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Sony Announces DRM-Free Music at Amazon
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Jan 11, 2008 04:40 AM
from the not-as-dumb-as-we-thought dept.
from the not-as-dumb-as-we-thought dept.
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."
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Sony's Idea of DRM-Free Music 370 comments
edmicman writes "Leave it to Sony to mess up DRM-free music downloads. What is the point of DRM-free tracks if you still have to go to a retail store to buy them? From the Infoworld article: 'The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM, from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada... The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card's covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."'"
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News: Amazon MP3 Store to Go Global in 2008 196 comments
Amazon announced in a press release today their plans to sell DRM-free music worldwide through the Amazon MP3 store beginning later this year. This news is being viewed by some as the latest volley in Amazon's digital music sales war with Apple's iTunes. Since Amazon has completed its plans to offer DRM-free music from all four major record labels (most recently, Sony and Warner), the global availability of the MP3s can only be excellent news for customers.
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Satan just called... (Score:4, Funny)
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)
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Free market (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Free market (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Free market (Score:5, Informative)
Bob[Bob] wrote and included with a post:
The main reason I can think of for preferring MP3 over AAC: Just about every compressed audio player will play MP3 files. Although the number of players that will play AAC file is increasing, it will be a long time before it will approach the number that can play MP3.
I have many devices that will play compressed audio files (including my computer). All will play MP3, five will play WMA, two will play AAC, and two will play ATRAC.
One of the main advantages AAC has over MP3 is better sound quality at a lower bitrate. For me, encoding my MP3 files at a 192 bitrate gives me good sound quality, and I don't mind the extra space it take to store the files. I might save space using AAC but the files will only play on a limited number of devices.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll continue to download the albums, listen to them and then either buy the CD (if I liked the album) or delete what I downloaded (if I didn't).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
US only (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Redundant by design (Score:4, Funny)
Sony - FUD. Redundant by design.
Economist Article (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote:
IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there.
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:Go fuck yourselves (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Go fuck yourselves (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Apple already did with EMI - They were first! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Apple already did with EMI - They were first! (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. emusic.com was doing this years before iTunes.
Parent
Re:There's Already DRM-Free Music At Amazon.... (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, if you don't see the sanctioned logo [google.com] on front or back of the case on the actual paper inserts, odds are you have a DRM-laden disc.
Parent