DRM – Another Bullet To The Head

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, based in France, has joined Britain’s EMI in selling music downloads that are not tightly protected by DRM. That leaves only Song BMG (based in Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (based in the US) to be using the outdated protection on their music downloads.“Universal Music Group said Thursday that it would begin selling current and back albums – from a collection of stars as diverse as 50 Cent, Maroon 5, Amy Winehouse and Johnny Cash – without anti-piracy software that restricts their use”

The Los Angeles Times chalks up Vivendi’s reversal as a way in which to “blunt Apple Inc.’s growing power by bypassing the iPod maker to sell thousands of songs in an unrestricted digital format through many other online music stores”.

Hmmm.

It’s clear that the big corporations are having very little success in the download sector – the ‘free’ competition being virtually insurmountable, with reasonably priced independent download services coming second – and it might just be that the corporations are finally becoming aware of the massive mistakes that they’ve made in the past. Overpriced over-protected formulaic downloads are evidently not the way forward; consumers realised (and acted on this) quite some time ago and it’s refreshing to finally see the corporations follow suit.

Recognizing that consumers have had a choice – and a rather favourable one, at that – in getting their music fix has taken the corporations a surprisingly long time. For organizations that boast massive marketing departments and huge consumer survey budgets, they’re obviously not utilizing their resources in the right way.

Now they may just be starting to recognized that their ‘customers’ aren’t the stupid ‘ cash cows’ that they thought they’d trained.

Posted on 13 August 2007 by Lee in News