“Music company EMI Group PLC – home of The Rolling Stones and Coldplay [and the world’s largest independent music company] – has been talking with online retailers about possibly selling its entire digital music catalog in MP3 format without copy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing numerous people familiar with the matter,” The Associated Press reports.
AP reports, “The MP3 format, which can be freely copied and played on virtually any device, would allow consumers to play music purchased from any online store on any digital music device.”
MacDailyNews Take: Translating for the AP, a routine job around here, replace “MP3” with “AAC” or any other unprotected file format. Obviously, we would hope that Apple wouldn’t be forced to go backwards to MP3, when AAC is the superior format. More about AAC Audio here.
AP continues, “According to the people familiar with the matter, London-based EMI asked the retailers to submit proposals by Thursday telling the company what size advance payments they would offer in exchange for the right to sell EMI’s music as MP3s, the Journal reported. One of the unidentified people said EMI would decide whether to forge ahead with the strategy based on the size of the offers. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as Friday.”
“Earlier this week, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs called on record labels to abandon their requirement for online music to use DRM, which is designed to limit unauthorized copying. Jobs said such restrictions have done little to slow music piracy and eliminating them would open up the online music marketplace,” AP reports.
Full article here.
Jobs should submit a proposal that ensures EMI will crack open the floodgates on DRM-free music.
Related articles:
Norway responds to Apple CEO Jobs’ call for DRM-free music – February 09, 2007
Recording Industry Association of America wants their DRM, calls for Apple to license FairPlay – February 08, 2007
Warner’s Middlebronfman: Jobs’ DRM-free music call ‘without logic and merit, we’ll not abandon DRM’ – February 08, 2007
Dvorak: Apple CEO Steve Jobs is dead right about DRM – February 07, 2007
Apple’s Jobs jolts music industry; Zune exec calls Jobs’ call for DRM-free music ‘irresponsible’ – February 07, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ posts rare open letter: ‘Thoughts on Music’ – calls for DRM-free music – February 06, 2007
Apple Inc. and The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. enter into new agreement – February 05, 2007
Norwegian Ombudsman: Apple’s FairPlay DRM is illegal in Norway – January 24, 2007
Major music labels ponder DRM-free future – January 23, 2007
Clash, Pink Floyd manager: ‘DRM is dead’ – November 06, 2006
Study reports the obvious: most music on iPods not from iTunes Store – September 17, 2006
EMI want to do this because they don’t much like Apple’s monopoly on digital music.
Why the talk of MP3 rather than AAC? Well, MP3 is played by all mobile digital music players, and supported by all on-line music stores that don’t do DRM. Going MP3 is about getting more outlets selling music – outlets that can and will give better attention to certain artists.
EMI is in two minds about this – about half the management wants to go DRM free, and half doesn’t. They are currently going through quite a major “restructuring” so the balance may have changed. It is looking increasingly likely though that some EMI owned labels will go DRM free in the not too distant future.
Alright!! this is great news and I hope they take it all the way.
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To quote a favorite musician of Steve’s.
Oh the tiiimes they are a changin!!!
Mr Reese
although 100 % correct you and I are dinosaours of our era, dumming down, is happing at every step of our senses. Cameras today do not offer the resolution of 2 decades ago. let just lay down and die peacefully while listening to vinyl
Apple, should they get to sell AAC unprotected, should also move to delivering the music at 256bit encoding.
This would put massive pressure on EMI’s competition to quickly fold and do the same.
Well, let’s look at the problem in its most simple form. People want to be free to do whatever they like with the music they paid for. Right? When this is negated by DRM, they cry “foul!” and write letters to government. Governments want to keep people happy, so they turn to the dispenser of the offending DRM scheme. In this case, Apple. In turn, Apple turns to the music industry, which imposed DRM as a condition for online sales of its catalogues to Apple (albeit during a time when P2P dissemination was rampant, so it made sense then). And the music industry now has to bite the bullet they’ve been unwilling to bite all along.
One thing that goes missing in this whole argument, though, is the fact that the music industry operates in very archaic ways. The process is largely the same one that used to be in place back in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, when the industry forged itself pretty much into what it is today. The fact that they still aim to produce “albums” (a collection of many songs by an artist) at a premium price is really at the center of the issue. Very few artists produce albums where every track is good enough to offset the premium price paid. So, if a buyer likes just one track bad enough, it’ll cost upwards of $17 to own a copy of the track. Not a good deal.
Enter online sales, where people can buy a track by an artist for a buck or so. Great. This means that the same buyer can select sixteen more tracks for the same amount of money otherwise paid for a single well-liked track off a not-so overall well-liked CD.
Suddenly, the whole music production paradigm shifts. What you “hear” is what you get. People are no longer paying premium for what they want to hear. Now, the industry doesn’t have to waste money producing bad work. But who tells that to the music execs? They’re under enough pressure already. Let alone the musicians.
So, what’s really wrong with the system, then? What’s wrong with it is that the music industry is not geared to cater to “a la carte” music sales on a large scale. That’d be way too efficient. That’d leave a lot of musicians without enough income to allow them to produce the very same hits the people want to hear.
The solution? Well, as I see it, if DRM goes and the industry adopts an “a la carte” scheme, it will certainly not be for a dollar a pop. It’d have to be $3 to $5 a pop if musicians, producers and their labels are meant to keep churning out hits for the masses liek they have in the past.
Can’t have the cake and eat it too, you know?
Better yet, EMI should offer their music using FLAC which is the most widely used lossless format around. This way, the user can make the decision on what to convert it to.
IMHO, Steve Jobs letter has thrown a wrench in EMI’s plans. Note that the offer was never
made to Apple only competing download services. The whole point was to reduce the
leverage of Apple and its iTunes store. Now if EMI goes ahead it will look like they agree
with Steve and don’t support the other major labels.
“That’d leave a lot of musicians without enough income to allow them to produce the very same hits the people want to hear.”
Bullshit. What it would do is clean out all the dead wood in the industry. I’ll buy a whole album for songs from a good band, but there are hardly any bands that good precisely because they don’t have to be. They can write one catchy hit and make you pay for another 67 minutes of dreck.
The labels have been trying to protect the album format for years. When I was in high school you could actually buy this thing called a ‘single’, which was one or 3 songs on a tape or a CD. The labels did away with these because it meant people didn’t buy the album.
Saying this is a good idea is like telling me I have to buy an F-350 along with my Focus so Ford can make a good profit. This is not about what the artist makes, it never has been. Artist don’t make much from album sales anyway, unless they sell millions of records, and not many artists do. The ones that do don’t tend to be the most talented, just the most widely-marketed.
So how about this: We shut down the labels. They are unnecessary at this point. If you have a bit of gear and a little engineering talent, you can make a decent album in your living room (ask Moby or Beck) and with iTunes (or another future DRM-free, interoperable model) you can put you music directly into the hands of your fans, and you never have to sell your soul for shelf space. More of that $.99 could go back to the artist, instead of the measly 10% they might get now. Artists could have more control over their own image and marketing because iTunes would just be the portal, rather than the gatekeeper.
This is the future. And DRM does not fit into it in any way that makes the experience better for the artist OR the consumer. It must go.
-c
“AP continues, “According to the people familiar with the matter, London-based EMI asked the retailers to submit proposals by Thursday telling the company what size advance payments they would offer in exchange for the right to sell EMI’s music as MP3s, the Journal reported. One of the unidentified people said EMI would decide whether to forge ahead with the strategy based on the size of the offers. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as Friday.”
So EMI wants advance payment and based on the total size of the advanced payments they would decide if they would pursue this? If you want this then bribe me and I will consider! Typical music industry.
ChriisyOne –
Some excellent points, especially about he album format. It is a relic, and should be discarded in favor of digital packages with better art, lyrics, videos, song-specific visualizer plug-ins, and whatever else that digital music can offer to enhance the artist’s music.
I don’t think, however, that labels are a thing of the past, but that they must evolve, too. Labels are responsible for marketing, tour organization, studio sessions, etc. It would be nice to see a lot more small labels and a lot less giant umbrella groups like EMI.
@ progeny
Agreed, I just think those functions could be better handled by smaller management organizations rather than huge conglomerates. If the would process were streamlined (and it’s overdue) the artist and consumers would be the real winners.
-c
“The labels have been trying to protect the album format for years. When I was in high school you could actually buy this thing called a ‘single’, which was one or 3 songs on a tape or a CD. The labels did away with these because it meant people didn’t buy the album.”
Uh they still do Chrissy.
Chrissy…
You’re missing my point. I’m all for doing away with DRM. I’m also all for redefining the way music is sold and bought. But doing so will mean people will have to forget the “dollar for a song” deal they’re getting now from the iTunes Store under DRM rules.
If you wish to see how things might turn out to be sooner than later, go to http://www.magnatune.com and take a look.
It’s only a matter of time before the entertainment business, be it music, film and TV goes on a more commodity-like “supply and demand”-based open market scheme.
But, again, the days of the “dollar a pop” flat fee music download days are as counted as the days of the DRM.
If EMI is the only big four opening up the music in unprotected format, Apple could put a little icon next to each DRM free song in iTunes. Then when the quarterly reports come out Steve could announce how much more of these DRM free files were sold during the quarter. The other big four companies could then see they were wrong and would drop DRM just to keep up with EMI. What a wonderful world it would be.
RE: Should the album format be discarded…
Not until they figure out a way to include that “new CD booklet” smell into an audio file.
Very significant crack in the dike or is it dyke?
EMI’s move is unlikely to be unrelated to SJ’s open letter. We will have to wait and see how this pans out, but Apple is the mover and shaker in this market now and it seems more likely to me that EMI is reacting to overtures by Apple. The music companies are not comfortable with Apple’s dominance, but they have to take account of Apple’s success in creating a new market paradigm.
Apple is a good business partner for the music industry. Apple’s technological expertise has created a new market for the recording studios, and the runaway success of the iPod has focused attention on music and grown the market overall. This may seem counter-intuitive if you focus on track sales in lieu of album sales. But iTunes has removed a distortion (consumers were forced to buy tracks they didnt want) and once the industry has made this adjustment, the uniquity of music and the ease by which it can now be acquired will result in significant growth for the whole industry.
Those in the industry who resent the new player will try to preserve their nice little “club” and resist Apple. Playing King Canute might generate headlines, but the shift in buying habits is irreversible.
A DRM-free catalogue will allow anyone to create a music store. But mastery of the technology for selection, transmission, organisation of and reproduction of music will dictate the winners in this new market.
And Apple are simply the best at this. iTunes will probably lose some market share, but Apple will continue to dominate this industry for years to come.
DRM-free music will mean the end of the line for several online retailers, specifically the ones that offer music by subscription. These stores have a business model that absolutely depends on DRM. If DRM disappears, their “all you can eat for one monthly fee but only as long as you’re a subscriber” plan gets broken. This will thin the herd significantly.
To Buster’s first post. EMI owns labels, Capitol and Parlophone. For 10 points, can anyone name the most popular group appearing on EMI’s labels? Hint, an agreement between this group’s label and Apple appeared less than a week before Mr. Jobs “Open Letter”.
So, what if said agreement is to not only introduce the Fab Four to iTunes but also to announce that the greatest (my opinion) musical group ever is going to let Everyone enjoy their music by making it DRM free.
“And as a show of support, their old labels, Capitol and Parlophone, are offering all of their recordings, including all of the EMI music library, DRM free! Ladies and Gentlemen, The Beatles!”
Talk about a hard act to follow. Why Steve would embarrass the hell out of the other labels, almost forcing an immediate end to DRM. Nah, he wouldn’t do that. ; )
Peace
Circuit City flash ad for MP3 players on Apple Insider’s site. An iPod with The Beatles, “Love” on the screen. It’s all coming together. Hmm, that’d be a catchy title for a song. Nah
Peace
I’m curious about one thing…
If only one of the four major music labels are willing to try this, does that mean that some iTunes music would contain DRM, and other iTunes music would not?
That could complicate matters, but it is an important first step in the right direction.
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