Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music
Link: Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music
"As even digital music revenue growth falters because of rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are moving closer to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to take.
"Executives of several technology companies meeting here at Midem, the annual global trade fair for the music industry, said over the weekend that at least one of the four major record companies could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months.
"Most independent record labels already sell tracks digitally compressed in the MP3 format, which can be downloaded, e-mailed or copied to computers, cellphones, portable music players and compact discs without limit.
"The independents see providing songs in MP3 partly as a way of generating publicity that could lead to future sales."
First off, shame on the writer, Victoria Shannon of the NY Times, for mindlessly parroting the music industry coan that any dropoff in music sales must necessarily be a function of evil internet pirates. There are lots of possible reasons for diminishing sales: it could be crappy product, marketing that can’t tear itself away from the playbook written in 1955, or an inability to catch up to the realities of the internet sales channel. (I suspect it’s a combination of all of these.)
The notion of releasing "promotional" singles as MP3s leaves something important unsaid — are they planning on releasing one or two songs as unprotected and leaving DRM on the others? Because if that’s the plan, then no thanks.
As a corollary to all this, I have to say I’m getting a lot of mileage out of my eMusic subscription after signing up a few months ago. Not only is being able to download unprotected MP3s a joy, but their site is extremely well thought out, with lots of bookmarking and discovery features that make browsing for new music a joy.
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Hey Jeffrey - if you like eMusic there’s a pretty cool mashup at http://pandora.emusic.com/
It’s not affiliated with Pandora in any way, but I’ve played around with it a bit and it’s a pretty cool way to discover music to buy on eMusic.
This is terrific, Marc, thanks for suggesting it!