Music Retailers Beg Recording Industry To Drop DRM
from the who-is-it-helping? dept
We've already seen more and more musicians tells the recording industry to drop DRM policies that hurt the consumer. And, of course, we know that consumers prefer non-DRM'd music (which sorta goes without saying). Now even music retailers are wondering what the recording industry is thinking. A group of UK retailers have banded together to urge the industry to drop DRM altogether in order to help boost holiday sales this year. Of course, in the past, we've seen the recording industry insist DRM was needed to protect both the artists and the retailers -- but it certainly looks like both are finally realizing what many have said all along: the only thing that DRM "protects" (and it does a piss poor job of it) is the obsolete business model of the record labels.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: drm, recording industry, retailers
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hard to Change
Oh, we were a computer training school. Duh. I finally left out of embarrassment.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Flexible
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Artists
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There are allot of business models running at the moment which should just be shut down and rebuilt; The bradband internet system and the mobile phone system in the UK for example. They only exist to exploit people in ways that dont even make sence.. charging people for imaginary services. This, to me, is pathetic exploitation.
Google with the 'g-phone' android system are obviously trying to change this, but in the UK carriers wont let it happen.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DRM is crapola
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not sure about the UK, but most music in the US is now sold by retailers that use it as a loss leader to get people in the store weekly for new releases (Best Buy, WalMart, and so on). They don't care if they make zero margins on music, because if you come in the store regularly eventually you'll buy the big screen TV.
WalMart in particular is the master of the zero or negative margin loss leader and the large margin upsell.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Can't compete
[ link to this | view in chronology ]