by Playfuls Staff |
7th April 2007
After EMI and Apple announced the introduction of DRM free
songs on iTunes store is Microsoft’s turn to sign a similar deal. Speaking with
Times,
Jason Reindorp, head of marketing for Zune, hinted that Microsoft will sell DRM
free songs via its Zune platform
“We've been saying for a while that we are aware that
consumers want to have unprotected content.”, Reindrop said. British music
giant EMI Group PLC said Monday it would start selling much of its music
without anti-copying software.
The third-largest recording company, which made its
announcement with Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, said it would
sell songs through Apple's iTunes store beginning next month and possibly later
through other online outlets.
By providing downloads without the anti-copying
"digital-rights management" software, "we aim to address the
lack of interoperability, which is frustrating for many music fans," EMI
CEO Eric Nicoli said. iTunes would sell individual EMI tracks, with their DRM
removed, at twice the sound quality of existing downloads for $1.29.
”This does open things up a little bit. It potentially makes the competition
more of a device-to-device or service-to-service basis, and will force the
various services to really innovate.” Reindrop said for Times.
Also, a Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the potential
agreement for IDG News Service. "The EMI announcement on Monday was not
exclusive to Apple," said Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an
e-mail to the IDG News Service.
Tough, EMI declined to comment a possible deal with
Microsoft but confirmed that the two companies are negotiating. Zune
Marketplace, a service similar with iTunes, offers already music from EMI.
Last year, an interview with Techcrunch, Bill Gates expressed
his opinions about said that the current DRM technologies are too complicated
for regular users and they are better off purchasing music CDs and ripping the
music from them for listening on computers and portable music players.
According to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Gates noted
that DRM “causes too much pain for legitimate buyers” and overall is not an
effective solution. He went on to say that “DRM is not where it should be, but
you won’t get me to say that there should be usage models and different payment
models for usage. At the end of the day, incentive systems do make a
difference, but we don’t have it right with incentives or interoperability.”
Zune is Microsoft's digital portable media player and is
also associated with the online music store (an iTunes rival). The portable MP3
player was released to the U.S.
market with a 30 GB model for US$249.99
Zune managed to obtain 9% market share since its launch in
November, making it the second most important MP3 player, but far behind iPod. In
December last year Microsoft confirmed that Zune had a 10.2 percent market
share in the U.S.
in the 30 gigabyte category, according to the latest data. In January this
year, Jason Reindrop said that Zune could be launched in Europe
before the end of 2007.
