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Amazon Gaining On iTunes' Lead In Online Music Sales

by Thomas Houston , posted Mar 27th 2008 at 10:02AM



Amazon recently moved into the number two online music retailer spot without much fanfare. Amazon's online MP3 store opened merely six months ago, and it appears to be gaining on the number one retailer -- Apple's iTunes Store, which commands 80% of online digital music sales.

The trends towards moving away from music burdened with digital rights management (DRM) software created new opportunities for Amazon. Why has DRM-free music -- which lets people play purchased tunes on any digital player or computer -- become such an important area of growth in the online music business? As Amazon's director of digital music, Pete Baltaxe, explained to USA Today: "Songs sold without DRM, at high quality, with album art, that's the best way to get people to buy music instead of stealing it," whereas DRM is a way to punish people who are buying...."

While Apple worked with record label EMI to sell DRM-free music in early 2007, the iTunes giant didn't have much luck getting other major labels immediately signed on. Instead of working with Apple -- currently offering 2 million DRM-free songs -- Warner, Sony/BMG and Universal decided to offer parts of their catalogs DRM-free on Amazon. Amazon's DRM-free library totals around 4.5 million, and is well-positioned to compete with iTunes.

Hopefully, the competition between the two retailers will result in better pricing and accessibility to music for consumers.

From USA Today

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Indie Music Offered for Free On MicroSD Cards

by Thomas Houston , posted Mar 20th 2008 at 10:20AM


SanDisk yesterday launched Sansa Sessions, a music distribution effort that uses microSD cards, which are those tiny little pieces of plastic that fit into (and expand the storage capacity of) cell phones. As of this week's launch, the microSD cards contain DRM-free tracks from over 50 indie rock bands, including Nada Surf, Of Montreal, Ladytron and more. This music sampler comes for free with the purchase of SanDisk's 8GB Sansa Fuze MP3 player, which has a built-in slot for reading the card.

While a microSD card loaded with tunes sounds like a good idea, we're not sure if it could actually take off as a popular format. Sure, file transfer to phones, MP3 players, and computers is easy, but the cards are physically tiny and extremely easy to lose.

From SanDisk and Engadget

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Record Industry Wants Anti-Virus Software to Scan for Pirated Files

by Tim Stevens, posted Feb 8th 2008 at 9:01AM

RIAA Wants Anti-Virus Software to Find Illegal Files, TooThe Recording Industry Association of America really, really wants to stop people from downloading illegal music. Over the years it has supported crippling copy protection that would leave your music files unplayable should you get a new computer, has stated that ripping your own CDs to your own MP3 player is illegal, and showed its commitment by hitting a single mother for a $220,000 fine for sharing two-dozen songs online. Now the RIAA wants unfettered access to the contents of your computer as part of a virus scan.

The software, which would either be part of anti-viral scanners or even something your ISP might require you to install, would run through your files on a regular basis and ensure that they are, indeed, your files. Presumably if it found something that wasn't yours it would alert the authorities and you'd be due for a summons.

This raises the question of just how the RIAA would be sure that the files it scans are indeed yours. Especially given those statements that ripping CDs is illegal, would it be flagging every iTunes or Windows Media Player track that didn't have DRM on it? It's a frightening concept even for those who do not illegally download music and one that we at least hope never sees the light of day.

From Fark and Gizmodo

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Amazon's Music Store Going Global This Year

by Tim Stevens, posted Jan 28th 2008 at 10:02AM

amazonmp3 Store Going Global This Year

We continue to be impressed at how quickly Amazon's amazonmp3 store has come in just a few months. What was a plucky little start-up recently became the first digital music vendor to offer copy protection-free tunes from all the major music labels, all in a format playable on nearly any digital music player in the world. The only thing holding it back it was geography, but that's set to change soon with Amazon.com announcing its download service will be going global this year.

Right now you have to be living in the U.S. of A. to purchase music from amazonmp3. The site requires a U.S. billing address and a U.S. credit card. There are ways around this, of course; if you happen to have generous American friends or relatives willing to let you use their plastic you can download the tracks from anywhere. Likewise, since the music is free of copy protection, those friends or relatives could just download them and send them to you, assuming of course they then deleted their copies. But, all that is a little questionable legally, and a bit of a pain to say the least, points that should make this international expansion of the company's store welcome news to many.

No word just yet of exactly when Amazon.com will loose its tracks on the global market, nor are there any details of which countries will be covered and by which labels. We'll bring that info when we have it.

From Reuters

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Sony Now Selling DRM-Free Music on Amazon

by Tim Stevens, posted Jan 11th 2008 at 1:32PM

Sony Selling DRM-Free Tunes on Amazon

Amazon.com has done it. In less than six months since its launch, the amazonmp3 service has gone from nothing to establishing a position as the only place on the web to legally download DRM-free music from every major American music studio. It was just a few weeks ago that Warner signed up, leaving Sony as the odd company out, something we predicted would change quickly. We didn't figure it'd be quite this quick, though, with Sony announcing plans to sell DRM-free music on amazonmp3.

DRM is of course the nasty copy protection that comes along much of the music you download online. Lately it's been going out of style faster than trucker hats and corny TV game shows, but Amazon.com's site is the only place on the web that exclusively sells DRM-free music from in a format that works on every digital music player known to man (the ubiquitous MP3), giving it a strong advantage over Apple's iTunes service. Plus, with many of its tracks available for $.89, ten cents cheaper than iTunes, at this point there's no reason not to check out what Amazon has to offer.

From USA Today

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Warner Offers Music on Amazon Without Copy Protection

by Tim Stevens, posted Dec 28th 2007 at 2:32PM

Amazon MP3
It sure looks like DRM, the record industry's digital music copy protection technology, is really dying. Wal-Mart is pushing record labels to ditch copy-protection from their tracks, Paul McCartney publicly hates the stuff, and even iTunes, which has sold more DRM-laden music than anyone else, is shifting away from protected tracks. Now Warner Music is joining in as well, finally selling tracks at Amazon's music store free of DRM nastiness.

DRM was created as an attempt to prevent people from sharing their digitally downloaded music with friends. However, it quickly became apparent that those who wanted to share music would find a way. It also became clear that DRM was only hurting those who tried to move their music to a new PC and found that it would no longer play. Much of this anti-DRM momentum can be attributed to Amazon itself, who launched its music store earlier this year and pledged from the beginning to only sell tracks that are not copy protected. While Amazon's success thus far pales in comparison to that of Apple's iTunes, that the site shuns DRM and also offers its tracks in the industry-standard MP3 format has made it quite popular among those who have non-Apple branded players.

Warner joins Universal Music Group and EMI at Amazon's store. This leaves Sony BMG as the odd man out, the only major label that has not signed up since the store launched in September. Sony has taken lots of heat for the extreme -- and possibly illegal -- tactics used to protect its music, so it's unsurprising that the company is late to the party on this one. But, the writing is on the wall, and if Sony doesn't come around soon it may find itself looking a little dated?

From BBC News

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Wal-Mart Tells Music Labels to Offer DRM-Free Music 'Or Else'

by Tim Stevens, posted Dec 3rd 2007 at 11:35AM

Wal-Mart Wants Restriction-Free Music DownloadsDRM is hated by those who legitimately purchase music, and now Wal-Mart is jumping on the bandwagon. They have asked record labels that sell music through its online store to ditch the stuff.

An abbreviation for Digital Rights Management, DRM is software created to restrict what you can do with music and movie downloads. It's the stuff that keeps you from copying music and movies from one computer to the next while limiting burning to CD or loading to a portable music player. If you legitimately paid for the content, DRM is nothing but annoying.

EMI started the DRM-free trend among the major labels this past spring, offering its restriction-free tracks for download through a number of sources. Individual artists like Radiohead and Paul McCartney have ditched DRM, but many major labels like Warner Music Group and Sony BMG have held out, requiring that their music sold online be protected. They are the ones being called out by Wal-Mart, who has asked them to make protection-free tracks available in 2008 "or else".

The "or else" part is undefined at this point, but when a retailer with the clout of Wal-Mart asks for something, it tends to get what it wants. We'll be keeping an eye on this going forward and hoping for the best.

From Boing Boing

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Amazon MP3 Store Takes Aim at iTunes

by Tom Conlon, posted Sep 25th 2007 at 5:35PM

Amazon MP3 Store Takes Aim at iTunes

Today, Amazon.com quietly re-targeted its missiles to point them squarely at Apple. The Internet superstore has launched a public test version of amazonmp3, its new music download service that offers MP3s compatible with every digital media player on the planet. That means you can download tracks and listen to them with iTunes and iPod just as easily as you could with Windows Media Player and, say, a Creative Zen.

The songs are also free of DRM copy protection, meaning you can freely copy them from device to device without getting tripped up by legal red tape. Unfortunately, that means the store is only offering songs from Universal and EMI, the two major labels that have gotten with the times and dropped DRM. Warner and Sony still won't set their songs free on the Internet without DRM, which means they won't be appearing on amazonmp3 any time soon. Even Universal and EMI haven't opened up their catalogs completely, further diminishing what's available on amazonmp3.

That said, we like what we see so far. Unlike iTunes, there's no flat rate for songs and albums. Songs are generally 99 cents a pop, though the top 100 songs are offered at a 10-cent discount. Just like in a music store at the mall, there's a bargain bin for albums (usually priced $8.99) that price as low as $4.99 and under. We found some excellent multi-track singles from the likes of Nirvana, Lily Allen and the Pixies for dirt-cheap.

One thing to note: While songs can be downloaded a la carte through your browser, you will need to download an amazonmp3 client program in order to download albums – but you're already used to that from using iTunes anyway.

Overall, we think we've found a new way to buy music. The selection isn't as big as we'd like it right now, but if you've already got all of your information stored with Amazon as a customer anyway, this really couldn't be any more convenient.

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Wal-Mart's New Downloads Play On iPods, Zunes, Cell Phones and More

by Tom Samiljan, posted Aug 21st 2007 at 4:21PM



Wal-Mart is the latest store to jump into the DRM-free music sales game, offering the same digital-rights-management-free tracks from EMI and Universal that are sold through the iTunes Plus, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and other online music stores. (DRM is a system of adding a small amount of data to an audio file, which puts draconian limitations on copying, burning, and playback of the material -- essentially this means you can't play your purchased music on more than one kind of portable player.)

The giant retailer's latest move means that, say, tracks by Norah Jones, Keith Urban, Barrio Fino, Amy Winehouse (pictured), or Bon Jovi, among other EMI and Universal acts, will be playable on everything from iPods, iPhones and BlackBerrys to Zunes, Windows Mobile Smart Phones, and most music cell phones.

What's more, these tunes will only cost $ .94 cents a track (or $9.22 per album), a full 35 cents less than the $1.29 iTunes is charging for its DRM-free tunes. The difference is Wal-Mart's tunes will be in the MP3 format, which plays on pretty much every audio player in existence, while Apple's iTunes Plus tracks are in the AAC format, which is of slightly higher audio quality (but plays on a smaller number of players).

In what is definitely a sign of the music industry's desperation, these easy-to-copy-and-pirate tunes are being virtually given away. The idea is this -- people who are nice law-abiding citizens or who just don't feel like dealing with the Wild West of illegal-file-sharing sites will flock to these attractively-priced, unshackled tracks.

For a full explanation on how DRM-free tunes work and where you can find and purchase these tunes, check out USA Today's newsy primer on the subject.

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The New Weapon Against Online Music Theft?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 20th 2007 at 10:29AM

Universal Testing Audio Watermarking System for Digital SongsRecord labels looking to keep their property off of illegal file-sharing networks have begun experimenting with a technology called 'watermarking' as the successor to DRM, or digital right management. DRM is a system of adding a small amount of data to an audio file, which puts draconian limitations on copying, burning, and playback of the material.

Customers dislike these restrictions and hackers have easily broken the protection, making DRM more of a nuisance than an effective anti-piracy tool. With a little extra work, DRM can be easily circumvented by non-hackers as well, thanks to the so-called analog gap. Simply burn your purchased track to a CD, then re-rip in your preferred format and the DRM copy protection is gone. For these reasons, labels and online stores have been abandoning DRM en masse over the past few months. EMI, Universal and Sony are all joining the DRM-free bandwagon, as have countless indies on the completely DRM-free eMusic site.

Universal is now planning to place supposedly inaudible watermarks into the audio itself. Watermark audio is comprised of slight oscillations at frequencies that the human ear cannot detect, but that a decoding device easily can. Because the watermark is placed in the track as audio, simply burning and ripping will no longer work as a means of erasing the extra info slipped in there by the record label. Though watermarks could be used to track individual songs back to pirates and file-sharers, they will not be used for that purpose at first. Instead, Universal will be using the watermarks simply to identify that a track began as a legal download to see if stripping a song of DRM has an impact on piracy.

Activated Content, the company licensing the technology to Universal has posted a 'Third Party Audibility Test,' which says there is no objective evidence that watermark is audible in two test tracks ('Beautiful Women' by Boyz II Men and 'English Roundabout' by XTC). However, a similar watermarking system was tried with the DVD Audio format (music on DVDs) and many audiophiles -- about the only people who bought DVD-A discs -- complained that the watermark was often easy to hear. Whether the audio is inaudible to humans ears or not, the truth is that the original music as it was intended to be heard by the artist has been altered.

But, labels will always want to track and try to dissuade the theft of their content, so for now watermarking seems like the obvious next step after the failure of DRM. Whether or not we'll see a massive backlash or an easy way to break the protection remains to be seen.

From Slashdot and Cnet

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Apple Adds Lennon to iTunes

by Tim Stevens, posted Aug 15th 2007 at 9:22AM

Apple Adds Lennon to iTunes

Though Apple still can't quite manage to get the entire Beatles collection on iTunes yet, it has managed to get 3/4 of the solo work that came after the Beatles squared away with the new addition of John Lennon's 13 solo albums, adding on to the solo works of Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, which are already downloadable from the service.

It's been tough for Apple to offer the Beatles on iTunes, thanks to a nasty lawsuit that was recently settled over the use of the name Apple, which also happens to be the name of the legendary record label founded long ago by the Beatles. The feud actually dates back all the way to the very beginning of Apple Computer, but boiled over in the last few years with the company's move into the music industry with the iPod and iTunes.

With things on their way to being patched up, the new Lennon additions include remastered studio albums like 'Imagine,' concert albums like 'Live In New York City,' the massive 'Anthology' collection, and even a selection of music videos to go along with the tunes.

Albums are available in standard and Plus formats, meaning DRM (digital rights management) haters can feel free to download, providing they're willing to cough up the extra cash to set their music free. And really, that's how Lennon probably would have wanted it.

From Shiny Shiny

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Universal and Google to Sell Unprotected Music

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 13th 2007 at 11:01AM

Universal Goes DRM Free... With Google?Universal Music Group, one of the 'Big Three,' has made the leap to DRM-free tunes (tracks you can play on any MP3 player since they don't have digital rights management, or, DRM). Oddly enough, though, Universal has left the largest online music retailer, iTunes, out in the cold. Universal will be selling the unprotected MP3s through the online stores of Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Rhapsody, and Google.

The service, called gBox, will display advertisements for artists on Google search pages. Clicking the link will take you to a page to purchase the DRM-free tracks for 99 cents using the Google Check Out system. Universal will also offer tracks with DRM for the same price... but we're not sure who would buy them. gBox is a start up and is not part of the Google family (not yet anyway). Google says the relationship is purely an advertising relationship.

GBox could be a legitimate competitor, given that it undercuts iTunes' DRM-less songs by 30 cents and has the ubiquitous Google as a partner. At launch, the service will only work on Windows PCs, though tracks can be played on any computer or MP3 player.

From Forbes and BetaNews

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One Million DRM-Free Tracks from EMI

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 25th 2007 at 11:17AM

EMI Expanding DRM-Free Music AvailabilityDRM, the copy protection intended to keep you from illegally sharing music you download, sometimes just prevents you from listening to the tunes you legally acquired. Back in May, when Apple launched iTunes Plus, EMI gave iTunes DRM-free tracks for the reasonable price of $1.29 a track. Today, EMI has announced a partnership with music distributor MusicNet to make 1 million DRM-free songs from its catalog available elsewhere.

You may not have heard of MusicNet, and that's probably okay with its executives. The company works in the background to provide content to a number of online music sales services like URGE, VirginDigital.com, and Yahooo! Music Unlimited.

With any luck, other record labels will follow suit. Before long, we may all live in a DRM-free utopia, where we're free to listen to our music whenever we want, wherever we want.

From Engadget

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Universal Severing Ties With iTunes?

by Tom Conlon, posted Jul 2nd 2007 at 10:21AM

Universal Ending Relationship With iTunes?

Universal Music Group has pulled out of iTunes. That's according to The New York Times, which, citing anonymous sources close to the negotiations, is reporting that the world's biggest music company has opted not to renew its contract with Apple to carry its artists on iTunes -- artists that include U2, Akon and Amy Winehouse.

The move by Universal is an attempt to coax Apple chief Steve Jobs into spreading the wealth that's been raked in thanks to the successes of iTunes and the iPod. Jobs currently has the music industry eating out of his hand: More than 100 million iPods have been sold worldwide since its invention, and yet the only copy-protected digital music service that works with it is iTunes. iTunes, for its part, accounts for 76 percent of all online music sales -- the only sector of the music industry currently experiencing any growth. Of course, the iPod is the only player that works with tracks purchased on iTunes.

Universal is such a massive player in the music business that its artists are responsible for one out of every three new music releases in the U.S. Losing Universal will be a blow to iTunes, though the reverse is also true: In the first quarter of 2007, iTunes accounted for 15 percent of Universal's worldwide revenue.

For now, it appears Universal will offer its music on iTunes without a contract, meaning it can remove its artists completely at any time with no advanced notice if it's not happy. That day may come sooner than later, since Steve Jobs has repeatedly refused to even entertain the notions Universal and other music companies are asking of Apple. They include allowing the iPod to be used with other services, allowing iTunes to work with other players and putting an end to flat rates for music files. The music industry wants the right to sell more popular songs at a premium and sell less popular songs at a discount.

For now, it's a stalemate between Apple and Universal and it'll be interesting to see who cries 'Uncle' first. Of course, it doesn't hurt Steve Jobs that he's a pro at twisting arms.

From The New York Times

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Free Music Downloads, Sans DRM

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 22nd 2007 at 1:23PM

Free Music Downloads, Sans DRMWE7 is a new download service offering free music with no DRM copy protection whatsoever. What the hell? How is this possible? By tacking a "relevant" advertisement onto the beginning of each song. The service is backed by pop legend, former Genesis frontman and Mr. Sledgehammer himself, Peter Gabriel. The service hopes to bring those who would normally download from an illegal sharing site or service back into the legal fold by offering songs for free without restrictions on sharing, but still getting the artists get paid. Users can still choose to buy a song at the regular price of £.99 ($1.97) to avoid the advertisements all together. But, if you're cheap or poor and just want your free music, you are not stuck with the ad's forever. After four weeks you have the option to remove the advertisements from the song. The bad news here? You can only remove the advertisements from 20 tracks a month.

Though all of this is still up in the air, at the bottom of WE7's We site is a passage that basically says just because this is how it works now, doesn't mean this is how it's going to work tomorrow.

WE7 does have its first major partner, V2, home to Bloc Party, Grandaddy, Cold War Kids, Gang of Four, Tom Ze, and Underworld. The label's entire back catalog will be available for free via WE7 in the near future.

From Shiny Shiny

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