DRM

from engadget.com

What was just a footnote to 2007 has finally come to fruition. Sony Ericsson just went live with details for the August 25th, Nordic launch of its PlayNow Arena media download site. Initially the site will offer 1 million, DRM-free songs (ramping up to 5 million) from Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI.

from arstechnica.com

The bad dream of DRM continues. Yahoo e-mailed its Yahoo! Music Store customers yesterday, telling them it will be closing for good—and the company will take its DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008.

from engadget.com

Rhapsody, the digital love-child of Real Networks and MTV, is best known for its DRM'd subscription music service. As such, the globe's population of sheep-white-earbudded, sidewalk zombies have been completely off limits to its charms. Until today.

from appleinsider.com

NBC has persuaded Microsoft to filter out copyrighted material in its Zune jukebox while Apple refuses the same.

from ilounge.com

Amazon’s MP3 store has become the number two digital music retailer, according to USA Today. The newspaper’s report claims that much of Amazon’s success is attributable to cooperation from the four major record labels, all of which gave Amazon permission to sell their music without DRM, while some have denied Apple the same opportunity.

from engadget.com

Remember Nokia's Comes with Music (CWM) service? The service which includes a full year of free DRM'd music downloads with the purchase of a CWM cellphone. Up to this point, Nokia has refused to comment on the financial details of the service. Important since "free" is expected to be anything but free with those music costs tucked neatly into the price of the handset, the carrier's data plan, or both.

from engadget.com

It was promised for May, now Apple is busy rolling out iTunes updates to "preview and purchase iTunes Plus music -- new higher-quality, DRM-free music downloads from participating music labels." Hmmm, "labels" huh? That's plural which means Stevie boy might have more than EMI up his sleeve when he goes on stage for All Things D later today.

from engadget.com

Just as the Times Online predicted last month, Amazon.com is set to strike a potentially major blow against DRM by launching a download store later this year that will offer millions of songs in unprotected, MP3-only format.

from ilounge.com

Despite initial speculation that today’s joint announcement by EMI and Apple would be the availability of the Beatles music catalog on iTunes, no such announcement was made by the two companies.

from ilounge.com

As anticipated, EMI Music today announced that it plans to make all of its digital music offerings free of anti-piracy restrictions and that iTunes would be the first online store to sell the DRM-free music.

from ilounge.com

According to a Jupiter Research survey, almost two-thirds of European music industry executives believe removing digital rights management (DRM) from downloadable music would compel more consumers to buy music online. The study was carried out between December and January, before Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ call for DRM-free music.

from engadget.com

Remember how we told you that Sony had hinted that "DRM would become less important" just a few days ago? Well, it appears that Stan Glasgow's quip wasn't just empty rhetoric. Late last night the wires lit up with reports that EMI Music has begun selling music tracks sans DRM for a buck apiece