracy doesn't decline, some in the industry will exclaim that DRM must return. Not sure that this affects the pirates very much.
Pirates: at least remove all the tags, etc, so it's not too obvious that files you share came from DRM-free stores.
US only (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Amazon has more attractive prices (generally $8 for a CD)
2) It's in MP3. I think non-DRM's AAC files are fine, but MP3's are more desirable.
3) Amazon just downloads the stuff to your hard drive. It feels just like a purchase.
All that said, CD's are more desirable, and if purchased used are a better value (they can be legally resold). But the Amazon model is the first electronic system to be interesting enough for me to pay money for it.
DRM killed itself. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has more or less a stranglehold now on the market, and the labels demanding DRM on their music help Apple maintaining this stranglehold, and block e.g. Amazon from selling music that plays on the iPod. After all, when they must use DRM, they can not use Apple's DRM, and thus the market for Amazon and the rest is limited to the non-iPod market. And that market of course is small, and no serious competition for Apple.
The only way out for the labels, the only way to break Apple's hold including the demands of one price for all songs, is to drop the DRM requirement. And finally they do so - it started of course with some iTunes-plus songs, and then one after another the labels realised that they themselves are locked in by DRM as much, if not more so, than the consumers. Even "rootkit" Sony BMG apparently finally realised that.
Now the only thing I can hope for is some real competition. US$ 0.99 (HK$ 7.7) for a single song is imho way too expensive. For that price I can buy complete movies (legal, mind you - old ones, but still, a complete movie, on VCD, sometimes go for HK$10 for two). A new movie on VCD costs here HK$ 40-50, a DVD costs about HK$ 90-120, a music CD costs HK$ 70-100 for local artists and HK$ 110-150 for overseas artists. This for legal copies, not the cheap illegal import from China.
So now finally the labels have cut the DRM from the songs, allowing Amazon and presumably soon other vendors, maybe Microsoft or Yahoo, to sell songs without DRM. Amazon is now selling a lot at prices lower than iTunes, this will likely attract customers away from iTunes. iTunes is getting competition, and may be forced to lower their prices. iTunes may also decide to give up on their DRM, the lock-in is broken up by the supply side and there is no need for them to put on the DRM. After all adding DRM costs money: it takes computer cycles, requiring more computer power; it requires extra logic on their chips or software in the iPods, etc. DRM less media is cheaper, even if only marginally so.
So will Apple give up on their DRM? Sure. I'm really sure they will. Maybe not anytime soon, but as soon as Amazon et. al. get some traction, they will. As soon as there comes a real competitor to the iPod, they will do as well just to keep there store going.
Reasonable pricing (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, but remember that the definition of "reasonable" is that the price is something both seller and buyer will agree on.
Until the current pricing has proven to actually be reasonable, nobody knows if we're there yet. The "reasonable" price for a song could very well be $0.01 per song, and then the current uncrippling of extremely over-priced songs wouldn't prove anything.
Re:Apple already did with EMI - They were first! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's nonsense. The fact that it is possible to burn to an inconvenient physical format an then rip to a DRM free format does not make iTunes DRM free. There is an inevitable loss of quality in this time-consuming process. I cannot play the original file on anything but iTunes or an iPod. That is DRM and it does not equate to consumer choice. Happily, Apple will now be forced to get rid of DRM - in the US, at least.
I have no problem with AAC - it's a good format and it can be played by Rockbox, but the DRM is not acceptable. I will never buy restricted media.
This is anti-competitive (Score:2, Insightful)
What the record companies are attempting to do here is break iTunes' monopoly on music downloads. They see the way to do this as supplying another retailer with a superior product (ie. DRM-free music) whist still insisting that iTunes sells DRM'ed tracks. They are then hoping that people will move over to Amazon's system, killing iTunes, whereupon they will then either declare DRM-free a failed experiment and re-lock the music, or force you to download entire albums only, or set variable pricing, or any other nefarious scheme they have dreamt up.
If you believe that the record companies have 'caved in' or are doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts, then you really need to develop a healthy sense of cynicism, and quickly ! The record companies are actually being incredibly anti-competitive here, allowing one sales channel access to a superior product that they deny to another.
iTunes has been a massively positive force for music downloads - it offers a-la carte choice and fixed-price downloads. It's extremely easy to use, and, well, just works. The record companies were handed a 'get out of jail free' card for internet downloads, something they hadn't been able to figure out themselves, and all they can do in return is attempt to bring down the very system that saved their necks. I think this says something about their mentalities.
The thing is, I don't think this will change anything. The average consumer values convenience over DRM, and nothing is as easy to use as iTunes. Eventually the record companies will have painted themselves into a corner, or will face a legal challenge from Apple, and all have to offer DRM-free on iTunes. Either that or Apple will do deals directly with the artists (lets' hope) and leave these backstabbing, money-grubbing bastards out in the cold.
Re:Apple already did with EMI - They were first! (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a number of online stores with DRM-free catalogs prior to Apple's involvement, and the DRM removal on iTunes was at the request of EMI, not the other way around.
Re:Free market (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure that I agree on this. Yes, major labels selling DRM-free music is probably a reasonable business model. But I'm not convinced that Option B is the regression you make it out to be. There is other progress to be made as well. DRM-free music solves a number of problems related to the restrictions on using your music. It doesn't address the problem that strong copyright poses for remixing/producing in a read-write culture (in Larry Lessigs words).
Illegal downloading by a large portion of society may well force politicians to rethink copyright. I'm not saying it necessarily will - only that it could. I live in Sweden, and in the months leading up to our last election, there was a lot of talk about illegal downloading. Several of the major political parties expressed the view that making an activity so many were engaging in illegal, was absurd and could threaten people's respect for the law.
All I'm saying is, if people continue to download their music from p2p services, it's not necessarily all bad news. That said, having all major labels offer DRM-free music is very good news, though, and I hope they are rewarded for it.
Re:Apple already did with EMI - They were first! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
As for choosing wisely lest we lose progress, What Progress? Copyright still lasts for an Unconstitutionally long time (which is effectively unlimited), and artists are still be badly exploited by massive corporations. There is no progress to be lost, except the continued erosion of sales of music owned by the big cartel. The decline of their revenue is the REAL progress. Once the power of big media is eroded to the point of making re-regulating media and telecommunications in a reasonable way, then we will have made a grand achievement.
Re:Free market (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it is a good move on Sony's part to release DRM-free music. But it is too soon to start buying their stuff. They are still Sony. Don't forget the Blu-Ray DRM. With the region codes they intend to spring if they win the format war. And don't forget the rootkit fiasco. As I understand it, Sony continues to plant trojans on their CDs, they just don't contain rootkits anymore. Yes, definitely too soon.
DRM free but still too much (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is anti-competitive (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. It locks iTunes to the iPod, and so they mutually support each other giving apple the monopoly. Speaking out against it didn't mean Jobs didn't like it. Just that he realised that if Apple didn't allow DRM free music on iTunes, it would mean competitors would be able to offer a better product. Apple had to make a concession here.
Sony/BMG have shown their colors with the rootkit (Score:4, Insightful)
They will never have my business again. They proved themselves untrustworthy and only fools ask to be taken twice.
Re:DRM killed itself. (Score:3, Insightful)
Does iTunes' present contract allow them to lower the prices?
Does iTunes' present contract allow them to drop the DRM?
all the best,
drew
Re:This is anti-competitive (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly do. Having DRM directly benefits Apple. You're locked into the iPod. If your iPod dies and you've bought a ton of music from the iTMS and you're faced burning it all to CD and re-riping it then, likely, having to import all of your music into some Media Library Management software that is compatible with a new MP3 player what are you more likely to do? Buy a new MP3 player and deal with all of that crap or buy a new iPod?
Re:It also took Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is not a saint by any stretch, but I think your analysis is way off. Rather than arrogant they were smart enough to create a market the way consumers wanted it to be and they tried hard to protect that market from disastrous media company meddling. Now the media companies are once again trying to screw up the digital market by excluding the one partner who made the market viable. I don't think Jobs is perfect, but he's a hell of a lot smarter than the media rubes and he'll have an answer for them. I for one howpe the rumor of Apple creating its own record label is true. They need to shake up big media's control and corrupt business practices.
As for the Amazon thing. I welcome any DRM free tracks. That's a positive step. But beware of the media companies motives. If they manage to break Apple I have no doubt that DRM will be back in a big way because the RIAA does not care about consumer needs one bit.
Re:Amazon is selling cross platform. (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but Amaxon is selling tracks in the universal format. Apple is not. Tracks from Amazon will play in by son's iPod, my daughter's Creative Zen, my Coby MP3 player, and in my living room DVD player. Itunes tracks on the other hand will play on my Son's Ipod and a couple computers and nowhere else. The choice of music vendors is simply a matter of compatibility for many. DRM is a compatibility issue. So is formats other than MP3.