News Microsoft wants to drop DRM too

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/04..._drop_drm_too/

[sinizterguy]

Now if we could get the DRM off video products too.

[mikeuk2004]

What happens to all the music you have purchased with dRM on it. Are they going to unlock it for you ??

[DXR_13KE]

this will be stopped by the RIAA...... i bet the rest of my chocolate almonds.

[rupbert]

A DRM free Zune player will be a genuine iPod competitor as the hardware itself is quite nice, with a lovely screen and simple interface.

I can't wait to see Zune v2 if Microsoft do eventually go DRM free, it's only a matter of time.

[Djpuk]

The user rejection of DRM seems to have pushed the manufacturers in to going this way with the labels, it is just a shame they did not listen at the start.
I guess they thouht it would only be the technical of us who would care, how wrong they were....
Power to the people is what I say.

[planki]

the moral and nice thing to do would be to unlock all current drm protected music bought through legimate means, however i suspect that Apple wouldn't do it as they would be losing the tie in that existing consumers have to Apple products.

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by planki

the moral and nice thing to do would be to unlock all current drm protected music bought through legimate means, however i suspect that Apple wouldn't do it as they would be losing the tie in that existing consumers have to Apple products.

The problem is that it's not for Apple to make this decision.

[Tyinsar]

When I saw the headline I was hoping that MS was trying to drop some of the DRM from Vista.

But at least the article points to the possibility of a "Plays For Sure" that actually "plays for sure". That would be good.

[pendragon]

two fingers up? how about one finger?

[Bauul]

A Zune player that could genuinely share music would be wicked, imagine a gig where the lead singer just holds up his Zune and says "this is our new single, enjoy!" and everyone in the audience recieves the mp3 there and then, now that would be something!

[planki]

Originally Posted by rupbert

The problem is that it's not for Apple to make this decision.

suppose but surely they would be able to have some leverage over songs that they have allready sold to existing customers.

[koola]

Originally Posted by rupbert

A DRM free Zune player will be a genuine iPod competitor as the hardware itself is quite nice, with a lovely screen and simple interface.

Originally Posted by Paul Thurrott

To hear Microsoft tell the story, you’d think its recently released Zune MP3 was doing just fine: Sales of the widely-reviled device were “exactly within our expectations,” a Microsoft spokesperson said recently. Reality, however, is a bit more cruel: After appearing in the top 10 on Amazon.com’s list of best-selling electronics devices for about a week after its debut, the highest-charting Zune model today can only be found if you scroll quite a ways down the list: The black Zune is currently nestled at number 95. The white and brown models, even more embarrassingly, can be found at numbers 866 and 687, respectively. Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research refers to Amazon’s sales list as “a pretty good indicator of consumer interest.”

So what went wrong? Just about everything, actually. The Zune provides only a small portion of the functionality a consumer gets with an iPod, and it does so with a device is that delivers less batter life and yet costs exactly the same as a comparable iPod. The Zune is incompatible with every single online service on the planet, even those that utilize Microsoft’s PlaysForSure technologies. Zune’s marketing is abysmal, while Microsoft appears to be going to great lengths to mimic everything about the iPod it can while offering virtually no real benefits over Apple’s dominant solutions.

Taken from here

Sure, DRM free would help the zune, but the iPod would win in the end...

[genesisofthesith]

Doesn't do a lot of good selling music drm free if its in a proprietary audio format (wma) that a number of your rivals (including the market leader) aren't compatable with.

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by koola

Sure, DRM free would help the zune, but the iPod would win in the end...

I agree.

If iTunes had sold DRM free music from the beginning they would have potentially sold 100x the amount of music.

I remember reading recently that iTunes have sold roughly 20 songs for every iPod sold. Now considering how many iPods there are that number may still seem high, but the fact that people have preferred to load music onto their iPods by other means points to a serious problem.

Now that problem won't exist much longer, I think iTunes is going to explode.

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by genesisofthesith

Does't do a lot of good selling music drm free if its in a proprietary audio format (wma) that a number of your rivals (including the market leader) aren't compatable with.

Indeed.

However I would suggest .aac could become the standard format rather than .mp3 as it offers much better compression.

[DXR_13KE]

what about .ogg?

[Kipman725]

what about FLAC and getting some quality back in the scheme of things, I wonder if anyone else is seeing this like I am:
CD's (too expensive) > DRM'd downloads (lousy quality DRM more expensive) > non drm'ed downloads (lousey quality, even more expensive)

where are my better than cd quality cheaper than cds with no drm'ed downloads?

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by DXR_13KE

what about .ogg?

Perhaps better in terms of sound quality, but .aac has been supported for some time now amongst portable audio devices.

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by Kipman725

...
where are my better than cd quality cheaper than cds with no drm'ed downloads?

Far, far on the horizon unfortunately.

The average joe was satisfied with 128 bit-rate music for quite some time now, and the move to 256 was long overdue.