Never watched much football, have you? It's called a misdirection play.

Amazon's music store is EMI - the open deal that Apple brokered - and Universal, who jumped up and down about DRM being necessary, maybe you should share your DRM with Microsoft so you could manage your Zune and your Samsung thingy in iTunes too - finally broke off negotiations on the basis that they wanted to control prices, not Apple. So fine, what did they do? Looking at EMI's success, they did what they said they wouldn't do and sold DRM-free music at a lower price than they want from Apple. Hmm. Guess they're giving a good price to Amazon, too. (I tried Amazon, and it's pretty nifty.) Oh, they're teaching Apple a lesson all right! (Laughs, snickers.)

The point? EMI down, now one more: Universal. Two more labels to go. How long until all four majors have dropped DRM? I'd say six months. Now, once the music is unlocked, the price war will really get going. I predict 25 cents a track in a year. Now, will the Apple "monopoly" be damaged? No. It wasn't a monopoly. The music's the loss leader for selling iPods, iPhones and iWhatevers. And business is vewy, vewy good. Thanks, Universal! Now Amazon has to pay some of the bandwidth charges, and the billing charges and everything. Thanks, Amazon! Now for the movie rental part of iTunes.

Oh, Sony Columbia, don't throw us in that briar patch like Universal did! Aah!

According to the Apple anti-fanboys who frequent your letters section, you're an Apple fanboy. And yet you talked about Apple fanboys as if they were something than yourself. Which is it? And I bet Slate had a story about this too. Huh? Huh?

...for anything with sound quality as poor as that of an MP3 file.

Do people really pay money for music in MP3 format?

We've gone from records that sound pretty good to compact discs that sound so-so to MP3 files sound mediocre, at best. The continued dumbing down of consumer media never ceases to amaze me.

And people pay for it?

eessmier - i know it may be hard to believe in your sonically isolated, perfectly flat-response recording mastering suite, for the majority of users mp3s sound just fine. they are encoded in a relatively high bitrate vbr format, this isn't your old school 128kpbs phase-fest that used to characterize poorly ripped internet mp3s off of bit torrents.

most people who are using ipods don't have the headphones, monitors, or golden ears required to notice the difference. and if it really bothers you, no one is forcing you to buy one. but to claim that LPs sound better is just anachronistic when you consider their reduced frequency range and inabilty to have out-of-phase information in stereo at low frequencies. it's warmer but less accurate, which maybe is ideal for old classic rock records, it really depends on your tastes in music i suppose. i do most of my ipod listening on a bus or train and the ambient noise from those environments cancels out the ability to discern between fine details like that anyway. and do you really think a bunch of dumb teenagers playing their mp3s on tinny phone speakers give a second thought to the subtle difference that psychoacoustic compression algorithms introduce?

anyway i'm glad to see the DRM fading, it seemed inevitable and that apples use of it was a compromise they had to broker with the big record labels in order to establish that people would buy music online in that fashion. now that it works, let the competition really heat up!!

The entire DRM mess is the most dumb-assed thing imaginable, probably worse than the cell phone debacle. It encourages illegal downloads (bad for the artists and producers), cripples devices (bad for device manufacturers), and confuses and cheats the consumer and is an impediment to fair competition.

If the industries are too short sited or not confident enough in their products to understand that a single DRM standard is in everyone's best interests and the best possible compromise between accessibility and copyright protection, why can't we put the DMCA to good use for once and dictate what DRM will be used by everyone? Device manufacturers and content providers would have to compete on the merits of their products... never mind. A certain company is surely lobbying very, very hard to protect the near monopoly of their iProducts, a monopoly that exists almost entirely because the fragmented DRM situation dictates that once you have market share you can't lose it ever. One concession (and EMI is the one who demanded DRM free music, not Apple) isn't going to change much. If the really big boys follow EMI's lead we may see real progress, but they are just as short sighted, greedy, and arrogant as they have ever been so that will be a long time coming.

For beginning to end, it has not been Apple who has wanted DRm-ed music. It has been the record labels who demanded it. Blaming Apple for the happy by-product isn't quite fair or minutely reasonable. That record labels are finally getting a clue is not Apple's fault.

Hey, I'm an Apple fan but a realist and I'm glad that this DRM-Free thing is happening. I was not happy about the record industry 10 years ago when this was all the rage. They have blamed illegal downloading for their woes for too long when in reality their troubles are mainly because their offerings are mostly garbage. In defense of Apple, I think that it would be appropriate to explain why their was DRM in the first place, or do you really understand that issue at all? Apple was successful at on-line music because Stevie boy was successful at wooing the labels into an agreement and the only way that they would do it was through a DRM scheme. Please don't be so disingenuous to

Apple. They sometimes deserve their knocks but be precise in your assessment.

Thanks,

G

Why Amazon IS Better

Amazon.com does have a better Music Store than Apple in terms of NOT tethering downloads and using MP3 format instead of proprietary AAC/iTunes. iTunes should have been in the forefront of pushing for this in the first place, and not making DRM-free so prohibitively expensive. But the fact that legal, accessible music is now available online should serve as a market correction. This should serve as evidence that (a) Suing Consumers, (b) Tethering Downloads, and (c) Using Governmental Lobbying to Artificially Restrict Consumers/Broadcasters is simply not a way to power sales.

Make Digital Sales Better

Amazon probably needs to do a better job promoting their DRM-free ($0.89/track) music, because not many people know about it. Now the question is, will "they" drop the prices so that it's competitive with a real-world market? When given the chance to buy the new Jimmy Eat World album for $8.99 (MP3 format) or buy the CD (with a case, artwork, rippability/portability, and resale value) for $9.99+tax ($10.69 in my state), I went for the physical CD. Drop the prices of digital downloads and the revenues will be made-up by volume sales.

Real World Effects

I am a college student (on a campus where our students are specifically targeted by the RIAA frequently), and a member of the prime 20-25 year-old music market. I was also an early user of Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, BearShare, and BT. The ability to find and "try out" music lead me to become an obsessive music fan. I bought CDs of the bands I liked, until people started getting sued by the RIAA. Then I quit buying CDs altogether and sold/traded my 300+ CDs en masse. I decided to support bands (and not the RIAA) directly by attending concerts. In 7 years, I've seen around 100 bands. But with the introduction of a viable alternative, e.g. DRM-free music, I have *actually* started purchasing music again.

What Hinders the Process

But then again, there's a generation gap. When my mom (who doesn't understand the computer, doesn't listen to that much music, and purchases around 1 album a year) sees that someone has been sued over music files in the newspaper, she says, "Good, they deserve it." I can explain the viewpoint of actual music consumers (crazy people like me who buy 20+ albums a year) 15-million times and tell her that the artificially bloated music industry will not give people viable legal alternatives, but she just doesn't get it. And this is the same mindset that the music industry executives seem to have.

What Needs to Happen (Realistically)

Now, there are a few things that need to happen:

(a) The RIAA needs to stop suing their consumers;

(b) The RIAA needs to stop trying to kill web broadcasters through excessive royalty payments (which doesn't happen for on-air radio broadcasts),

(c) Each label needs to work out their offerings on DRM-free music availability, and;

(d) the DMCA needs to be repealed or amended substantially because the civil penalties (fines) are simply flabbergasting in comparison to penalties for other civil acts. (Ergo, "Good job, music lobby, way to screw your consumers.")

When that all happens... that's when I'll get off of my soapbox.