No DRM MP3 for double the price at Yahoo Music

Stan Beer
Friday, 21 July 2006 20:04

Your IT - Home IT

Now here's an interesting question. Would you pay double the price for an MP3 download if you had the right to copy and play it anywhere? Yahoo and Sony BMG are hoping that you will.

Yahoo is selling exactly one track as a test case - the Jessica Simpson single "A Public Affair" - at a price of US$1.99. ironically the DRM (Digital Rights management) free track is on the Sony BMG label, which was the center of the root kit scandal last year.

Being DRM free means that the track can be copied anywhere, including to CDs, as many times as the owner likes. However, for the privilege of doing that, the owner must pay double the price of DRM-protected tracks that can be purcased for 99c from online stores such as iTunes.

Downloading a track from an iTunes store, enables the user to play that track on their PC and download it to an iPod, but not a rival MP3 player, and allows three legal CD copies to be made.

The question for users is: what value do they place of having unrestricted access to downloaded music. So far, consumers have voted with their wallets for 99c and the combination of iTunes and iPod.

Apple no doubt believes that the days of CDs is numbered, when you have a device that can potentially store hundreds and perhaps thousands of songs and will plug into your car or home hi-fi system.