Non-DRM music from Apple/EMI can only help
April 13th, 2007 by 
emile
A few days ago when Apple/EMI non-DRM’ed music was the hot story of the day, CNBC’s Power Lunch ran a clip about it. After the clip ran, Bill Griffeth wondered aloud about how that couldn’t be good for their business, because those files would surely appear on the peer-to-peer networks.
I’m guessing Bill hasn’t logged on to any of those networks lately. Approximately .2 seconds after a CD hits store shelves, there are thousands of DRM-free copies of those songs on the networks. Half of the time, those albums have somehow “slipped out” of the studios hands onto the networks several weeks before the official release.
Until the studios can plug the CD-to-P2P network hole, releasing DRM-free songs and getting paid for them is a no-brainer.
| 2.5 |
Posted in New Media | 
April 13th, 2007 at 7:58 am
The thing is, you can’t plug the P2P hole. It just won’t happen anytime soon.
What the music industry needs is something completely new — which I read about on Shelly Palmer’s blog last night (see “Did We Miss the Memo?”.) The industry needs to recognize how people are using music right now, and find a way to capitalize on it.
What are people doing right now? Using songs to make user-generated videos, and creating mashups. The music industry doesn’t make any money from any of this. They need to find a way to — a new system of easy licenses, something iTunes-like for music licensing.
It’s a whole new, untapped revenue stream.
Kimberly