Yahoo, Sony BMG release copy-free music
Yahoo is selling personalized Jessica Simpson’s new single, produced by Sony BMG, without Digital Rights Management (DRM), which is first time that a major music label sells an unprotected digital song. The recording industry has been pushing for increased DRM and copyright protection laws and enforcement to prevent piracy, which they say is hurting music sales. While independent labels and musicians offer music downloads without copyright protection, Sony BMG’s release of a DRM-free song from Simpson is in stark contrast to the company’s effort last year to lock down music CD content.
The Simpson song, “A Public Affair,” is available on Yahoo Music for US$1.99, about twice the price of a typical title download, and it includes a personalization feature for 500 names. The copy-free music downloads are in the popular, flexible MP3 format, which means it can be stored, transferred, burned and played on nearly all digital music players, including iPods.
However, concerns remain whether consumers will be willing to pay a premium price for all this flexibility.
Although the Yahoo Music MP3 is only a special, personalized version of a standard music download, it highlights how online music providers and the recording companies are starting to resist Apple’s iPod and iTunes dominance.
Yahoo has not mentioned any plans to expand its DRM-free offerings.
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 5:40 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
