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152 Comments
- MarkusX, on 10/07/2008, -11/+101Are we sure there's no root-kit hidden somewhere? :-))
- HughesAP, on 10/07/2008, -18/+83too bad I am boycotting Sony, otherwise it would be good news.
- roebeet, on 10/07/2008, -5/+63The "footnote" is that it's a monthly subscription service, like eMusic. But actually eMusic offers 30 downloads a month for $11.99. A much better plan (your musical tastes permitting).
- Asianwaste, on 10/07/2008, -6/+51Sony... DRM Free? *Head explode*
- Lunarsight, on 10/07/2008, -10/+43I don't trust Sony anymore.
After the whole fiasco with the hidden root kits on their music discs in 2005, I wouldn't put anything by them.
Once you pull a stunt like that behind the backs of consumers, that causes irreparable harm to your image. - pplant, on 10/07/2008, -7/+38I find it funny how all the big labels are so worried that about Apple.
Their strategy seems counter productive to me.
First Amazon undercuts with 89 cents, now Sony with 66 cents. *and emusic and others are cheaper.
Eventually they will run out of room. But I guess when your business is built on being a middle man you will always dream of volume.
Seems that Apple's "power" has lead a vast population to accept the 99 cent per track mentality. You may go cheaper but you can't ever go back to being more expensive. Apple not only has more dollars flowing through its store, but it also has more volume than anyone else.
If I were the record companies, I'd ride that wave all the way down until the industry is dead. Heck you don't even have to do any work. - KenSPT, on 10/07/2008, -12/+40You know what's cheaper than .66 cents? ......... free.
- tekkitan, on 10/07/2008, -4/+31Why would there be a lawsuit? It's Sony's music...
- rdm13, on 10/07/2008, -5/+22"So you like ***** music?"
oh cuz mainstream music is sooooo goood. why don't you go run along and listen to soulja boy with all the other children. i bet you can even teach them all the moves. - Jrr6415sun, on 10/07/2008, -17/+33***** itunes
- xsecretfiles, on 10/07/2008, -3/+19Never Forget?
- dalittle, on 10/07/2008, -3/+17Sony IS the RIAA. Along with Universal, Warner Brothers, and EMI. They suck.
- fani, on 10/07/2008, -3/+17Although this is good news for the consumer, some things about it suck -
- sony sucks. I boycott Sony religiously now after its rootkit fiasco. Makes me hesitant even if they give away their music for free. Something must be in it.
- why doesn't the musician and his band make the most of that 66 cents ? Why do these middle distributors take away so much. I really want to pay the musician for his talent, not the middle guys
- ***** RIAA - Monarch818, on 10/07/2008, -8/+21Ditto with the Boycott of Sony. What with the rootkit fiasco, and the craptastic DRM on Bluray, not to mention the bribes they paid the industry to get Bluray to win the HD war. I'll never trust them, nor buy one of their products again.
- Meocross, on 10/07/2008, -4/+17So who will be the first to find hidden botnets within Sonys "DRM free" music files?
- Asianwaste, on 10/07/2008, -2/+11"Our company is the largest company in china,and the most honest trading company"
Straight from the website.. you can't make this ***** up. - Goochman, on 10/07/2008, -6/+15Wait till the RIAA finds out about this - I wonder if they will sue Sony for $5,000 a track for undervalueing the 'artists' work!
And what about Kid Rock - an 'Album' artist - can we buy his drivel for $6 to get the 1 song on his album thats half decent? - tacojohn48, on 10/07/2008, -2/+10You can come over while I am home if you have a way of reproducing them and leaving the original unharmed.
/don't believe piracy is good, just pointing out the difference that makes your argument invalid. - r3zonance, on 10/07/2008, -1/+9"It can be seen as abuse of a market position of you sell something cheaper to smaller customers than you do to your biggest customer"
Especially as Sony own 50% of that smaller competitor.
In fact British Telecom had their wrists slapped for, the anti-competitive, selling phone lines internally for a cheaper price than they sold to their competitors. - antoni, on 10/07/2008, -4/+12"half decent"? You're kidding right? That Sweet Home Alabama take off makes me cringe.
- cheeseplease, on 10/07/2008, -1/+8I completely agree, it's like record companies don't really see what they're up against: everybody is getting all their music in high quality for free right now. As long as pay-for-music services don't offer full catalogues and full freedom for a very low price, it will never gain widespread popularity.
- wTheOnew, on 10/07/2008, -1/+8Die spammer!
- karmajunkie, on 10/07/2008, -2/+8This is more of a competition to eMusic than Apple, methinks; same business plan, but not as good a deal as eMusic. The only downside to eMusic is selection, although its pretty good last time I checked, especially since your savvier music buyers tend to have the more eclectic tastes found at eMusic.
- palewook, on 10/07/2008, -2/+8F' Sony. Don't support the RIAA. Do not buy anything from the Big Four labels.
- krische, on 10/07/2008, -8/+14fyi, the HD DVD camp was the first to start offering bribes. (Something along the lines of 100 million for transformers exclusive). Sony only started doing it after they saw the HD DVD people doing. Sony just had more money to throw around.
- pigfister, on 10/07/2008, -2/+8Sony are the driving force behind the RIAA and MPAA.
RIAA, SOUNDEXCHANGE, BPI, IFPI, CRIA, Ect, Ect, Ect:
# Sony BMG Music Entertainment
# Universal Music Group
# Warner Music Group
# EMI
MPAA:
# The Walt Disney Company
# Sony Pictures
# Paramount Pictures Viacom—(DreamWorks owners since February 2006)
# 20th Century Fox (News Corporation)
# Universal Studios (NBC Universal)
# Warner Bros. (Time Warner) - aerion, on 10/07/2008, -5/+10Personally, I think their catalogue is excellent and refreshingly different from most other retailers, but then again my musical taste is not mainstream.
Don't expect to find Kylie Minogue or Britney Spears on eMusic (expect perhaps on a compilation CD) or other chart stuff.
Instead, you'll find a wide range of other genres, metal, electronica, world music, jazz, rock, you name it...
They do let you try out their service for free. They give you 25 free downloads, which you get to keep even if you don't sign up with them at the end of the trial, so I'd say, give it a go and see for yourself what their offering is like.
As far as I'm concerned their service is a no-brainer:
- DRM free (always have been)
- high quality "plays on everything" MP3 VBR files, no WMA/M4A "PlaysForSure" crap
- extremely varied selection
- some of the lowest prices around - blueaura, on 10/07/2008, -0/+5Oh, that's a great song. I love the clever way he rhymes "things" with. . . "things".
[This post brought to you by Sarcasm] - HolyChimp, on 10/07/2008, -1/+6Except the labels wanted Apple to take the hit out of their 30% running costs rather than the labels giving a bigger chunk of their 70% to the artists.
- XtheXlanternX, on 10/07/2008, -0/+5Uh, Blu Ray is way better than HD DVD. It is higher quality, has higher capacity... How is Blu Ray not the be-all-end-all compared to HD DVD? You'd be willing to sacrifice a huge amount of data capacity for a savings of a couple bucks per DVD? Please.
- brickbat, on 10/07/2008, -7/+12It can be seen as abuse of a market position of you sell something cheaper to smaller customers than you do to your biggest customer. On the face of it, Apple would seem to have a pretty good case here.
- skoles, on 10/07/2008, -6/+10I need some new furniture and a TV. Let me know the next time you're not home.
- scruffles, on 10/07/2008, -0/+4The record companies should be worried about Apple. There isn't enough room in the industry for two middle men. The market will eventually squeeze one out. Right now the labels are collecting 70% of the revenue for providing "marketing" and "production", while Apple is collecting pennies on the dollar for "distribution". On top of that, Apple's distribution method is beginning to include marketing. If the artist, or the consumer wanted a larger cut, and Apple has a large enough market share, the cut will have to come from the labels.
The best strategy for the labels right now is to break up any music store that gets to popular unless its one they own.
Of course, the best thing for the consumer is for the record labels to go out of business. - theonlybradever, on 10/07/2008, -0/+4@ scruffles,
a terrific analysis.
the more popular places like the iTunes Store become, the less smaller artists require the help of major labels for distribution and press coverage. you can already ride MySpace popularity right into the iTunes best sellers list. - MarkusX, on 10/07/2008, -2/+6Does eMusic have as good a catalog as Sony does?
Does anybody know? - Wetzilla, on 10/07/2008, -2/+6Kid Rock has a half decent song?
- RudeTurnip, on 10/07/2008, -1/+5Take a look at Revision3's web site if you're interested in subscribing to eMusic. They have lots of 10%-off deals with most of their sponsors and there might be a deal with eMusic, too.
- Meocross, on 10/07/2008, -2/+6give it 5 hours for it to backfire in their face.
- inactive, on 10/07/2008, -3/+7It's a feature....
- Wetzilla, on 10/07/2008, -1/+5It's not a subscription in that sense. You "subscribe" to buying 15 tracks a month. It's more like it debits your card automatically and sets it aside for you to purchase music with.
- ceemeister, on 10/07/2008, -1/+5I had a feeling it might work like that, something like the Columbia CD club where they charge you every month to send you CDs. You're supposedly not obliged to keep them if you send them back, but you usually have to buy a few of them before you can cancel the membership, which autorenews. I bet there are some shenanigans like that here too.
- handmadewallaby, on 10/07/2008, -0/+4Remember Sony's "Connect" Music store and how much of a failure that was.
- clclark33, on 10/07/2008, -2/+6Actually, it could be considered predatory pricing; in many countries (including the U.S. I believe), it is considered a violation of anti-trust laws.
"Predatory pricing (also known as destroyer pricing) is the practice of a firm selling a product at very low price with the intent of driving competitors out of the market, or create a barrier to entry into the market for potential new competitors. If competitors or potential competitors cannot sustain equal or lower prices without losing money, they go out of business or choose not to enter the business. The predatory pricer has fewer competitors or a monopoly, allowing it to raise prices above what the market would otherwise bear." - ProfessorJerk, on 10/07/2008, -4/+8Who cares? Does anyone want a music subscription service? Until music companies offer something as good as the competition (i.e. cheap DRM free mp3's) than it's just easier and more convenient to torrent the one or two songs that you want.
- inactive, on 10/07/2008, -1/+5Why the decimal point? 0.66 cents = two thirds of a penny
- inactive, on 10/07/2008, -2/+5You should see PS3, it's the most DRM friendly system out there.
Makes me feel Linus Torvalds took over a part of Sony to build it
"Someone should buy their entire library then torrent it."
And you are the reason why DRM was made in the first place - santasing, on 10/07/2008, -1/+4MS did hand out checks worth about $100 mil to Paramount, that is documented on a bunch of websites. I don't really care one way or the other but its people like these that make it seem like Sony is the devil.
You are getting DRM free music, its a better deal than even iTunes. Sony did the rootkit thing. And I condemned it back then. Its old news now. Sony took the heat and changed its policy. Do you even remember without going to Google what year that was.
Fanboys...sheesh. I can imagine you sitting on a porch when ur 80 shouting "Boycott Sony". - krische, on 10/07/2008, -2/+5So is it abuse then when manufacturers sell cheaper to walmart than they do to their little customers?
- then00b, on 10/07/2008, -0/+3That's a pretty huge footnote. Buried as misleading.
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