EMI May Sell Entire Collection as DRM-less MP3s

BobbyJo writes "According to the Chicago Sun-Times, EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ... without Digital Rights Management protections. According to the article, several other major music companies have considered this same route, but none as far as EMI. The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes. Those competing retailers include RealNetworks Inc., eMusic.com, MusicNet Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. People familiar with the matter cautioned that EMI could still abandon the proposed strategy before implementing it. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as today.'"

Re:Compression

[TheRaven64]

Any recorded music is lossy. If it's digital, then the loss is determined by the bit rate and the compression algorithm. If it's analogue then it's determined by the bandwidth of the underlying substrate. The question is, how much loss are you willing to accept? I have a few CDs where I can hear loss from the original analogue recording, and some where I can hear loss from the digital transfer. Most of my CDs, however, are a sufficiently close approximation of lossless that my ears can't tell the difference. Most MP3s are not. AAC and Vorbis are for most music at a reasonable bit rate, but both have issues with certain kinds of instruments.

I would rather have something like FLAC because then it's future-proof. For now, I would probably transcode it to AAC to conserve battery life while portable (disk access is expensive). In the future, I can transcode it to something else without having any additional loss.

Competing with Apple???

[ryanduff]

The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes.

Not according to the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/business/media/0 9online.html [nytimes.com]:

EMI, which releases music by artists including Coldplay and the Beatles, has discussed various proposals to sell unprotected files through an array of digital retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Real Networks and Yahoo, said the executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Don't be confused by the submitter's opinion. Moral reasons vs competition was mentioned nowhere in the linked Associated Press article...
In the manner of Steve Ballmer "FUD! FUD! FUD!"

Not Just DRM FREE

[Anonymous Coward]

They better have a damn good privacy policy that does not Spam, sell, rent, or otherwise share information or communicate for any other reason than the immediate business at hand. This won't be like retailers with bad privacy policies in which case one can simply go to a more reputable online store. You want to see a nightmare privacy policy, check out Buy.com [buy.com]:

At Buy.com, your privacy is a top priority. Please read our privacy policy details.

...

...

Except as limited below, we reserve the right to use or disclose your personally identifiable information for business reasons in whatever manner desired.

An opt-out option is useless as the cat is out of the bag before delivery of goods and often the opt-out is broken or they opt you back in, or you don't know the extent of the abuse 'til later*. Many online stores essentially say, "We value your privacy... read on to see how we really don't and were just joking."

I know being AC and this is /. with its masturbatory hatred of ACs and DRM, but IMHO, this is a concern of equal if not more serious concern.

*I opted out of receiving a woodworking catalog after buying a $10 doodad. The online company had sent over a dozen catalogs based on one $10 purchase. After "opting out", I promptly received another half dozen catalogs from OTHER woodworking stores with whom I had never done business. That is how opt works. Fuck us? No, FUCK YOU!

Re:MP3 eh?

[Ansible42]

I wish they'd start offering music in FLAC format. If you have a good stereo you can tell the difference. I'd like to see higher-than-CD bitrates too, there's no reason to stick with CD or less quality. I'd pay a little extra for a better format.

He did exactly that

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

I think steve missed a critical moment in his letter. He should have pointed out with a LOT more punch that they are all ALREADY selling their ENTIRE music collections without DRM in physical stores... and that we're simply talking about making the same possible on online stores.

He did exactly that: [apple.com]

Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That's right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

Re:Recent EMI News

[the_womble]

The statutory mechanical royalty rate is paid to the music publisher, not the artist. In most cases of music EMI sells, they would be the publisher.

The statutory rate can be overridden by a contract and is, in effect a maximum rate, not a minimum, see http://www.joelmabus.com/royalties.htm [joelmabus.com]

Other costs of selling downloads are much lower than CDs.

Lower costs could raise volumes.

The type of people who regard big media as evil, are exactly the people who would see a company that dropped DRM as good. The rest do not think about it.

EMIs sales would have the advantage of being completely non-infringing globally.

I think that EMI will get the average slashdotters money. I am sure that, far more importantly, they will get the average music buyer's money. They will certainly get mine.

Re:Recent EMI News

[Bright Apollo]

Most of you probably know all this and I'm likely just stating the obvious.

RIAA uses an old but effective technique to keep their royalties coming: information hoarding. A fully-transparent accounting of costs per CD, traced back to what the artist gets and including taxes, etc, would neuter most of the arguments or at least put them on the same playing field for fair comparisons.

Once this is done, it becomes easy to look at artist output as the sum of recording studio time plus expenses, then promotion costs, and so forth down to distribution which, then, becomes very small as a line-item cost. Once the cost components are transparent, effective arbitrage pushes these costs down as well.

-BA