We're stumbling in little baby steps towards the end of mainstream DRM. EMI announced that every single CD it sells from now on will be free of DRM, and thus open to personal format shifting, such as the world should be. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing writes, "I remember just a few years ago when an EMI customer-service rep sent an email to an irate customer promising that every CD in Europe would have DRM within a decade."
EMI seems to have wisened up quite a bit over the last year, dipping its toes in the DRM free waters of mp3 distribution and generally learning how not to be Universal Music Group. Kudos to EMI on a practical decision that more labels should be making. The other majors should pay attention, lest they find themselves playing catch-up to a hip new EMI by year's end.
See also:
The first week of 2007 in review
DRM-free Nora Jones song on eMusic and Yahoo!
Major label to take mp3 plunge, but who?
EMI experimenting with DRM-less mp3s?
1. I just purchased Norah Jones' latest CD "not too late" (an EMI production) and am unable to import the content into iTunes in order to listen to the CD on my iPod. This is the first CD I've ever purchased with DRM applied (I didn't even know to look for it nor would I have known what to look for) and it will *certainly* be the last.
Since I listen to music on my iPod 99.99% of the time I spend listening to music, it seems I've just purchased a very expensive coaster.
Posted at 5:05PM on Jan 31st 2007 by Rob Wilkerson