10 years after the advent of Napster, a sleeping giant wakes up ... EMI in Talks to Sell Unprotected MP3s Feb 9, 1:24 AM (ET) NEW YORK (AP) - Music company EMI Group PLC - home of The Rolling Stones and Coldplay - has been talking with online retailers about possibly selling its entire digital music catalog in MP3 format without copy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing numerous people familiar with the matter. The MP3 format, which can be freely copied and played on virtually any device, would allow consumers to play music purchased from any online store on any digital music device. Currently, music purchased at Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iTunes Store, for example, is wrapped in Apple's proprietary version of Digital Rights Management technology known as "FairPlay" and can only be played on the company's iPod devices. Songs purchased from rival online stores that carry different DRM technology cannot be played on iPods. That has caused some to wonder whether it might be hampering sales. According to the people familiar with the matter, London-based EMI asked the retailers to submit proposals by Thursday telling the company what size advance payments they would offer in exchange for the right to sell EMI's music as MP3s, the Journal reported. One of the unidentified people said EMI would decide whether to forge ahead with the strategy based on the size of the offers. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as Friday, the Journal said. When asked about the report, EMI spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer told The Associated Press, "We're not commenting on speculation." Earlier this week, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs called on record labels to abandon their requirement for online music to use DRM, which is designed to limit unauthorized copying. Jobs said such restrictions have done little to slow music piracy and eliminating them would open up the online music marketplace. One person familiar with the matter told the Journal that several major music companies have recently floated the idea of scrapping copy protections, but none appears to have gone as far as EMI, and some maintain that copy-protection software is critical to stop piracy. EMI is the world's third-largest music company by sales and home to acts ranging from The Beatles to the Beastie Boys. But some of its performers - notably including The Beatles - do not yet sell their music in any digital form. EMI has experimented with releasing singles in the DRM-free MP3 format. In the past few months, the company has released tracks by Norah Jones, Lily Allen and the band Relient K. Meyer said Thursday night: "The results of those experiments were very positive, and the fan feedback has been very enthusiastic."
Really. I have a program that takes away the protection and allows me to burn, copy, or do whatever to the mp3 files I download.
Let us know when you can do that to copy-protected WMAs and iTunes-downloaded songs, please. That would be swell. why do I get the feeling that we created a monster with Lil Pun knowing so much stuff...? I am thinking Lawnmower Man...
This is really simple. Burn your WMAs or Itunes songs to CD and then rip them from the CD onto your hard drive.
Yes, I did it that way before too but I wonder if there is another way around it. The thing is, I pat less than $10/month for unlimited downloads. The catch is they are protected files and you can only listen to them on the computer, you can't burn them, place them on an iPod, etc. To get around this the DRM has to be cracked/broken/whatever. I think everybody knows about the burning then ripping but maybe not.
There is software available that will record anything your computer can play as various types of files (MP3, WAV, etc.) Some of the software will take as long to record as the song is, while other software will record at various speeds (e.g. 4X).
Umm... , yeah, man... I know that one... I meant WMAs or iTunes songs OTHER people have purchased or copy-protected... you know? Lil Pun, what is the name of YOUR software?
Tunebite Platinum. Works real well except on occasion it will cut off parts of the beginning of the song, nothing too big or it will scramble parts of the song. It only does these things every so often and not a lot. All you have to do it re-record it and the second time has always been good to me.
EMI May Sell Entire Collection as DRM-less MP3s "According to the Chicago Sun-Times, EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ... without Digital Rights Management protections. According to the article, several other major music companies have considered this same route, but none as far as EMI. The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes. Those competing retailers include RealNetworks Inc., eMusic.com, MusicNet Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. People familiar with the matter cautioned that EMI could still abandon the proposed strategy before implementing it. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as today.'"
