p2pnet - rss feed: Dump DRM, UK retailers plead
p2pnet news | DRM:- DRM is hurting sales of organised music cartel product to the extent that in the UK, Britons have spent only 79 pence - in the region of the rip-off price of one corporate track - per download per head of population per year for the past three years.
So says Kim Bayley, director-general of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), quoted in the Financial Times.
Or put another way, the average Briton has bought fewer than three digital tracks in the past three years, says new figures, and now stores want the Big 4 corporate music cartel to dump DRM for online downloads —- but not because they’ve finally woken up and realised DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control is dumb.
Rather, “Incompatible proprietary technologies, aimed at defeating rampant piracy in the digital music era, are instead ’stifling growth and working against the consumer interest’, says the FT, quoting Bayley.
The music industry, aka Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US), “makes at least 40 per cent of its revenues in the fourth quarter, but the traditional sales build-up has started later than usual,” says the story, going on:
Recorded music companies had been “quick to complain” that the slide in CD sales had not been offset by growth in digital music, Ms Bayley said, but their embrace of digital rights management (DRM) systems “might have added to the slow take-up of legal digital services”.
There are, “certainly experiments, but there’s still a certain element of resistance within the music industry, Bayley says in the FT story, going on:
“At the moment, [DRM] just puts consumers off.”
‘Consumers’ spend as much as $25 on a CD only to be told they don’t actually own it - they’ve merely rented it for very specific industry stipulated uses
Then comes Bayley’s killer statement.
Consumers, she says, are almost four times as likely to choose an MP3 file over a DRM-protected track, “when the two were offered alongside each other”.
Really? What a surprise.
“The ERA, which represents high street retailers and online sites, said it was making the appeal now in the hope that music companies would drop DRM protections before the Christmas season and the January sales rise, when consumers load up the iPods they receive at Christmas,” adds the financial Times.
(Thanks, Tom)
Also See:
Financial Times - Anti-piracy moves ‘hurt sales’, November 20, 2007
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November 21st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
This is a DUH moment that comes home. Of course, the main purpose has been to get the cd dead and gone by the customer shunning the product to begin with in favor of digital mp3s that are easier to put in the DRM.
They may do things that are stupid to the public but it is always with an end purpose in mind. Many time it strikes me they don’t think it through beyond the initial desire they support.
A good example of this is the sweethart deals that were given the major chain stores. They didn’t think through that giving these volume discounts would close the doors on mom and pop stores that provided more exposure and income through the back catalog sales. Nor did they they think through the realization that giving the chains the power to distribute the “product” would curtail their income for the amount charged for it.
Nor was it considered when they made sue’em all a policy that it would totally turn off the public. So much so that the artists themselves are now looking at disassociating themselves with the majors just so they aren’t painted with the same brush of hate as seen by their fans while at the same time removing the labels from the money chain. The end result of that means that if all artists go this route then the only thing remaining for income for the labels are made entertainers and back catalog sales.
When faced with the ultimate reality that refusing to lower prices could result in their total loss of that distribution chain when the chains would be willing to drop the sales completely if the price were not lowered has bitten them in the butt with lower income which strangely is attributed to piracy instead of their own screwups.
Now they are faced with their own distributors again demanding they alter their business methods before they drag yet another group into considering ways around the label to get product to the customer. There is no telling what that could take the form of. It might be the businesses dropping all together music from their shelves in favor of something else which could actually move to the sales register or it might mean stores offering indie only titles that might be willing to hear what they have as concerns.