AnywhereCD, the new online music service created by original MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, has ended its legal spat with Warner Music Group, with both sides agreeing to dismiss their respective lawsuits against each other, and to bring their planned business partnership to an early end.
As previously reported, AnywhereCD is a combined CD and download music store, which allows customers to download whole albums as non-DRMed MP3s providing they mail order the physical CD. The logic behind the service is that once someone has bought a CD they can easily rip the music on it as MP3s, so you might has well supply the MP3s directly.
However, it could be argued that this kind of service is really designed to be a DRM free download platform and that the mailing out of CDs is just a technicality to convince record labels who are nervous of selling digital music in unprotected file formats, but who realise that consumers can and will rip MP3s off CDs, to buy in. That was arguably even more the case with AnywhereCD at launch because it offered the option to not actually receive the physical CD at all, allowing the customer to save the postage and packaging costs.
Which made it surprising that Warner Music, still a big advocate of digital rights management technology, was the first major record company to sign up to the service. Which meant it was not all that surprising when, almost as soon as the service went live, Warner announced it was backing out of its deal with Robertson, arguing it had been misled about how the AnywhereCD service would work.
Both sides issued legal papers regarding the dispute as to what Warner had or had not signed up to, but yesterday they announced they had reached an out of court settlement which will allow AnywhereCD to continue to sell Warner's music until 30 Sep, after which the major will withdraw its catalogue.