Wise Buddha

You can’t have escaped the widespread media coverage of EMI’s decision to make their entire catalogue available via iTunes and other retailers free of DRM. If you have been living under a rock DRM limits what you can do with music that you have purchased from legit sources. Apple limits the number of times you can burn the track or how many computers it can be stored on etc.

This is good news BUT EMI also took the opportunity to jack the price of each track because of the higher file quality - fair enough you might think but it potentially makes inferior MP3 tracks more expensive than buying a high quality CD copy from Future Shop - huh!

Anyhow the Good The Bad and The Queen became EMI’s first artist to release DRM free music on their web site (good album btw) and in a fitting tribute to not knowing their arses from their elbows the RIAA - you know the guys who sue kids, grannies and dead people for downloading music - have ended up sending cease and desist letters to legit participants in a Nine Inch Nails viral promotion read about it here.

I think it’s about time that the record labels recognised that a seismic shift has occurred in their business model and that music is now a swappable and collectible commodity whether they like it or not. What the labels have to do is influence the public to use legit downloading services not aggressively pursue their own customers. I for one will purchase some music from EMI to reflect my support of their move, a few tracks perhaps once the Beatles are made available. In the meantime the other labels need to place themselves in the mindset of their consumers and facilitate the inevitable whilst making some money rather than none at all. Having said that I will never spend the same amount of money buying inferior MP3 files when the CD is cheaper - maybe this is their master strategy to make us all buy CD’s again!