Buy song online here with no copyright protection at $2?
Chua Hian Hou
Fri, Apr 13, 2007
The Straits Times
MUSIC fans here can look forward to downloading their favourite songs without copyright protection at $2 a tune, if discussions between music label EMI and online music retailer Soundbuzz pan out.
According to EMI Music Singapore managing director Mohan Mahabatra, the two companies began preliminary talks last week to sell unprotected digital music that can be played on computers, mobile phones and portable music players via the Internet.
EMI, the world's fourth largest music company, has offered a similar deal to other interested parties, including 'telecommunications companies and mobile phone manufacturers', Mr Mahabatra said.
He expects these digital rights management or DRM-free songs to cost '30 per cent more than our current recommended minimum pricing of $1.49 per DRM-protected song', or about $2.
DRM is a technology used to protect digital content from unauthorised copying. It is typically used by online music services like iTunes and Soundbuzz to limit the number of times a song can be copied, or the number of devices to which it can be transferred.
This follows last week's announcement by EMI and Apple that the iTunes Store will sell DRM-free music from EMI's stable of artists at US$1.30 (about S$2) a song. DRM-protected songs sell for US$1.
Apple's iTunes online music store is available only to customers in the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan. An Apple spokesman declined to say whether the store would make its way here, although it did open an iTunes New Zealand store last year. New Zealand's population size is similar to Singapore's.
Soundbuzz, said its chief executive officer Sudanshu Sarronwala, has been talking with the four 'majors' - EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner - for a while to sell DRM-free music here. He said he is hopeful the other three companies will follow the same route as EMI, 'because this is what the consumer wants'.
However, as long as pirated music is available, it seems nothing the music industry does will satisfy some fans.
One female executive in her late 20s, who declined to be named, told The Straits Times that she would not 'pay even 20cents' as long as she could get music free elsewhere.
