More songs to buy, download and share
— -- Artists such as Jay-Z, Amy Winehouse and the Beach Boys today will join the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones and others who have tunes for sale online free of copy restrictions.
Major label Universal, which also is home to 50 Cent, Sting and Gwen Stefani, begins testing the market for digital music without digital rights management built in to hinder sharing. Tracks will be available through online music retailers such as Google, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Rhapsody but not the largest seller of music downloads, iTunes.
The songs and albums will be priced comparably to what retailers charge, usually 79 to 99 cents a track or $9.99 per album.
The label would not comment on the experiment, which is set to run until the end of the year. When he announced the plan this month, Universal Music Group's Doug Morris said he expected the project to "provide valuable insights into the implications of selling our music in an open format."
Restricting indiscriminant copying has been a concern since Napster made online music swapping wildly popular in the late 1990s. As record companies ventured into online sales of legitimate music downloads, several digital rights management systems have been used to control how music is shared and transferred to portables.
Online sales have been on the upswing. Downloads and subscription fees totaled about $1 billion in 2006, according to market tracking firm Jupiter Research, and are expected to grow 20% this year. But observers have wondered whether the market would grow faster without restrictions and the confusion they cause.
In April, EMI, home to the Stones, Jones and Coldplay, was the first major label to sell unprotected tracks. Universal's move "is another step toward a world where we can have some simple compatibility," Jupiter's David Card says.
Various forms of management have tripped up buyers of digital music. Most iTunes music, for example, is sold in a format that can't be moved directly to devices based on Windows software; Windows Media files sold through sites such as Walmart.com can't be added directly to Apple's iPods.
Most digital tracks can be burned to a CD and then copied back to a PC, which strips the digital rights management and allows movement anywhere. It's a cumbersome process that may deter casual piracy, but "anybody who really wants to do it can do it," Card says.
EMI says its move has been positive for sales. "We recognized there was a growing frustration among consumers about the lack of interoperability among devices and stores," says EMI's Jeanne Meyer, who declined to give figures. "We are very pleased with what we've seen. The real impact appears to be driving full album sales."
EMI's DRM-free songs are available on iTunes and will be sold on Amazon when its digital music store opens later this year. Amazon also will sell Universal songs. The iTunes tracks, including the John Lennon catalog added last week, go for $1.29 (30 cents more than standard tracks), but albums sell for the same price (usually $9.99) as standard ones. Ringo Starr's music will be added next week.