[ARSCLIST] interesting

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/business/10music.html

now that Universal will open up its catalog to standard non-DRM formats, I think everyone else 
(Warner Music, Sony/BMG) will quickly follow suit. This will probably be the death knell for the CD, 
figure it will demise slowly over the next 5-10 years and no material will be issued on CD after 
that.

I see this as possibly good news. Apple seems to have set the bar higher for quality at the higher 
price. I still think 256kbps AAC is not CD quality but it's a heck of a lot better sounding (to my 
ears at least) than 128k. I'd like to see full CD quality for $1.29 a song, and that may end up how 
it goes since Apple has introduced the idea of competing over sound quality. What will probably 
drive this will be viable competition to iTunes, which so far hasn't emerged.

Also possibly good news, it seems to me that a company like Universal, with vast stores of already 
digitized material sitting out of print and making zero money right now, would want to make 
everything available online at a price since there are almost zero production costs vs. packaging 
and manufacturing CD's. It seems to me -- and I don't pretend to understand how Big Music sees their 
business model since it's made little sense from the outside for quite some time -- that you'd want 
to flood the market with choices and count every $1.29 as found money if the material was out of 
print previously. This might be over-optimism by a collector, though, given Big Music's continuing 
shotgun-to-feet MO.

Anyway, very interesting to see DRM going to the great grave of Bad Ideas, where it belongs. The 
lesson for history -- treat your customers like thieves and they will turn on you.

-- Tom Fine