Sony/BMG To Start To Sell Unprotected Digital Albums

[CoopDVill]

Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the world's second largest music company, will this month become the last of the big four majors to drop copy protection software on music downloads, also known as digital rights management (DRM).

Sony BMG, home to artists including Beyonce, Britney Spears and Celine Dion, said on Monday it will launch a gift card service on January 15 called Platinum MusicPass that will feature digital albums from its artists in the MP3 format. The format does not use DRM protection.

Fans will be able to buy the digital album cards in stores and download full-length albums from a MusicPass Web site after they type in an identifying number. The cards will be available at U.S. retail outlets such as Best Buy and Target.

"The introduction of MusicPass is an important part of Sony BMG's ongoing campaign to bring its artists' music to fans in new and innovative ways, and to develop compelling new business models," said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG president, global digital business & U.S. Sales.

The music industry posted a 15 percent drop in album sales in 2007 as fans bought fewer CDs. Digital music sales did not make up for the revenue shortfall, forcing executives to explore new business models and ways of attracting consumers.

One of the biggest issues for music companies last year was whether dropping DRM would help drive digital sales.

In February, Apple Inc founder Steve Jobs called on music companies to stop requiring retailers to use DRM for services like his company's iTunes Music Store. Jobs said dropping DRM would help boost sales.

Digital music buyers have been frustrated by the limitations imposed by DRM, prompting industry analysts to support the call to drop copy protection. Music companies had required DRM to prevent users from making multiple copies or sharing songs with friends for free.

EMI, the number four music company in market share became the first major to drop DRM in April and was later followed by Vivendi's Universal Music Group. Last month, Warner Music Group said it would start selling its music in MP3 format through Amazon.com.

 

[CoopDVill]

Digitally Downloaded Music Sales Reach Record High In 2007

As physical CD sales continue their free fall, digital downloads again reached record sales figures for the year.

U.S. digital download sales reached an all-time high for the fourth year in a row, culminating with the biggest post-holiday sales week. For Christmas week (December 24-30), shoppers downloaded almost 43 million tracks from various digital music services, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. That's a 42.5 percent jump over the 30.1 million downloaded in the same week the previous year.

For the year, 844.1 million tracks were downloaded digitally, a 45 percent rise over the 581.9 million tally for 2006. Digital albums are up 53.5 percent as well, at 50 million sold, compared with 32.5 million in 2006. Fourth-quarter sales also reached all-time highs, with 231.9 million tracks and 14.2 million albums sold digitally during the period, compared with 163.3 million tracks and 9.8 million albums the year before.

Individual songs are performing better, too. "Low" by Flo Rida sold 467,000 downloads for the week, topping the 294,000 digital units of Fergie's "Fergalicious" for the same week in 2006. In addition, 27 songs sold more than 100,000 units during the post-Christmas rush, with 10 exceeding 200,000. In 2006, only 15 songs sold more than 100,000 and four sold more than 200,000.

These figures highlight a banner year for individual songs as well. Setting the record for the most downloaded digital track in a year is Soulja Boy with "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," which moved 2.7 million copies. Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" was the top download of 2006 with 1.9 million, while Weezer's "Beverly Hills" was the digital king in 2005 with 961,000.

Not one track sold more than 500,000 digital units in 2004, but 114 did in 2007, almost double the 61 tracks that crossed that threshold in 2006. Meanwhile, 36 tracks passed the 1 million sales mark, more than double the 17 in 2006.

All these records set in 2007 bode well for 2008 digital sales. The post-holiday spike witnessed during the past four years generally sets the tone for digital track sales in the year that follows once the volume settles down. The 6.6 million tracks sold after Christmas in 2004 carried over into the new year, with weekly sales totals averaging about 5.2 million tracks per week in January, to 9.5 million the week before Christmas 2005.

Tracks then jumped to 19.9 million after Christmas that year, and settled down to an average of 11.3 million in January 2006. Again, digital sales increased to 14.5 million the week before Christmas 2006, rising to 30.1 million the week after. The first few weeks of 2007 then saw average track sales of 19 million. This year's week after Christmas (which actually only tracked five days after Christmas) produced a robust 42.9 million tracks sold.

While SoundScan's data measures sales from such digital retailers as iTunes, Amazon and Rhapsody, it does not track sales from artists' own Web sites (such as Radiohead's direct-to-fan release of "In Rainbows") or from widgets placed on artists' social networking pages (such as James Blunt's Lala widget on MySpace, which sells his 2007 album "All the Lost Souls").

 

[djsincere510]

on Monday it will launch a gift card service on January 15 called Platinum MusicPass

So that directly puts Sony Music for sale in the check out counter lines at grocery stores..Nice move.
Kinda how southwest airlines got their gift cards for sale at walmart..

 

[Defy]

very interesting.....looks like the first steps in a complete change in how people acquire music

In February, Apple Inc founder Steve Jobs called on music companies to stop requiring retailers to use DRM for services like his company's iTunes Music Store. Jobs said dropping DRM would help boost sales.

thats funny since iTunes AAC protected formats are one of if not the most popular DRM.


I thought Sony wasn't gonna give up on their DRM mission tho

 

[City Situation]

^ Yeah forreal.

On another note, fuck Sony and the RIAA. I'm not gonna give them money so that they can come after random people for downloading. My plan is to be able to join the free digiwaxx record pool if I ever need tracks from the major labels like Sony, EMI, Warner, and Universal. Not to mention nothing they put out is actually worth buying anyway.

Maybe if they had done this around when they found out about Napster, and capitalized on downloading, and they didn't start suing random people, then maybe I probably love this, but not now.

 

[ESFCE]

I will always prefer buying a physical cd and ripping it myself than buying the files no matter the price.... I only grab single songs off iTunes from time to time.