I wrote earlier about Universal leaping whole-heartedly into the fray with a huge catalogue of artists now available in MP3 format. Now Sony have leaped into action as well. OK – so leapt is perhaps an overstatement… the new Glasvegas album is up on 7Digital today (a week or so later than on iTunes) in glorious 320 kbps MP3 format. There seem to be a few other back catalogue items in there too, but I’ve not done a thorough check and it seems patchy rather than as enthusiastic as Universal, Warners and EMI (in reverse order of committing) are today.
BUT, I’m genuinely excited that we may be seeing the end of ridiculously un-customer friendly DRM policies in the sale of music. Who knows, if they get round to TELLING people they’re doing this, maybe their sales might even increase a little…. I’ve long believed one of the reasons that *some* people download, um, illegally is because DRM makes life so blinking difficult to enjoy music that you have legitimately bought.
Now all we need is for Apple to soften their approach to syncing your iPod with more than one PC and we’ll be making REAL progress in providing a highly usable digital music experience. Hurrah!
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[...] on from a post over at Sandlines about how many of the digital audio providers are switching away from DRM and over to MP3 which [...]