Saturday, February 24, 2007

EMI still loves DRM

The one member of the RIAA to have been actively considering a way of dropping the need for DRM from its downloads, EMI, has abandoned negotiations and apparently abandoned the idea.

The sticking point? Record company greed, as ever:

EMI, the third-largest music company, demanded an upfront payment to compensate for its risk in releasing the music without software that prevents copying, the sources said. The retailers countered with a lower offer, which EMI rejected, and negotiations are now on hold, they said.

We're not quite sure why EMI even thought this one would fly - after all, if removing the DRM from the downloads meant that each song would be sold just once and then released for free into wild, that's even more of a risk for a download company than for the record company. EMI would still have other ways of making money from the music; if nobody needed Napster to get their downloads any more, Napster has no business. In effect, EMI is asking to be compensated for a risk from the companies actually taking the risk.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

DRM is a joke...any kid can turn a song with DRM into an mp3. Labels need to lower prices of albums/songs and sell direct to consumers.

Also, The RIAA's efforts against file sharing are soon going to be a thing of the past with all of these new software applications that offer encrypted exchanges. Look at GigaTribe for instance ( http://www.gigatribe.com ), their free software lets users exchange entire folders of albums in a few easy clicks, and not even the ISPs will be able to spot what's being exchanged.

The music model is changing rapidly, and the music industry is just going to have to adapt. I for one will never buy a DRM-plagued music file, nor will I buy one of those "copy protected" CD's I so often see. DRM will just backfire and hurt their sales!!

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