Vivendi’s Universal abandons DRM
p2pnet news view | Music:- DRM is all but dead, at least in the corporate music world.
A while back, Britain’s tottering EMI, now owned by private equity company Terra Firma, took the plunge and started selling downloads which weren’t locked up tight with DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control.
It wasn’t rocket science to predict it would only be a matter of time before the other members of the Big 4 organise music cartel followed suit and now Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, based in France, has done the same, leaving only Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US).
The Los Angeles Times attributes UMG’s reversal as a way to, “blunt Apple Inc.’s growing power” by, “bypassing the iPod maker to sell thousands of songs in an unrestricted digital format through many other online music stores”.
But could there be another reason?
Thanks to DRM and grossly over-priced, formulaic downloads (and vested interest mainstream media hype notwithstanding) the corporate music business is virtually non-existent.
Might it be that because of this, music fans are ignoring corporate offerings in their droves, instead looking to the free P2P networks and steadily growing number of reasonably priced independent download sites for their music fixes?
Apple boasts it’s now reached sales of three billion since iTunes was fired up in 2003.
The number is unsupported, but even if it’s accurate, it means little against what’s happening in the real world of online music.
More than one billion songs are shared online as MP3s every day says The Expanding Digital Universe, an IDC white paper.
A huge exaggeration? Perhaps, but it’s acknowledged even by the corporate music industry that at the very least, around the world, more than one billion files move computer to computer every month.
Competition, not iTunes
In short, is unacknowledged competition, not Apple’s iTunes, behind Vivendi’s abandonment of digital restrictions management —- that and the fact Big 4 enforcement units such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) and CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) are suing Big 4 customers at the Big 4’s behest, in the process creating an enormous base of disenchanted music buyers, who, thanks to the depredations of the ‘trade associations,’ will now have nothing to do with the major labels, part of the reason for UMG’s entirely predictable change of heart?
“Universal Music Group said Thursday that it would begin selling current and back albums – from a collection of stars as diverse as 50 Cent, Maroon 5, Amy Winehouse and Johnny Cash – without anti-piracy software that restricts their use,” says the LA.Times.
“Online retail partners include Best Buy Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. — but not Apple’s iTunes music store.”
It, “seems like a bold-faced move to blunt Apple’s influence,” it has Mike McGuire, vice president of research at Gartner, saying.
Excluded Apple so that iTunes could serve as a ‘control group’
The LA Times goes on:
Universal called the effort a test to see how sales and piracy rates would be affected when it sells songs in the MP3 format, which can be copied freely and played on any computer or mobile device.
The lack of software will make it easy to put copyrighted music on file-sharing networks, but doing so is still illegal. Universal said it hired a firm to monitor piracy during the test period, from Aug. 21 to Jan. 31.
Publicly, Universal said it excluded Apple so that iTunes could serve as a “control group” to make sales comparisons easier. Songs sold through iTunes are wrapped in digital rights management software that prevents them from being shared on more than a certain number of computers and played on devices other than Apple’s iPod and iPhone.
Universal Music CEO Doug Morris said in a statement that the test would “provide valuable insights into the implications of selling our music in an open format.”
But no insight is needed. the writing has been clearly on the wall since 2003 when the RIAA led the way by launching the Big 4’s bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign designed to terrorise people across America into buying corporate, and only corporate, downloads.
The online music industry will suddenly explode
The plan has been a dismal failure, but that isn’t stopping the labels on continuing their persecution of their own customers.
It’ll eventually have to end, but not before the lives of thousands of US citizens, including children, have been made thoroughly miserable.
If and when all the members of the the corporate music cartel drop DRM, and follow up by reducing wholesale rates so retailers, including Apple, can start selling Big 4 offerings at reasonable prices, the online music industry will suddenly explode and labels will be claiming that was the plan all along.
Historically, the period of customer victimisation will be a blip.
But it’ll be a blip marking the change from an era when customers were merely cash cow consumers, led by the noseand forced to pay ridiculous prices to a new, to another where they’re customers again; people with free choice, and the will to use it.
This will also allow the emergence of new talent, new ideas and new ways of selling music.
Big Music has tried to gain total control of how and by whom music is distributed in cyberspace, but it’s failed.
IMHO, the abandonment of the DRM is the first step, not the last.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Click the mic on the right to hear David Bannister’s p2pnetcast of this story >>>>
Also See:
Los Angeles Times – Universal Music to sell songs without copying constraints, August 9, 2007
every day – 1 billion songs a DAY shared online, March 8, 2007
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
With our without DRM do not give even one peny to these pigs! They weill use the money to persecute and extort people and to corrupt our governement even more. It is you duty as citizen to make sure they go out of business.
Buy music form indiies instead and if you really insiste on listening to the old foggy brtiney slutt and madona crap stuff use p2p instead. You don’t have to share. The level of sharing is around 70%. To begin to make a dent in availability math calculation indicate that you have to reduce the sharing down to 1-2% so if you don’t feel confortable sharing you don’t have too. if you are reaaly parano use Winny or Ants or use your P2p2 app via the network system TOR.
You can also use fire wall such as peer-Guardian that keep out only the music and entertainement parasites out of your system. Anyway the odd of beeing buly by these craps is less than wining the lotto even if you share and take no precaution.