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Warner Music Group ditches DRM, on Amazon MP3 only

by Scott McNulty Dec 27th 2007 at 6:00PM



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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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...
 

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Jaijaz

I'll never buy a DRM free MP3! I'll buy a DRM'ed AAC track from Apple over a DRM free MP3, purely cause of the better sound quality. Having said that, give me the CD any day, then I'll rip it with a lossless encoder, for the iPod.

December 29 2007 at 3:33 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
madhurdutta

Great now all the music that is not available on iTunes will be downloaded by me... does not that also fit onto any mp3 player? itunes made everything so simple and i can't imagine buying a legal compilation from anywhere else. so me i will download from to$$ents.
regards

December 28 2007 at 5:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tom

Amazon MP3 still has their shitty license agreement that denies you the ownership rights you'd have with a CD. Screw Amazon.

December 28 2007 at 3:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rick

@ 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.

December 27 2007 at 8:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Object-X

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.

December 27 2007 at 7:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Object-X's comment
Simon Arch

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.

December 27 2007 at 8:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LD

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.

December 27 2007 at 8:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rick

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.

December 27 2007 at 7:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to Rick's comment
Allister

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.

December 27 2007 at 7:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
punkassjim

Good stuff, but it strikes me as rather baby-ish to grant non-DRM rights to Amazon without granting it to iTunes. Freakin' retarded.

December 27 2007 at 7:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to punkassjim's comment
Allister

Good point! If they let Apple do it, I'd not give a toss about Amazon being US only.

December 27 2007 at 7:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LD

Not really. Perhaps Amazon is giving them a bigger piece of the pie than Apple has been willing to pony up.

December 27 2007 at 8:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
krye

jerks

December 27 2007 at 6:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to krye's comment
Matt

Whut!!?1!

December 28 2007 at 1:02 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
krye

...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?

December 28 2007 at 9:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
boatofcar

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.

December 27 2007 at 6:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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