iTunes Goes DRM Free - But No Social Network Just Yet - ReadWrit. At the Macworld 2009 keynote today, Apple announced that by the end of this quarter, all 10 million songs available on iTunes will be DRM free [Digital Rights Management]. As of today, 8 million songs will be DRM free, with the other 2 million done by end of Q1 09. This is long overdue, especially considering that Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the music industry in February 2007 asking them to abolish DRM. Since that time, many of Apple's key competitors have gone DRM free or have significantly loosened the restrictions - Amazon in September 07, Rhapsody in June 08, Yahoo Music in July 08, and Walmart in October 08, to mention just some. So it's great to see the market leader in online music, Apple, actively killing off DRM too.
DRM-free upgrades to your existing iTunes collection are now available via iTunes Plus, Apple's program for DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding. What Didn't Get Announced Conclusion: Meh. Talking To Pirates. Talking To 'Pirates' A few days ago I posted a simple question on my blog. "Why do people pirate my games? ". It was an honest attempt to get real answers to an important question. I submitted the bog entry to slashdot and the penny arcade forums, and from there it made it to arstechnica, then digg, then bnet and probably a few other places. Introduction Firstly it's worth pointing out that there were LOTs of responses (and they are still coming in now), hundreds of comments on the sites listed, a ton of comments on the blog (despite it crumbling under the strain) and hundreds of emails made it through to me. The semi-political ones I got a few people churning out long arguments about whether or not intellectual property is valid, and claiming that it was censorship, or fascism and other variations on this theme.
Money This *did* surprise me. Game Quality This was a big complaint too. Digital Distribution Lots of people claimed to pirate because it was easier than going to shops. Confessions. Studios Should Look to Trent Reznor for Future of Distribution - There was an article over the weekend in the New York Times about new tactics Warner Brothers is planning to boost flagging DVD sales. Warner plans to release direct-to-DVD companion films alongside new releases in the future, in an attempt to build buzz for the later DVD release of the main feature. What they really should be doing, is to ditch the traditional DVD model altogether, and take a look at some of the things alt rocker Trent Reznor has done over the past few months. Warner's plan involves creating a separate, direct-to-DVD movie for its 2009 blockbuster "Watchmen," a graphic novel adaptation by the director of smash-hit "300. " The DVD-only release will follow an alternate storyline taken from the same graphic novel and will hit stores about a week after the movie opens in theaters.
Warner is hoping for a few things from the DVD. But it doesn't seem like it will work. The Reznor Blue Print The result was that his true fans ate it up. Conclusion. What is Music 2.0? - ReadWriteWeb. Music Tax Details From Source: “Pay Us Not To Sue You” We learned yesterday that Warner Music, the third largest music label, is gunning for a $5/month music tax on U.S. residents. Some of the details were in the article: they’ve hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to create a new entity around the project, presumably to get other labels involved. Griffin threw out the idea of a $5/month tax (which would be added to people’s ISP bill), generating $20 billion/year in revenues. The tax won’t be mandatory, he implies. And he also said that it isn’t really a “tax”: “we have no such interest in government running this or having any part of it.” Griffin also talked about advertising subsidies for partners who don’t want to pay the fee.
Users who are paying the tax will be able to download music from the Internet legally, through all the normal channels (BitTorrent, other P2P networks, etc.). Nothing he said is strictly untrue. The tax will not, in fact, be mandatory. Why will ISP’s agree to this? The Best Things In Life May Be Free, But It Cost $400 Million To. Update: CNET is reporting that this may be inaccurate – “A spokeswoman for Sony/ATV Music Publishing told CNET News.com that the reports are “untrue.”” The best things in life are free But you can keep them for the birds and bees Now give me money That’s what I want That’s what I want, yeah That’s what I want… Paul McCartney has signed a $400 million deal with Apple for the distribution of the entire Beatles’ back catalog on iTunes.
Under the deal, the money will be distributed to Ringo Starr, the families of George Harrison and John Lennon, Michael Jackson, EMI and Sony, along with McCartney getting his share as well. The deal finally finishes Steve Job’s quest for the Holy Grail of music downloads. (via CrunchGear) Amazon Completes DRM-Free Roster With Sony-BMG. For anyone who was bummed about the hoops they were going to have to jump through to get DRM-free songs from Sony-BMG artists, by the end of the month you will be able to download those songs at Amazon’s MP3 store.
A couple days after announcing a weird plan with physical retailers to distribute DRM-free music that will require people to buy a plastic stored value card first and then download it afterwards , Amazon looks to be the first online music distributor to strike a deal with Sony-BMG. It will also be the first online music store to offer DRM-free songs from all four major labels, having previously struck deals with Warner, EMI, and Universal Music. Sony has uploaded around 200,000 tracks to Amazon, which constitutes their entire “active” catalog (the stuff that actually sells). Our understanding is that their entire catalog will be uploaded over time. We expect Steve Jobs to announce the addition of Sony-BMG music without DRM to iTunes at MacWorld next week. The Music Industry’s Last Stand Will Be A Music Tax. It is becoming more and more difficult for the music industry to ignore the basic economics of the their industry: unenforceable property rights (you can’t sue everyone) and zero marginal production costs (file sharing is ridiculously easy).
All the big labels have now given up on DRM. They haven’t yet given up on trying to charge for their music, but it’s becoming more and more clear that as long as there is a free alternative (file sharing), the price of music will have to fall towards free. You can disagree as to whether it’s “fair” that the price of recorded music will be zero or near zero, but you can’t disagree that it’s going to happen. I presented my arguments here last October. Subsequently, we noted that even offering the new RadioHead album for free didn’t stop massive file sharing on BitTorrent. Personally, I think a new era of free recorded music and paid live performances is a very good thing.
This isn’t the first time its popped up. So far they’re just testing the water. Yahoo Is Clearly Up To Something Big Around Music. There have been rumors that Yahoo Music is preparing to launch a big new product sometime soon. And when I read this overview of a presentation given by Yahoo Music’s VP of Product Development Ian Rogers last month it basically confirmed it for me: expect something new and interesting from Yahoo Music in the near future. Some background: Rogers, along with former Yahoo music GM David Goldberg, was one of the first music industry insiders to actively call for the dismantling of the DRM machine (I interviewed both early last year).
Rogers also made an impassioned speech last October calling for sanity in the music industry. “Inconvenience doesn’t scale,” he said. And – suing Napster for popularizing music sharing was “like throwing Newton in jail for popularizing the concept of gravity.” He went even further in his most recent talk. But he went further this time, saying “We’re in the process of redefining what Yahoo!
So what are they up to? The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free. 2007 is turning out to be a terrible year for the music industry. Or rather, a terrible year for the the music labels. The DRM walls are crumbling. Music CD sales continue to plummet rather alarmingly. Artists like Prince and Nine Inch Nails are flouting their labels and either giving music away or telling their fans to steal it.
Another blow earlier this week: Radiohead, which is no longer controlled by their label, Capitol Records, put their new digital album on sale on the Internet for whatever price people want to pay for it. The economics of recorded music are fairly simple. P2P networks just exacerbate the problem (or opportunity) further, giving people a way to speed up the process of creating free copies almost to the point of being ridiculous. Eventually, unless governments are willing to take drastic measures to protect the industry (such as a mandatory music tax), economic theory will win out and the price of music will fall towards zero.
Europe Wants To Force DRM Interoperability. The European Union wants to standardize content distribution as well as DRM standards, according to statements from EU Commissioner Viviane Reding. Under the proposals, the EU would regulate the market by creating a single, European market for online music, films, and video games. According to Ars Technica, DRM would also be required to remain transparent to consumers with an aim of providing interoperability. Currently DRM standards from providers including Apple and Microsoft are not compatible, resulting in device lock-in that discriminates against consumers who wish to use their legal purchases on multiple devices, or even switch between devices, say from an iPod to a Zune. To quote Commissioner Reding “Europe’s content sector is suffering under its regulatory fragmentation, under its lack of clear, consumer-friendly rules for accessing copyright-protected online content, and serious disagreements between stakeholders about fundamental issues such as levies and private copying.”