DRMed music is dead! Sony BMG to release its entire catalog on Amazon!

By SN Saturday January 12, 2008

New York Times – January 11, 2008:

Sony BMG, the music company, announced Thursday that it would become the fourth and final major label to begin selling digital music on Amazon.com, offering its entire catalog in the MP3 format by the end of the month.

The move by Sony BMG, which represents artists like Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, Santana and Justin Timberlake, further positions Amazon’s digital music store as a significant rival to the market leader, the iTunes store from Apple.

BBSpot has a hilarious write-up on Sony’s previous complicated attempt at releasing MP3s.

I also love how the market solved this problem in the US. Over in Europe, in order to get interoperability, the European Commission is trying create a system with one DRM to rule them all. In the US we have interoperability, as non-DRMed MP3s play on nearly everything. And we’ve dumped DRM in the process! A Win-Win without government imposed interference!

14 Comments

domc says:

1/12/2008 at 6:12 am

I’m dumping napster as of today. After raising the prices this month there history. To bad…
jescott418 says:

1/12/2008 at 7:14 am

So the question is will Apple follow suit and announce non DRM music for iTunes at Macworld? I think at this point the music industry has nothing to lose. Their market share is shrinking to the gaming industry and their bad publicity with the whole RIAA taking people to court is not helping. I grew up with records and making cassette copies was no big deal. I cannot see that the music industry has benefited from DRM.
Cinaedh says:

1/12/2008 at 7:24 am

See? It pays to go apeshit now and then. Europeans are just too laid-back and calm.

By the way, is that Britney or one of a zillion, highly original, one-of-a-kind, Britney lookalikes?

Whatever. It’s a great Saturday picture!
jim h says:

1/12/2008 at 9:05 am

I’ve bought some tracks from Amazon and while it “works” it’s lame and clunky – Light-years behind ITunes.

But, all we need now is for 2 major DRM-free music sites to start competing on price, which everyone now thinks has to be .99 for no obvious reason.
SN says:

1/12/2008 at 9:33 am

“Light-years behind ITunes.”

Mmm… considering that Amazon’s service automatically puts downloaded music in iTunes, I find your comment completely ignorant.

Amazon gives you a choice. If you want to use iTunes you can. But if you have brain, you don’t have to.
Imposter says:

1/12/2008 at 9:41 am

[Comment deleted – Violation of Posting Guidelines. – ed.]
James Hill says:

1/12/2008 at 10:00 am

Interesting how I’m being worshiped and everything, but the moderators should really clean this up.

After all, I use the same e-mail in every post. It shouldn’t be too hard for the hacks around here to do that.

Also, for SN, when the liberals in this country realize the same thing can happen with health care, where the free market can solve these problems, do you think they’ll all commit mass suicide… or just become Ron Paul supporters?
Angel H. Wong says:

1/12/2008 at 10:59 am

#7

The Britty with the catholic schoolgirl’s uniform? (perfect for jewish men) or the bald angsty one? (even more perfect for jewish men with MBAs)
doug says:

1/12/2008 at 1:35 pm

I think Amazon should come up with a little web-app for those who don’t care to get their music through their browser.

#7. as soon as they stop licensing doctors and approving medications, then medicine will have no more “government interference.”

and won’t we all be better off. the free market will quash doctors and drugs that have high mortality rates, and the stacks of corpses can be monuments to the efficiency of market forces.

music =/ health care.
James Hill says:

1/12/2008 at 3:01 pm

I guess I’ll just wait until Britty gets older. Women are like dog turds, the older they get the easier they are to pick up.
SJP says:

1/12/2008 at 5:12 pm

I didn’t realize Amazon sold DRM free music. After reading this I opened an account and bought some music. I agree with #6 that it is easy to use and will automatically put the downloaded song into the iTunes library. However, I also agree with #5, it’s light years behind iTunes. Amazon is easy enough if you know what you want (although even here it is messy), but if you just want to browse Amazon completely misses the boat. They need to do a serious overhaul of the site. I guess I will browse for music in iTunes, but purchase songs from Amazon. I can’t stand DRM.
SJP says:

1/12/2008 at 5:18 pm

I noticed that Amazon downloads songs to the MY DOCUMENTS/MY MUSIC/AMAZON MP3 even through it puts the song into the iTunes library. So you have two copies of the downloaded song on your computer. That seems a little weird.
SN says:

1/12/2008 at 7:22 pm

“So you have two copies of the downloaded song on your computer.”

No, not two copies. Amazon just tells iTunes where that one copy is located.

“if you just want to browse Amazon completely misses the boat.”

I guess I misunderstood 5’s complaint. Yeah, if you know exactly what you want, Amazon’s interface is great (at least to me). But for finding new music, it sucks. Sorry Jim B.
SJP says:

1/14/2008 at 12:29 pm

SN – No, if you tell iTunes to import the songs into your iTunes library then you have two copies. One in the MY DOCUMENTS folder and one in the iTUNES LIBRARY folder. This really isn’t a complaint about Amazon, but rather just something I noticed and thought I would share. I have used Amazon more and I am impressed with buying DRM free music online, encoded at 256kbps no less. I would think iTunes would have to go DRM free. This obviously is payback by the record moguls; allowing Amazon to sell DRM free music (cheaper in some cases) has to put a crunch on Apple, doesn’t it?