The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
The bold move by EMI to make all of its music available online DRM free is a long overdue step in the right direction. However, why will consumers pay extra for something that should be theirs by right?
Both Apple and EMI made all the right noises
earlier this week when they made their joint announcement that iTunes
would provide a DRM free option for all EMI music available at the
online store. However, charging consumers 30% more for that option
amounts to nothing more than a massive price hike by stealth.
No doubt both EMI and Apple would defend the US$1.29 charge for DRM
free music by claiming that it is necessary to protect their markets.
After all, iTunes users might download tracks to their Sony Walkmans
and other non iPod devices and, as far as EMI is concerned, they might
copy tracks to....well whatever they've been copying them to.
In addition, EMI will encode DRM free tracks at a higher bit rate than
ordinary copy protected tracks, giving users higher quality sound
reproduction than what they've been getting up until now. Is it
impertinent to ask EMI why users should pay extra for the sort of sound
quality they should have been getting in the first place?
It is no secret that, as far as online music is concerned at least, DRM
has been an abysmal failure. Only a tiny fraction of the music sitting
on iPods is from iTunes and, while the Apple music store dominates the
legal music downloads market, it is dwarfed by the volume downloaded
from illegal sites. In addition, DRM cracking software continues to
proliferate.
It is also no secret that music companies have been pressing Apple to
raise its iTunes music prices. Spearheaded by Steve Jobs, Apple has
resisted price hikes while publicly calling for lifting of DRM
restrictions.
The new move by EMI would seem to provide a solution for both Apple and
the record companies. However, for consumers all it offers is an
acknowledgement that the product they've been paying for up until now
is inferior and, if they want the real thing, they'll have to pay more.
Neither Apple nor EMI should be surprised if most consumers say thanks but no thanks.
David Bass
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