“Yahoo for the fist time is offering a popular song for sale unprotected by anti-copying technology. It’s a one-time deal with record label Epic that the web giant nevertheless portrayed as significant progress toward its goal of eventually selling all music downloads with no restrictions,” Eli Milchman reports for Wired.
“On Wednesday Yahoo Music announced it is selling Jessica Simpson’s latest single, “A Public Affair,” as an MP3 with no digital rights management (DRM) technology. That means the tracks will play on any device and can be copied any number of times, including on CDs,” Milchman reports.
“The Simpson experiment includes a customization option, allowing customers to purchase a version of the song that includes a choice of dozens of possible names in the song lyrics,” Milchman reports. “The download is priced at $2, double that of what songs usually sell for at Yahoo and most other outlets. Ian Rogers of Yahoo Music wrote in a Yahoo Music Blog post on Wednesday that the higher price reflects the fact that the songs can be personalized by including the downloader’s name, and not because the track is DRM-free. Rogers goes on to say that he thinks the price of DRM-free tracks should be between $2 and the usual $1 pricing.”
“Although Yahoo positioned the offer as a major step toward establishing wider releases of unrestricted downloads, analysts expresses skepticism that record labels are ready for this step. Only one online music outlet, Emusic, offers all of its downloads in MP3 format, but it doesn’t carry songs from major labels like Sony and Capitol,” Milchman reports. “The availability of a DRM-free download at a major online music seller is a one-time promotion and won’t become a general trend, according to Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at technology research company Jupiter Research.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yahoo’s massive library of DRM-free MP3 tracks also includes zero (0) other songs.