There's Hope! Die DRM!

[Cole]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37410

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE. After all the lawsuits we've been reporting about, all the fiasco's we've been through (Microsoft incompatible trio MSN-Plays For Sure-Zune), and now, it seems that music industry executives are finally thinking with their senses and not with their ill-fated techno-paranoid logic. During Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles, a lot of speakers are confirming that the time has come to either drop the DRM completely, or enable complete interoperability between various devices and services such as iTunes, Zune, Sansa, Rhapsody, eMusic, Yahoo, Napster, Limewire, Walkman etc.

Sales of CDs continue to drop, but it seems that musical industry is still full of them and they do not realise that people don't want to buy CDs because they're offering same 16-bit 44 kHz stereo sound for the past 20 years, but ok, at least some progress has been made.

Several labels teamed up with Yahoo, putting experimental sales of MP3 files with brilliant artists such as Norah Jones and alleged artists Jessica Simpson and Jesse McCartney alongside those DRM-filled ones.

Results were surprising to say the least, and executives of those labels are now pre-announcing that they will be increasing the number of DRM-free MP3 files that are able to reproduce on any device that a buyer owns. It comes as a shock that now an user of legally bought content can reproduce his files throughout his place of living, not just on a single device.

I just might start buying regular music again, instead of downsampling tracks to MP3 format from my music DVD collection. You know, music with crystal clear 5.1 Dolby Digital or dts sound.

Hmm...but that would mean I would not have high quality 5.1 soundtrack again. Nah, I'll just continue to buy concert DVDs, thank you. B+ for effort, though. ?

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Finally they start to understand.

I can't wait until this is implemented and is out of the talking phase.

 

[jondy]

Cool. I suppose it was inevitable that consumers would force companies to do an about-face on DRM, but it's nice to know (in the music industry, at least) this is happening sooner rather than later.