Universal Drops DRM – Snubs iTunes August 12, 2007
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Universal Music Group, which roundly denied any plans to introduce DRM-free downloads, has pulled a U-turn and announced a 6-month trial with thousands of albums and tracks up for sale without the dreaded copyright technology. EMI, which was the first to drop DRM completely, must be doing OK then.
The DRM-free albums and songs will sell through retailer services and online providers like RealNetworks, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Google, among others. The company said:
“The experiment will run from August to January and analyse such factors as consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s.”
Some of the music will be sold for 99 cents, a bit cheaper than the $1.29 Apple charges for its DRM-free tunes. So, where does iTunes fit in here with Universal. Ah, nowhere actually.
Universal will not be allowing iTunes access to its DRM-free content. The reason seems to be that Apple is already too strong in the digital music arena and Universal wants to increase competition [and its own profits] by going with the rest.
Not much of a DRM–free trial/experiment if you exclude the largest download service on the planet though, is it?-Martin Lynch
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
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Comments
The way I read it elsewhere, part of the reason for excluding iTunes (I'm not sayin *how big* a part) is so that they have a control group of DRM-only downloads against which to judge the success of the DRM-free downloads.
That's not such an unusual approach to trying to work out which channels are the most successful, where you have multiple sales channels.
Cheers, Tony.
i need to down load and subscribe your web site
"i need to down load and subscribe your web site"
does the person who wrote that have to right to live? i think not...