Universal Music Group will sell DRM-free music until January to test consumer demand for being able to do as we please with music that we legitimately purchase. The test tracks will be offered through many major music services with the notable exception of iTunes.
According to the New York Times,
“The effort is likely to be seen as part of the industry’s wider push to increase competition to iTunes and shift leverage away from Apple, which wields enormous influence over prices and other terms in digital music.”
EMI was the first label to offer DRM-free tracks and, even at $1.29 per song, it’s enjoying success. According to the suits at Universal, “at least some of [Universal's] new music will be sold in unprotected form for 99 cents…”
Universal is the largest music group of all the major labels so this could be a huge win for consumers if all goes well. The other labels would almost have to drop DRM to stay competitive.
Universal Music Will Sell Songs Without Copy Protection [New York Times]
I saw the headline and had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. It’s not, so I can only conclude that Universal is up to something. Probably any supposedly DRM-free song that you purchase from Universal contains some sort of self-destruct mechanism causing any device on which it resides to explode at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day.
In his famous article “Marketing Myopia” Professor Ted Leavitt described the buggy whip industry and observed that no amount of product improvement could prevent the evaporation of the industry.
The record industry is on its way to becoming a new buggy whip industry. Eliminating DRM is the kind of ineffective product improvement Leavitt described.
The industry needs to reinvent itself is a free, ad-supported medium.
Check out the Ad-Supported Music Central blog:http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/