Indeed Steve Jobs has expressed his feelings about DRM in his open letter one month ago but no one believed that a music company will agree to share Apple’s vision.
April 9, 2007 (Press Release) --
EMI-Apple’s decision to sell on iTunes DRM-free songs was quite a surprise for the music industry. Indeed Steve Jobs has expressed his feelings about DRM in his open letter one month ago but no one believed that a music company will agree to share Apple’s vision.
In a surprising move, last week in a joint press conference with Steve Jobs, EMI Music agreed to launch new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
EMI said at the time that its move comes as a response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI's new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.
"Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.
Indeed the real winners of the EMI-Apple deal are the consumers and, of course, the MP3 players producers, but is still unclear what will be the future of DRM.
Following closely the Apple’s move, Microsoft also hinted that is considering DRM-free songs for its Zune platform. Speaking with Times, Jason Reindorp, head of marketing for Zune, confirmed that Microsoft is negotiating with EMI. “We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content.”, Reindrop said. ”This does open things up a little bit. It potentially makes the competition more of a device-to-device or service-to-service basis, and will force the various services to really innovate.” Reindrop added for Times.
A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the potential agreement for IDG News Service. "The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the IDG News Service.
Tough, EMI declined to comment a possible deal with Microsoft but confirmed that the two companies are negotiating. Zune Marketplace, a service similar with iTunes, offers already music from EMI.
Even with Apple and Microsoft playing on the same side, it’s not sure that the other three major companies, Warner Music, Universal and Sony BMG will follow EMI’s example.
With EMI Apple deal in place, the three music giants are facing increased pressure to adopt DRM-free downloads, but they had their reservations about the uncertain impact on this decision.
Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. already expressed publicly his opinion about DRM-free world. Shortly after Jobs’ letter Edgar Bronfman said in a conference call with analysts that Apple CEO stance to give up DRM is "completely without logic or merit. We advocate the continued ... protection of our and our artists’ intellectual property" he said. “There is no logical reason to abandon DRM nor to disadvantage services that are successfully implementing DRM," Bronfman added. The other two music companies declined to make public comments on the EMI-Apple deal.
Instead the music companies would preferred Apple to share with other makers the FairPlay technology, which allows music downloaded from iTunes to be played only in iPod.
What is clear is that the music executives worry that dropping DRM will make the music vulnerable to piracy. The unprotected songs downloaded from legal services may find their way on to illegal file-sharing networks, which in the end mean that fewer people will be interested to buy.
In theory, EMI’s move should boost the company’s online music sales, despite the piracy. EMI hopes to grab a bigger share of the digital music market (which is expected to steadily rise in detriment of CD sales until 2010), putting its bet also on music downloaded on mobile phones (more than 500 million handsets available worldwide by the end of 2007). But this is just a theory…
Another issue is the price of the DRM-free songs. According to Apple and EMI, the songs with their DRM removed will be available at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. A higher price could lure the customers away from legal music services.
In the past, Apple dismissed the request of the music companies to introduce a variable pricing scheme on iTunes. During the first period of 2006, the officials of the four companies had made a lot of statements saying that the old records should be priced at 60 – 80 cents, and the price of the new tunes should be around $1.20. Apple argued that a flat-rate price is a method to keep customers away peer-to-peer and illegal file-sharing services.
Still, an EMI-Apple success could convince the other companies to jump into DRM-free boat. Even Apple EMI deal could mean a new era for consumers, their effort to ditch DRM will be useless if the other music companies will decide not to follow the same policy. Until now, DRM is alive and kicking.
Source: http://www.playfuls.com/
In a surprising move, last week in a joint press conference with Steve Jobs, EMI Music agreed to launch new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
EMI said at the time that its move comes as a response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI's new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.
"Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.
Indeed the real winners of the EMI-Apple deal are the consumers and, of course, the MP3 players producers, but is still unclear what will be the future of DRM.
Following closely the Apple’s move, Microsoft also hinted that is considering DRM-free songs for its Zune platform. Speaking with Times, Jason Reindorp, head of marketing for Zune, confirmed that Microsoft is negotiating with EMI. “We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content.”, Reindrop said. ”This does open things up a little bit. It potentially makes the competition more of a device-to-device or service-to-service basis, and will force the various services to really innovate.” Reindrop added for Times.
A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the potential agreement for IDG News Service. "The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the IDG News Service.
Tough, EMI declined to comment a possible deal with Microsoft but confirmed that the two companies are negotiating. Zune Marketplace, a service similar with iTunes, offers already music from EMI.
Even with Apple and Microsoft playing on the same side, it’s not sure that the other three major companies, Warner Music, Universal and Sony BMG will follow EMI’s example.
With EMI Apple deal in place, the three music giants are facing increased pressure to adopt DRM-free downloads, but they had their reservations about the uncertain impact on this decision.
Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. already expressed publicly his opinion about DRM-free world. Shortly after Jobs’ letter Edgar Bronfman said in a conference call with analysts that Apple CEO stance to give up DRM is "completely without logic or merit. We advocate the continued ... protection of our and our artists’ intellectual property" he said. “There is no logical reason to abandon DRM nor to disadvantage services that are successfully implementing DRM," Bronfman added. The other two music companies declined to make public comments on the EMI-Apple deal.
Instead the music companies would preferred Apple to share with other makers the FairPlay technology, which allows music downloaded from iTunes to be played only in iPod.
What is clear is that the music executives worry that dropping DRM will make the music vulnerable to piracy. The unprotected songs downloaded from legal services may find their way on to illegal file-sharing networks, which in the end mean that fewer people will be interested to buy.
In theory, EMI’s move should boost the company’s online music sales, despite the piracy. EMI hopes to grab a bigger share of the digital music market (which is expected to steadily rise in detriment of CD sales until 2010), putting its bet also on music downloaded on mobile phones (more than 500 million handsets available worldwide by the end of 2007). But this is just a theory…
Another issue is the price of the DRM-free songs. According to Apple and EMI, the songs with their DRM removed will be available at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. A higher price could lure the customers away from legal music services.
In the past, Apple dismissed the request of the music companies to introduce a variable pricing scheme on iTunes. During the first period of 2006, the officials of the four companies had made a lot of statements saying that the old records should be priced at 60 – 80 cents, and the price of the new tunes should be around $1.20. Apple argued that a flat-rate price is a method to keep customers away peer-to-peer and illegal file-sharing services.
Still, an EMI-Apple success could convince the other companies to jump into DRM-free boat. Even Apple EMI deal could mean a new era for consumers, their effort to ditch DRM will be useless if the other music companies will decide not to follow the same policy. Until now, DRM is alive and kicking.
Source: http://www.playfuls.com/
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