Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, iTunes
Warner Music Group ditches DRM, on Amazon MP3 only
You'll be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the Music Industry who thinks that DRM is a good thing, and today it looks like more people in the Music Industry are seeing the error of their ways. Warner Music Group has announced that starting today people can buy their entire digital catalog via Amazon MP3 (see our review of Amazon's digital music store front here). The unique thing about Amazon MP3 is, as you might have guessed , they only sell music in the MP3 format sans DRM. That's right, all those lovely Warner Music Group tracks are yours to have without DRM and, generally, for less than what you'll pay in the iTunes Store (Amazon MP3 has a sliding scale of prices but most tracks cost $.89 or $.99).
Some might say, 'Why should I care about this? I'm on a Mac!' The beauty of this is that these MP3 files will play on your Mac, your iPod, your iPhone, and even that Zune you got in a box of cereal. No DRM means more flexibility in how you can consume your media, and we all like that.
[via Engadget]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Quine said 6:12PM on 12-27-2007
Sweet deal! Down with DRM!
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Hawke said 6:22PM on 12-27-2007
And don't forget - any competition is good for all consumers. If the non-DRM mp3 model works for amazon.com, it only pushes other labels and distribution outlets to do the same. Because amazon is 89 cents, it'll also help others push their prices lower!
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JaXX said 6:33PM on 12-27-2007
Is it still limited to the US ?
When this opened a few months ago, during the first few days, there was no IP filtering and then... boom ! they locked it all up...
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Ben said 6:53PM on 12-27-2007
Bah! Tell me about it. I thought that this could be circumvented through PayPals secure card number generation, but that's also for US residents only (at the moment).
Having said that, we don't even have the freakin' iPhone yet.
I simultaneously love and hate living in Australia...
boatofcar said 6:42PM on 12-27-2007
I've been using Amazon over iTunes for quite a while now--they make it so easy! When you download a track, it will automatically put it into your iTunes library with artwork.
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krye said 6:52PM on 12-27-2007
jerks
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Matt said 1:02AM on 12-28-2007
Whut!!?1!
Kevin Rye said 9:12AM on 12-28-2007
...like I said, jerks. Why DRM free for Amazon and not iTunes? What a bunch of babies. Seriously, all this back and forth crap with Universal, NBC, Apple, Warner....they are all like a bunch of school kids. The only people that are getting screwed here are you and me. Don't they see that?
punkassjim said 7:03PM on 12-27-2007
Good stuff, but it strikes me as rather baby-ish to grant non-DRM rights to Amazon without granting it to iTunes. Freakin' retarded.
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Allister said 7:05PM on 12-27-2007
Good point! If they let Apple do it, I'd not give a toss about Amazon being US only.
LD said 8:33PM on 12-27-2007
Not really. Perhaps Amazon is giving them a bigger piece of the pie than Apple has been willing to pony up.
Allister said 7:04PM on 12-27-2007
I second the call for international sales! I am already a long standing customer of Amazon. Locking it down to the US is as stupid as region encoding DVDs in this day and age.
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Rick said 7:47PM on 12-27-2007
What bit rate are Amazon's mp3s? The thing I hate about mp3 is that to get decent quality, you need huge file sizes. iTunes gives everything to you in AAC... great audio, small file size.
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Simon Arch said 8:09PM on 12-27-2007
The few I've purchased are VBR mp3s encoded with LAME with (I'm guessing) the -V 1 --vbr-new setting. It's -V 0 or 1. They're VERY good quality, in other words. This is the setting I use in iTunes-LAME when I add music to my library from newly purchased CDs or lossless downloads.
thethirdmoose said 8:26PM on 12-27-2007
~256 KB/s, VBR
LD said 8:33PM on 12-27-2007
Great audio, small file size, limited portability.
Object-X said 7:52PM on 12-27-2007
This seems to me grounds for a class action lawsuit against Warner. By selling DRM enabled tracks via iTunes (which Warner required and still does) and now selling the same tracks without it but not removing the DRM of previous sold tracks amounts to a bait and switch. Apple might also have grounds to sue to have it removed since the deal is obviously designed to hurt Apple.
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Simon Arch said 8:16PM on 12-27-2007
Hm. I don't know about that. Apple's contract with Warner Bros. was probably negotiated a while ago. I wouldn't be surprised if the next time they negotiate a contract the DRM disappears. They might have a reason to sue for breach of trust if Apple can prove conclusively that Warner was planning this, but that's going to be very difficult to do.
Besides, there are too many lawsuits clogging our courts these days. It would be better to enter into an arbitration than to go to court.
LD said 8:33PM on 12-27-2007
You, sir, are quite obviously talking out of your ass.
There is no bait and switch. When you buy a Warner track from iTunes you know it's got DRM and is AAC. What have they baited and what have they switched?
Answer: nothing.
They sold you precisely what they told you they were selling you and what you thought you were buying.
Moron.
Rick said 8:49PM on 12-27-2007
@ thethirdmoose
Ah... Well, I guess that is a decent quality. It'll be interesting to see if Steve shifts things around come January because of this stuff.
I know this is a sidenote, but I still don't know why anyone would buy a movie off iTunes. For the same price, I can subscribe to a month of unlimited movies from Netflix. Furthermore, I can fire up Windoze (via VMWare) and stream unlimited movies straight off Netflix's website. Again, all for $9.99.
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