Very interesting report in Billboard overnight about a major promotion being planned by Pepsi and Amazon which, the US trade magazine reckons, could force SonyBMG and Warner to get their skates on regarding the release of their digital catalogues without that now well and truly outdated digital rights management technology.
As much previously reported, earlier this year EMI became the first major record company to admit that encrypting their digital music with restrictive DRM technology did nothing to protect against copyright infringement, and just pissed off consumers and gave Apple a stronger hold over the digital music market, because only iTunes could sell DRMed music that worked with the market leader iPod.
Universal followed suit in August announcing it would make large parts of its digital catalogue available without DRM in what was officially a six-month experiment, but which is expected to continue once those six months are up at the end of January.
As reported here recently, rumours have been rife that SonyBMG are also planning to drop DRM imminently, though those rumours seem to be mainly coming out of the US, with UK based SonyBMGers being much less committal on the whole thing. We now hear that SonyBMG's independent distribution arm RED is in talks with Amazon about making tracks available in the non-DRMed MP3 format, which is in itself a change of policy at the major, and may well be where those 'SonyBMG about to drop DRM' rumours have stemmed from.
Warner Music, meanwhile, remain very quiet on the whole DRM issue, though top execs at both SonyBMG and Warner are said to be watching Universal's DRM-free experiment closely, and are likely to be influenced by whether Universal continue to offer MP3s after their six month experiment, which they probably will.
Anyway, Billboard have reported that Pepsi in the US is planning a major music promotion that will launch during the mega-advertiser event that is the Superbowl in February. The promotion will appear on some 5 billion bottles, and will allow customers to download a free MP3 track for every five bottle tops they collect. Since the promotion will be in association with Amazon's recently launched DRM-free MP3 download service, any major not involved in that service won't be able to participate, which would mean them missing out on what could one of the highest profile music promotions in the US next year.
That, coupled with separate reports that US retail giant Wal-Mart is putting the pressure on SonyBMG and Warner to make their music available in MP3 format for their download platform, means that the across-the-board DRM-free music is surely now just around the corner. In fact, I'd bet you a six pack of Pepsi and ten pound Asda voucher that restrictive DRM is a distant memory this time next year.
Meanwhile all those dumb ass SonyBMG and Warner execs can explain to their shareholders why they held on to an expensive, redundant, anti-consumer technology for so much longer than was really necessary. A cynic might say "because they're out of their depth in the post-plastic era of music", but what do cynics know? Apart from how not to run a record company.