Over at Techcrunch the word was that April 2nd would be the day to remember for music industry, this day bears comparisons to the day Google opened the cheque book for Youtube and changed the face of online video.
EMI are going DRM-free, it is a lovely thought and we at 7digital have a smile from ear to ear.
From the announcement (and most news press stories) you were lead to believe the deal was an exclusive between Apple & EMI – not true. As soon as EMI CEO Eric Nicoli made the announcement 7digital went live with the first high quality 320kbps MP3 music from The Good, the Bad & the Queen.
The other revelation was that the world leading iTunes music store would sell EMI music in their AAC format which did not do much for the interoperability debate. On the positive side, the announcement meant that competing download stores could finally sell EMI content in MP3 which meant music files are now be compatible with all of the 100 million iPods out there.
The giant quality leap from iTunes current 128kbps DRM tracks to unprotected 256kbps is very average but great news for other download stores, at 7digital we can now sell these unprotected files in 320kbps – a much higher quality.
Pricing was the other hot topic, should consumers pay a higher price for a premium quality track? Does the artist see any extra from this increased cost? These questions will be debated for some time. There is no time to dwell over this dilemma, it is time to move forward and encourage the other major labels to join the DRM free party.
Not only has EMI has taken the bold move to save the spiralling music industry, they have also broken the iTunes fixed pricing model, a feat that major labels have forever tried to do. Winning the battle of iTunes fixed pricing should make the other labels lick their lips at the thought of generating more revenue for zero cost.
The talk now is for iTunes to become a subscription model. I personally am not a sucker for subscription models and I am yet to be convinced subscription is the way forward.
It has taken five years for iTunes to ooze a little flexibility, could it be that iTunes are cracking under the pressure from labels and governments throughout the world?
Peter Davias Marketing Manager
Contact me: peter.davias (at) 7digital (dot) com
February 5, 2008 at 3:46 am
[...] EMI made the decision in April to go DRM free, 7digital noted on their blog that they “grinned ear to ear.” Since that time, they’ve seen music download [...]
March 22, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I know this blog is almost a year old and i know see that warner have given up drm free tracks as well. As im currently a music management student who did quite alot of research into drm, im interested in hearing an up to date opinion from a company such as seven digital on the current situation. i became quite obsessed at how i-tunes were allowed to dominate the market without more pressure to make a universal drm? i’ve looked at the riaa and steve jobs having a slagging match as well as the french law cases against apple and although im not a lawyer, isnt it pretty obvious that apple are controlling digital music sales due to the fact that they have already a large share in the mp3 player market, which you’d probably agree that it isn’t fair competition especially if its coming from something thats meant to stop people sharing files.
But now that mp3 players are due to be sold as mobile phones, that takes away ipods stronghold in the player market, surely it’ll be tougher for them to compete with nokia, sony ericsson and samsung with their iphone. So it sorta seperates the relationship in market share between ipod and itunes but if companies such as omniphone are offering unlimited downloads for £1.99, which i-tunes are probably going to respond to but where does it leave companies such as 7digital? who arent on a subscription service and costs £1.50 for one single track by sms. Are you convinced that subscription services are the way forward now if the main way of paying for the track (by card to computer) may be soon outdated, as more people will soon probably download directly to their phone? Obviously I’m only a student, i’ve no experience in digital music sales, i even applied for work experience for your company with no word back, but do you not think that simply waiting for drm to dissapear is not enough to successfully compete?
hopefully i get some feedback as your situation is quite interesting to watch.
February 28, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I love your site!
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