August 10, 2007

Finally... told you so;) - Universal Music Will Sell Songs Without Copy Protection - New York Times

"Signaling another departure from the music industry’s longtime antipiracy strategy, the Universal Music Group will sell a significant portion of its catalog without the customary copy protection software for at least the next few months, the company announced yesterday...."

Link: Universal Music Will Sell Songs Without Copy Protection - New York Times.  and many other links

It looks like my predictions will indeed hold up: DRM in digital music will be toast by the end of this year. Good to see someone is finally waking up at the Major Record Labels. 

In a nutshell, this is like the Berlin Wall Coming coming down. It took a loooooong time but when it happened it crumbled in a very short time, changing the landscape forever.

Aug 10, 2007 3:52:01 AM | DRM

3 Comments

Daniel Suh
1.

Good news! The rest of the labels must follow or else they'll be left behind, however there is still just one problem.


"But the music will not be offered D.R.M.-free through Apple’s iTunes, the leading music service."


The Berlin Wall has been crushed, but still resists to fall.

Posted by: Daniel Suh | August 10, 2007 at 08:14 PM

Ash
2.

Great progress! I hope "the rest of 'em" will follow

Posted by: Ash | August 11, 2007 at 08:50 PM

KL
3.

Has the EMI decision led to any increased sales of iTunes Plus songs compared to the restricted ones? Or is the "progress" just ideological?

I haven't heard any success stories yet, so I would love to hear if anyone else have.

Posted by: KL | August 11, 2007 at 09:02 PM

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About "The End of Control" My new book, and this blog, is about the most important issue the media business is facing as it tries to move forward: control. Try Googling for a definition of “control” and you will find many interesting morsels, such as: control = power to direct or determine; “under control.” Control is the power to determine - for the purpose of this blook, that will make a very suitable definition. In my work as speaker and advisor, the tough issue of control emerges, again and again, as the key contention point within TV companies, publishers, record labels, and broadcasters: How can a commercial venture that is based on so-called “intellectual property” thrive and prosper in an environment that seems to continuously and progressively remove control from the creators/owners/providers of content, and hands it over to the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users), effectively making them more powerful every single day? But the reality is that every click inadvertently makes another case for the consumer’s ever-increasing rise in importance. Within all the conversations I have had about things like commercial content versus shared content, about the read-only or the read-write web, and about copyright versus Fair Use, the crucial question always seems to boil down to WHERE IS THE CONTROL HERE, i.e., questions such as “Who will control this new media universe” and “How much control do I need to run a revenue-generating business?” Ever more devices, ever faster broadband, more channels, more platforms, faster processors, endless storage, better search — and still, we have only 24 hours in a day. The real barrier is attention! For many content creators or providers, it may often seem that one’s power to monetize stands to be inadvertently diminished every time some geek in some garage publishes a new piece of code. Today,...
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Google, Universal Music Partner To Sell DRM-Free Music Link: Google, Universal Music Partner To Sell DRM-Free Music. Looks like a hot summer (and autumn) for digital music and the Major Labels who seem to be finally waking up to what IS rather then what they WANT IT to be. Now this is what's going to happen - they will: Step 1: drop DRM and sell music in the format that people actually want: MP3 (and other open formats - personally I'd love some good wav files!) Step 2: bundle and combine music with SEARCH and Adds Step 3: 'hide' the payments for music within another payments (access, ads etc), and license social networks and online communities to stream music on demand, without the usual DMCA compliant stuff Step 4: share all kinds of revenue streams with all kinds of partners Step 5: offer new deals to artists that will look like agency deals (well.. this will probably happen in parallel). GOOD MORNING MAJOR RECORD LABELS. Listen to this soundtrack for immediate edification: Download alarm_clock_oldstyle.mp3 (courtesy of SoundSnap)

Gerd Leonhard

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