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Apple's iTunes and e-tailer Amazon.com are in position to test this hypothesis in the coming months. On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it plans to sell digital songs from record label EMI Group that will be DRM-free. Amazon's unprotected music, which will be sold from the retailer's upcoming download store, can be played on a wide variety of portable music players, including Apple's iPod and Microsoft's Zune. Amazon's announcement follows one last month from Apple, which is also due to begin selling unprotected music from EMI.
The music industry-- struggling with one of its worst-ever sales slumps--will be closely watching how Amazon and Apple fare. If they are successful in moving a lot of songs, then that might convince the other three major record companies to strip DRM from their music. If sales are lackluster, then that might spur the labels to wrap songs in even tighter copy protection, say industry insiders.
"DRM is the only thing that has given the industry any kind of control," said one record executive, who requested anonymity.
David Card, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said it's going to be hard for Amazon and Apple to prove anything by selling music from only one of the four major labels.
"Amazon is a strong endorsement for this (unprotected music) strategy," Card said. "The question of whether it's enough to tilt the tables away from DRM remains to be seen. The sales would have to be huge to bring the others on board."
Representatives from Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG declined to comment.
Sales of traditional CDs are in a free fall. The industry reported a 17 percent decline in album sales so far this year. Ipsos Insight, a Chicago-based market research firm, issued a report recently that showed a 15 percent drop from 2002 in the number of U.S. consumers who had bought a CD within the past six months. The music industry is waiting for music downloads to make up these losses, but that hasn't happened yet.
The question of whether DRM-free music will appeal enough to consumers to make them pay for it may be answered by music fans like Elise Malmberg and her husband, Joe Gore.
The San Francisco couple are musicians, music critics and owners of more than 500GB of music. The couple listens to songs on iPods and other devices.
"DRM is kind of a moot conversation," said Malmberg, who bought her last CD from Amazon in December. "The record labels are trying to control something that's totally out of their control. People can access songs now regardless of DRM. It doesn't help."
If the price is right ...
Gore and Malmberg rip most of the songs they listen from albums and load it on to their iPods. While the pair does buy some music from iTunes, they don't tolerate Apple's copy-protection software.
"We know a way to convert everything into regular MP3s," Malmberg said. "We can then move them around to any device we want. It's ridiculous for them to say I can listen to songs only on the players they say I can."
Amazon and Apple could end up frustrating consumers, many of whom have long resented having to figure out what music formats and DRM schemes are compatible with the many music players available, said Susan Kevorkian an analyst with IDC.
"By offering both DRM-protected music and songs without, these retailers are adding another level of complexity," Kevorkian said.
Nonetheless, Malmberg, 44, and Gore, 48, said they would absolutely buy unprotected music from Amazon as long as the retailer's new site is simple to use and sells songs at the right price.
Look for other retailers, including Wal-Mart, to offer DRM-free music, said music-industry sources. Amy Colella, a Walmart.com spokeswoman said the company has yet to decide its next move.
"We know digital music interoperability is important to our customers and continue to evaluate these types of opportunities," Colella said.
Jeanne Meyer, a spokeswoman for EMI, declined to identify which retailers would next begin offering unprotected music. "We're out talking to everyone," she said.
If EMI is able to stir up interest in DRM-free music among retailers (Apple is responsible for 80 percent of all music downloads), it may help push other labels to at least try it out, according to industry insiders.
One executive from one of EMI's rival labels said that the fear among DRM proponents within the record industry is that the labels could be "swept up" into copy-free music should it take off with retailers.
They may be right to tread lightly here. Not even Malmberg is convinced that offering consumers a way to listen to music on multiple devices is the way to cure what ails the record industry. She said that too many consumers have gotten use to paying little or nothing for songs.
"Ultimately I don't think digital music will be a primary product," Malmberg said. "I think it will be a value-added thing that's used to sell other products."
See more CNET content tagged:
Amazon.com Inc., digital-rights management, copy protection, EMI Group Plc., retailer
The music industry complains that CD sales are in a free fall and I have to say, they have no one to blame but themselves. First off, and maybe I'm just hitting my "you kids get off my lawn" stage, but a lot of the music being released is terrible. Most of it is just rehashing (or 'sampling' as you kids call it) old music anyway. Many of the kids releasing music these days can't even sing during a performance because so much of it depends on them dancing instead of actually singing. Second, the prices are way out of whack. I've been eyeing the new Feist disc at Starbucks. They want 15.00 for it but I can get the same music from iTunes for 9.99 and I just burn it on my own disc. Granted I have slightly more portability and freedom with the disc, but is that worth an extra 5.00 when I'm near a digital player 85% of my day anyway? Finally, the music industry has sabotaged itself with their own paranoia. Take Sony's root kit fiasco and the latest incident with the Blue Ray discs where they've made their own product incompatible with their own players. They put so many wacky DRM schemes on the discs that I can't play the things in the one player I use most, my computer.
I hope it works, but who knows.
To even insinuate any blame on retailers for the DRM-restrictions that are imposed by record companies is foolishness, and coming from an "analyst" is a good display of lacking integrity. As for confusing the public, I don't think having a separate section of the site where "DRM-FREE Music" that would be open to any music players would be that hard for the public to understand.
of FM.
buy DRM-free music, and not from dubious sources like
allofmp3.com. Consumers should want all the labels to drop
DRM, and the other three major labels are going to need
convincing.
So stop buying music from three big ones that insist on DRM.
Buy only from EMI and indies that sell without DRM. If we vote
with dollars, the industry will have to respond.
Instead, charge me a reasonable fee on a monthly or annual basis, and let me access any piece of media from any computer anywhere at any time and play it on any device I choose. I already do that for music (Rhapsody.com) and I find the experience much more useful.
This 'pay by the download' approach hopefully is only a passing fad.
-jason
So far, the success of iTunes shows that most people want to own their music.
Tomorrow may be another story.
too much work, too inconvenient and lock me into monthly pricing
that I don't want.
fad" increases market share.
I'd say that, oh, 80% of consumers strongly disagree with you..
Not Zune (huvering at 2.5%). Even the non-ipod players mostly
contain purchased music instead of rented.
Stats just don't bear this out.
Also, if this is so great, why hasn't this worked with renting
furniture and so on. Why aren't we all leasing cars? eh
All they have accomplished so far is to push their customers to innovate new methods of getting DRM free music (and dust off some old methods).
Years ago it was common for people to copy their albums and tapes and share with their friends. Napster made it more convenient to use the net rather than cassette tapes.
But now, once again, it's quite common these days for groups of people with common musical tastes to buy a single CD, rip it, and distribute the music to everyone who chipped in for the disk. I've even heard of music buying "co-ops" among groups of people.
Does the RIAA plan to start patting down everyone on the planet and searching their USB drives?
Perhaps providing the product your customers want at a reasonable price might be the basis for a successful business.
In other words, if we don't chip in and bail them out, they'll punish us by making DRM even worse?
Where is the evidence that file swapping is the reason for slow sales? DRM solves little, even if you believe it works. This isn't the Napster/Kaaza heyday... I don't even know anybody downloading illegal files anymore.
Maybe they should look in the mirror and search for reasons there. Overpriced product? Crappy music? Lack of interest in the latest "dancing girl" musician? Competition for entertainment dollars based on expanded options? Dollars going to new hardware (iPods aren't cheap like CD walkmans were!)? The list goes on.
With very few exceptions, the industry is not releasing product that appeal to this demographic.
For example, everyone I know age 45+ listens to talk radio now. We are sick of Oldie and Classic Rock stations... For me, there are only a handfull of new songs a year that I really like.
Find some fresh and creative artists, and get cloned radio stations to play there stuff. Then, MAYBE the largest segment of our population will start buying CD's again.
I think music has lost a lot of it's glamour. It's now a commodity. Add to it the fact that most of the large music retailers have gone either belly-up or closed shop. Big box stores sell most of the music and are dedicating even less space for music sales, so it will be even harder to find a wide variety of music off line. In addition, the music industry has managed to pis5 off most of their customers.
I don´t mean to say that yesterdays music was better... Hell, there´s a lot of crap form the ´70s and ´80s i´d like to forget about. But it´s like, nowadays, they´re going way out line with it. And DRM is not helping eiher.
Get better artist, offer their music at a fair price; and i´ll buy they CDs for the music, the artwork, the line notes, bios, pictures... like the good old days of vinyl and pre-iPod digital music (CDs)
Rehash and Crap
Enough said.
I've had an ipod sense they came out with the first generation,
and have 5th gen. now. Although I love my ipod just as much as
the next person, I have come to a rather disturbing realization.
The music selection on my ipod (although vast), has become
stagnant and stale. So, I started asking my friends and found
that we had all become accustom to hearing perfectly clear
music anytime we want, when and wherever we wanted. I also
found that we had all become completely intolerant of radio
commercials. Some even choosing to sit in silence in the car if
they forgot their ipods rather than listen to annoying radio
commercials trying to sell stuff.
I'd be one of the first people to slam good-old radio. However,
despite it's many downsides and annoyances, it did constantly
force new artists in-front of our faces. It kept our music libraries
alive and fresh. Although I don't have the numbers to prove it, I
would venture to guess that if we looked, we would undoubtedly
find a correlation between the ever decreasing radio audience
and the decrease in cd sales.
I don't really have an answer to this theorized problem yet, so I'll
leave that up to you to come up with. :)
It's too late already and it wont make any difference which way they go
every drm scheme gets cracked and anyone who can use google can break it.
Give it up already
Well, with DRM-free music, the labels are finally giving you what you want: the opportunity to buy only the songs you want at a fair price.
If you find yourself still resistant to paying for the music you enjoy and to support the artists who create it, perhaps you need to re-examine your morals and ethics. There is no more rationale for stealing.
Digital Music Sites = DRM, subscription fees, No CD, No Art, lower than CD quality and the online Music Sites charge 99˘ for each DRM Track! No thanks I will buy a discounted CD online. Deals like 23 songs at $7 with a physical CD copy and artwork. LOL! Things just gotta change.
What people want are tunes at 50˘ or lower and DRM FREE! It really can't get any simpler but I guess greed blinds.
- Indie Lables are Killing Big Corporate Lables
- by onlyauser May 20, 2007 8:09 AM PDT
- Indie Lables are Killing Big Corporate Lables.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (40 Comments)Most of the NEW original music with any edge at all is from an independent lable anyway.
The corporations have killed radio and now they are killing the big lable recording industry in the name of greed. Be thankful for the awesome creativity and talent of the Independents.