Amazon downloads: DRM-free
p2pnet.net news:- Britain’s EMI was the first of the Big 4 labels to make virtually its entire music catalog available without DRM (Digital Restrictions Management).
Offer higher priced downloads and without consumer control, but with slightly higher quality sound, and the punters will come running, is its sincere hope.
And where it goes, Warner Music (US), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) are bound to follow, sooner or later. And the same goes for all corporate online stores offering digital downloads.
Amazon has decided to start selling DRM-free downloads supplied by EMI. This means buyers will be able to do more or less whatever they want with their digital music acquisitions, and as often as they want.
“Amazon already has millions of online shoppers and sophisticated software that recommends products based on customer tastes,” says the Los Angeles Times, going on:
“Amazon’s vow to sell music not limited by so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software deals a big blow to the major record labels. They have tried to keep electronic versions of songs in a format that’s difficult to illegally share.
“Music industry insiders said privately that Amazon’s clout might eventually force them to give up their effort to use technology to restrict what people do with the digital music they buy.”
How much will Amazon be asking? It hasn’t yet said. But $.99 is the going rate, having been established by the Big 4 without any kind of explanation as to how it was arrived at.
Certainly, few people who regularly use the Net to get their music are willing to pay that much, especially when the labels are using their various so-called trade associations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to try to sue their customers around the world into buying product.
The high price charged by the Big 4 is the principal reason they’ve been unable to break into the real world of online music. Not many music lovers will pay a dollar, or even more, for their fixes, especially when they can already get whatever they want, whenever they want it, from the independent music sites run by entrepreneurs and musicians, and/or from the free p2p networks.
When will Amazon launch its new venture? It doesn’t say.
Meanwhile, one of the more interesting question raised by this new development is: what will Apple do?
Disingenuously claiming DRM is down to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, DRM maestro Steve Jobs will start selling DRM-free iTunes downloads this month. .
But of course, there’s a price —- $1.30 per download.
Will the Apple faithful, already paying far too much for far too little, be willing to pay even more to be able to play their music on devices of their choosing?
Stay tuned.
Also See:
without DRM – EMI to drop DRM?, January 9, 2007
Los Angeles Times – Amazon to sell unrestricted songs, May 17, 2007
few people – 1 billion songs a DAY shared online, March 8, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by goverment restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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May 17th, 2007 at 6:55 am
I read this with the assumption that their Unbox service was now without DRM. I wans’t even aware that Amazon had a music store.
Bummer.
May 17th, 2007 at 8:40 am
When Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer asked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezzos if the file format, .MP3 is whats planned, also use Microsofts .WMV format. Bezzos flatly said no.
May 19th, 2007 at 3:52 am
“Will the Apple faithful, already paying far too much for far too little, be willing to pay even more to be able to play their music on devices of their choosing?”
Well if they do,then that is THEIR stupidity! If people are willing to put up with DRM and high prices, then companies like apple are willing to let them.
I for one will NOT be bullied into buying music from these services! I willNOT have DRM of any kind and I think the prices are outragous. I will stick with the ways I regularly get my music.