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January 7, 2008

music

Sony BMG’s not-smart plan to sell DRM-free tracks

Posted Jan. 7, ’08, 4:45 PM PT by Thomas Gagnon-van Leeuwen
Category | Music

So remember how we learned a few days ago that Sony BMG would soon drop DRM on at least part of its music catalog? Turns out the record label really is, but it’s not half as exciting as it sounds. This is the genius idea: you walk in select physical stores across the U.S. and Canada (Best Buy, Target, etc.), you buy a shiny $13 “Platinum MusicPass”, go home, scratch the back to reveal an exciting code, and hop online to go download one of the 37 albums available at launch (Britney Spears’ Blackout, anyone?). DRM-free.

Seriously, who are those guys kidding? Apparently, the logic behind this idea is that by going into physical stores to get their MusicPass, people will also buy CDs. The only problem is that no one will go to a store to get a card with a code, then go home, go on their computer and have a choice of 37 albums to download for $13.

If people are walking in the store, why not buy the physical CD? The price is comparable, it’s DRM-free (duh), and you get a backup of your music with shiny photos and lyrics. Or how about this: if people are sitting at home, why not fire up BitTorrent or Limewire (yes, people still use that) and get a DRM-free album for free — as in, they give you no money, Sony.

Coincidently, the launch date for this project is the same as Steve’s Macworld keynote (January 15th). Hopefully Plan B at Sony is to just throw the music up on iTunes Plus and forget about Plan A. Because either way, their “innovative” experiment will probably be a miserable failure.


3 Comments

Anonymous said:

I honestly can't decide if I am shocked by this news or not. On the one hand I am shocked that anyone could be stupid enough to come up with such a mind-bendingly idiotic plan as this. On the other hand I have to take into consideration that the perpetrators of this plan are Sony and that their reality and ours are certainly different.

Personally, I'm not impacted by this since I don't live in the US or Canada. However, even if I did live in one of these countries I can safely say that I would not be taking "advantage" of this madness for the reasons mentioned in the article - i.e. false economy and inconvenience.

Since Sony presumably only understands money I can only hope that shareholders vote with their wallet and sell at this news as I assume they at least are able to recognise a bad business idea when they see one.

January 7, 2008 11:28 PM
Anonymous said:

I think Sony is trying to re-coup losses in on-line album sales with this dumb idea by having consumers pay for an entire album up-front before they get to the download stage. It will disappear very soon, just as the concept of album, CD, and DVD will as digital downloading becomes the standard.

January 8, 2008 4:18 AM
CVBruce Author Profile Page said:

The best thing that Sony could do right now is to spin off BMG.

It made sense to have a company to supply media when Sony was the leading force in the Music Player industry. It has been ages since the Walkman brand has had a big impact on the market place.

Spinning off BMG would allow Sony to focus on what they do best, building hardware.

January 8, 2008 3:20 PM

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