p2pnet - rss feed: DRM-free music is GOOD!
p2pnet.net news:- Makes you want to weep, dunnit.
DRM hasn’t worked, doesn’t work, and never will work, as just about everyone who isn’t joined at the hip to the corporate entertainment or software cartels has been saying ever since it first reared its ugly head.
For one thing, anything which can be seen or heard can be copied. That’s self-evident. For another, no one but an idiot will ever buy into cartel claims that when you spend good money on a CD or DVD, you’re not actually buying it; you’re only licensing it for very specific uses.
Then EMI dropped DRM.
Results? Positive, from all appearances.
Speaking at a US music industry event, “The initial results of DRM-free music are good,” Macworld UK has EMI vp Lauren Berkowitz declaring.
Moreover, the good news is based on sales from over-priced corporate sites such as iTunes, which account for zip in the real world of online music..
“Berkowitz said that initial success with DRM-free songs seems set to boost sales of digital albums, as well as songs,” says the story. “She confirmed that sales of the legendary Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon had increased since it shipped DRM-free - these are up 350 per cent.
“The other three major labels: Universal, Warner and Sony/BMG are reportedly studying the results of EMI’s experiement [sic] closely,” says Macworld. “Those labels still favour rights-restriction in an attempt to protect their content, but market pressure may force them to emulate EMI and join Apple’s iTunes Plus service.”
It’s interesting the way this is framed as speculation. Actually, it’s a solid gold, carved in rock certainty that the other three members of the cartel will follow suit. The only question is when, so:
- When will the Big 4 labels, all of whom are on the distinctly blunt edge of the 21st century digital media curve with or without DRM, lower their prices enough to bring them within range of the hundreds of millions of music lovers who’d dearly love to buy their product?
- When will they abandon their wholly unsuccessful efforts to sue their own customers into becoming compliant consumers?
These events too will come to pass, which means the only real question is:
Will that happen before the once faithful corporate consumer bases have totally haemorrhaged away?
Also See:
Macworld UK - EMI sales climb on iTunes Plus plan, June 20, 2007
account for zip - 1 billion songs a DAY shared online, March 8, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 20th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
What the corporates don’t realise is, by suing all their customers, they have made enemies for life.
It doesn’t matter what PR stunts they pull, I for one will never buy from them again. They lost me as a customer a long time ago, with their vexatious attacks on the vulnerable. The populous has a long memory, and we shall not soon forget what they have done.
I encourage (or do it for them) all my friends and family to download music from the piratebay and other good bittorrent sites. The RIAA and it’s clients can kiss my arse.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
You aren’t alone in this feeling. I personally feel alienated from big music. Not only has it gone to where I don’t recognize it as being music any more but its so damn boringly the same.
I can remember when albums came out that had not one or two hits on them but *gasp!* nearly all were hits. Now a days they are so stuffed with filler they aren’t worth taking a chance on them with the money being charged for just one or two potentially likable songs. There’s no excitement generated today.
But there is another issue here attached to my wallet. I don’t buy products whose corporations ways to doing business I don’t like. It took a few years to wise up to the idea that my dollar was a vote in what I believed in and with holding it was another way of voting. Today I practice that religiously.
The RIAA and other acronyms have shown me just what sort of business they are coupled with just want sort of people work for them that support these sort of actions. Recently the RIAA was voted one of the most despised companies on the face of the earth. Because they are nothing but the lightning rod supposed to take your wrath rather than the true order givers, I guess it never occurs to the labels they receive the fallout over the actions of their pets. Believe that I practice what I preach in this. When the RIAA started sueing file sharers, they kissed their last dollar coming from my hand.
At that point I changed entertainment to movies and was buying 4-5 movies a week for my home library. Then the MPAA started on the sue rampage. Not only did I cease to buy or rent movies but I ceased to get any sort of tv programs at all. Today, my tv has no input to it but the dvd. You know what? Since being without it, I now realize just what a pest the ad companies are. Hearing one after being away from it so long, just turns me totally off. Without hearing them every day, every hour, I’ve become sensitized to the unwanted intrusion.
At this point you couldn’t make me take back tv to hooked up public airwaves. So not only did they loose a customer for life, they lost the willingness of me to put up with their income maker.
Slick move on their part.