Oct

22

DRM For the Masses

October 22, 2006 |

The Washington Post today is running an interesting story on DRMed music and the future of DRM. It is not that interesting from the point of view of getting new information, but from the perspective of the regular user, who, until now, has not shown much interest in DRM issues. Articles like these, I think, are important to inform buyers about the options they have.

The article gives a well deserved plug to eMusic. DRM free, good quaility MP3s for a good price (25 cents per song with the 40 songs for $10 plan - even less with the 90 songs for $20 plan). While iTunes is the big honcho of online music stores, eMusic has quietly found its place as the #2 - ahead of all the other competitors. In a sane world, that would be enough to convince competitors to adopt this model - but the music industry has never been sane, so its only option is to lose to the illegal P2P networks.

From the article:

Even after scores of lawsuits from the recording industry against users of file-sharing programs, nothing is quite as popular as downloading for free. Some measurements show that the vast majority of music downloads are still from underground file-trading programs such as eDonkey and LimeWire. Research firm BigChampagne puts that figure at 90 percent.

The eMusic subscription service has plans ranging from $10 to $20 a month, allowing music fans to download 40 to 90 songs a month in the open MP3 song format, a file type that pretty much every computer and digital music player can read. Songs downloaded from eMusic can be played on an iPod.

If there’s a catch, it’s this: eMusic’s catalogue is limited to the independent labels. There are plenty of famous artists, such as Miles Davis and Creedence Clearwater Revival, but you probably won’t be able to get the latest hit song there.

“We’re like the old indie record store on the corner,” says eMusic chief executive David Pakman. The service is second only to iTunes in popularity.

Some other Washington Post articles on digital music:

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