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The Music Industry Drops DRM
Music fans have long decried the use of DRM, which restricts the devices downloaded music can be played on. The lure of DRM-free MP3s is that they will play on virtually any device — PCs, Macs, iPods, iPhones, Zunes and many others. Rapidly declining CD sales have been plaguing the labels for years, however, due at least in part to piracy, they say, so the move to abandon the controls of DRM has been slow in coming.
There have been many indications in recent months that the music industry is on the cusp of a sea change, and two announcements on Monday suggested that the change is nigh.
First, as anticipated in reports last week, Sony BMG Music Entertainment officially announced the launch of its Platinum MusicPass, a series of digital album cards that enable consumers to download full-length albums and bonus content in the form of high-quality MP3 files.
The first 37 digital rights management (DRM)-free titles in the series, which represent musical genres ranging from rock and pop to R&B and country, will debut on Jan. 15, and will be available at retail outlets across the United States by the end of the month. In Canada, MusicPass will debut in late January.
Entire Download Catalog
Napster, meanwhile, announced Monday that it will shift the entire download sales catalog on its award-winning PC service to the MP3 format in the second calendar quarter of 2008.All single-track and album sales through Napster will be made available exclusively in the MP3 format, which will be compatible with virtually all MP3 players and music phones around the globe, the company said. The news makes Napster the first music subscription service featuring major label content to announce such a complete shift to MP3 format for download sales, it added.
The news from both industry giants comes just shortly after Warner announced at the end of last year that it would allow Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com to sell its content in MP3 format, without attached DRM schemes.
Launched in September, Amazon.com’s DRM-free music store, called “Amazon MP3,” now boasts some 2.9 million songs from more than 33,000 record labels.