My copy of New Media Age hit the doormat at last this morning, complete with a cover story about Amazon’s imminent opening of an MP3 store here in Blighty. How long has this been open in the States???

Anyway, alongside 7Digital and Play.com, iTunes is at last getting some serious competition. I like it!

Tags: 7digital, Amazon, DRM, iTunes, mp3, music

Bye Bye DRM

I blogged a couple of times on this subject already - this is really just an update. Seems Sandlines was pretty quick off the mark with this news yesterday, beating New Media Age, Brand Republic and the Guardian to the punch.

When I posted below, there were a smattering of Sony/Columbia etc titles available in MP3 format. 7Digital have now confirmed that they are 100% MP3. That means 4 million tracks. Oh, and that Glasvegas album is better value, this week only, for a fiver. You heard it here first

Tags: 7digital, DRM, mp3, music

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!

Tags: DRM, glasvegas, mp3, music, sony

MP3 = Universal Music format

… and it’s a yes!!!

Well, perhaps I shouldn’t really try to claim credit for this, but right after I blogged (below) about how Universal and Sony should embrace the brave world of DRM-free music and allow their catalogue to be sold as MP3, I found myself looking at the 7Digital site and lo, there’s a whole swag of Universal’s various labels all offering MP3 format downloads.

That means artists like U2, The Killers, The Cure, Amy Winehouse, Sam Sparro, Kanye West, Jay Z… quite a long list.

I feel a spending spree coming on…

Tags: DRM, mp3, universal music

Our friends over at Nokia have announced their ‘Comes With Music‘ subscription service is going to launch here in Blighty first.

Comes with DRM Time Bomb

I’m a huge consumer of music - have been one way or another all my life - and I’m old enough to remember buying music in Vinyl (before it became cool again), cassette tape, CD, MiniDisc (remember that?) and now of course I buy most of it via download sites - MUCH prefering MP3 to the complexities and frustrations that DRM has inevitably brought to the process. So I come with baggage.

The only good thing about DRM (and there’s not room here to talk about all the bad stuff) is the opportunity for subscription services - rental of your content. And Nokia’s offering here is an interesting move ahead on what the likes of Napster and Vodafone (amongst others) already offer: this time the DRM is linked directly to the purchase of the device - so you buy your pay-as-you-go nokia phone, and you can download ‘all you can eat’. Then, 12 months later, the bomb goes off. You need to go out and buy another phone.

Neat trick: Nokia just turned the PAYG market into an annual subscription, of sorts.

D’you think they have people standing outside schools flogging these things?

Personally, Ihave an eclectic mixture of devices: a Sony Walkman music phone, an iPod Touch, a couple of other mp3 players - and I like my stuff to be playable whereever… so I MUCH prefer my music in MP3 format, thank you very much. Thanks to the mix of eMusic, 7Digital and Play.com, *most* of what I want to buy comes through in MP3 (legally!). I’m just waiting for (most of) Universal and for Sony to get with the programme… Come on guys!

Tags: DRM, iphone, iPod Touch, mp3, music, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Walkman