Amazon to sell non-DRM files from EMI. I expect we'll see that the other major labels won't be able to hold out for very long against consumers' desire to legally acquire music files that are as flexible as the ones you can illegally obtain.
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Chipping Away
16 May 2007 05:19 pm
Comments (6)
"More correctly, consumers are looking to acquire digital music that is as flexible as that which can be obtained legally on standard CDs"
Exactamundo.
Don't look for movie studios to follow the same script, precisely because the median consumer can't rip DVD's.
And that's what sucks. The only reason we are even approaching an expectation that you should be able to have free access to your audio media is that audio has always been easy to copy, and so we're used to it. We're never going to have that again, with video or whatever new media we create, and so we're never going to feel as outraged as we should that labels and industry groups control how we get to enjoy what we buy.
Since this is music related, can one segue to Hillary Clinton's boomer nostalgia theme song selection?
Matt, you had a post along the same lines when EMI entered an agreement with iTunes. But the reason EMI gave up on this is that they're in desperate need of cash and are most likely going to go bankrupt or be merged into another label. In other words, this is a "going out of business" sale.
The record business is hurting all over, so the other labels might follow suit, or they might not. But it's not a given based on EMI's desperate maneuvers.
Comments closed May 30, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
You say "...consumers' desire to legally acquire music files that are as flexible as the ones you can illegally obtain" which is incorrect.
More correctly, consumers are looking to acquire digital music that is as flexible as that which can be obtained legally on standard CDs - which traditionally have no DRM at all. This is the contradiction at the root level the majors digital distribution strategy (or lack there of) that Steve Jobs most notably, but certainly other people throughout the industry have been hammering on for a while now.
If you can buy a physical CD and rip it on your computer and have DRM free lossless AIFF files - why bother crippling the usage rights of digital consumers at all? Why engineer inconvenience into your product? It's counterproductive at best. It's an example of pre-internet "genie back in the bottle" IP lawyerism at it's most embarrassing.
You can't undo the CD, and while we wait for the industry to accept that, we buy crippled music. Excellent.
Posted by Matthew | May 16, 2007 5:40 PM