Another reason for free netlabel music, seen on ars technica:
Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it’s done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer. (…)
by Becky Hogge - EDRi-member Open Rights Group - UK
Commissioner Charlie McCreevy’s announcement in February 2008 that he proposes to nearly double the term of copyright protection for sound recordings from 50 to 95 years came as a shock to UK digital rights campaigners. Back in 2006, here in the UK, the case against copyright term extension was robustly made - by campaigners such as my organisation, the Open Rights Group, and more importantly, by economists from one of the UK’s leading universities. It led to a firm commitment from our Government that they would never seek to extend copyright term retrospectively. Read the rest of this entry »
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple has posted a long article titled “Thoughts On Music“, where he is reacting to recent criticism on the DRM of the iTunes Music Store. It is an interesting article worth reading.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. 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!
As DRM free netlabel I have one thing to say: “If you don’t like DRM, why doesn’t the iTunes Music Store offer DRM free music then?” (at least next to the DRM polluted files)
Nobody is forcing Apple to follow the dictate of a few major labels which unfortunately control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. Look at eMusic, Bleep, Beatport etc., there are enough labels (I guess the remaining 30%) who are willing to sell their music online in good quality and DRM free.
I have been using the legal mp3 download service from eMusic now for many years as a good source of independent, drm free and affordable online music next to all of my netlabel downloads. Today I received the surprising message from eMusic, that my account has been transfered to Emusic Europe and indeed, on the eMusic site it says eMusic Europe now.
But there is more going on. Not only did they open eMusic Europe, they also increased prices for their European customers as Frank Hecker points out in his blog entry.
(…) The European eMusic Basic price of €12.99 is thus equivalent to $16.68 per month compared to the US price of $9.99. Even if you remove the effect of VAT the European price is equivalent to $14.20, representing a price increase of over 42%. (…)
