Universal: yes to DRM-free music, no to iTunes.
Danny Gorog12 August 2007, 6:02 AM
When will the dinosaurs who run the record companies finally work out that consumers don't 'dig' DRM, and would rather steal than use it?
In what appears to be little more than an effort to increase its bargaining position with Apple, Universal have just announced they will begin trialling the sales of DRM-free music to all digital music sellers except for iTunes.
In the press release Universal states that 'it is continuing the testing of digital sales of tracks and albums without digital rights management (DRM) by making thousands of its albums and tracks available from its digital repertoire in MP3 form without DRM enabling, for a limited time.'
Participants in the trial will include Google, Wal-Mart, Best Buy Digital Music Store, Rhapsody, Transworld, Passalong Networks, Amazon.com and Puretracks. Universal will also be selling the DRM-free music at the standard wholesale rate, meaning there will be no requirement for the reseller to price differentiate between DRM and DRM-free equivalents.
This is in stark contrast to iTunes Plus that launched in May this year. iTunes Plus is Apple's DRM free music offering, providing DRM-free music (only from EMI at present) encoded at 256Kbps for an extra fifty cents. Steve Jobs however confidently predicted that all four majors would be selling DRM-free music by year end.
Universal's move stinks of a big old-time company trying to save itself from irrelevance, and continues the tradition of music labels treating their customers like idiots. The music labels realise that DRM free music is the future and that CDs are dying a quick death. Universal's move should be applauded on one hand (the fact that they are dipping their toe in the water is something, I guess) and lampooned on the other, as not putting the DRM-free music onto iTunes -- the largest online music store in the world by a vast margin -- means they're not really serious about giving it a try.
It's moves like this that make you smile a secret smile when you get word that music piracy (due to consumers' distaste for DRM) is still on the rise, and that hopefully in the not-too-distant future record labels will have become largely irrelevant, with artists recording and submitting music directly to online services and getting a bigger cut of sales.