Monday, January 7th, 2008, at 9:24 pm
As anyone that follows my Google Reader Shared Items knows, I enjoy sharing a lot of news from TechCrunch.
This one is absolutely preposterous. Sony BMG has announced that they will now [finally] be selling DRM free music. This makes them the last of the “big four” to wake up and smell the coffee.
With one small catch. In order to purchase said music, you must go to a store, choose the album you want, buy a special card for $12.99, bring it home, log on to a special website, and voila!… you may now download your DRM free album.
At that point, why wouldn’t you just buy the album on CD where you get the uncompressed full version? If you have a computer with internet access, it’s not much of a stretch to presume you would have access to a CD drive that can rip your music. The major reason I haven’t hopped on the digital music bandwagon is the compression issue.
This begs the question, “Do record companies really wonder why people are compelled to steal music?” If they continue to make it this difficult to legally purchase digital music, nobody is going to start buying any time soon.