| Wednesday, June 12, 2002 |
21:26 - I can't believe what I'm seeing.
http://www.sunspot.net/la-fi-universal12jun12.story
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Somebody pinch me. It looks as though Sony's and Universal's record divisions have woken up suddenly having grown a brain, and they're doing what we had all considered to be the impossible dream: they're releasing music as digital singles, for less than $1, and whole digital albums for $10. And what's more, this music can be burned onto CDs.
The songs will be distributed first by Liquid Audio of Redwood City, Calif., whose audio format provides better sound quality than MP3 files. Liquid Audio delivers music to dozens of online retailers, including CDNow, Amazon.com, Best Buy and Sam Goody.
Liquid Audio files are scrambled so they can't be freely copied from computer to computer. But Universal has decided to let buyers burn the files onto conventional CDs in unscrambled formats, meaning they could be copied or moved freely from that point.
The major labels have resisted the idea of letting consumers burn downloadable songs because they believe it would encourage piracy. But Kenswil noted that songs are widely being pirated, so "you're not keeping anything from being open [to piracy] by copy-protecting the download."
This could get really interesting.
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