The Null Device

Universal releases 43,000 songs online

From the Age: recording industry behemoth Universal releases 43,000 songs online; for US$0.99, users will be able to download them and burn them to a CD. Doesn't say which format it's in, though it sounds like the terms of the MP3-based EMusic service, which Vivendi Universal bought sometime before going pear-shaped. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if it was some proprietary format which needs "secure" Windows-based software just in case the naughty user tries to do something the copyright holder doesn't like.

There are 2 comments on "Universal releases 43,000 songs online":

Posted by: Andrew
http://realkosh.weblogs.com/
Fri Nov 22 02:17:32 2002

Latest rumours are either just Liquid Audio (vomit) or both Liquid and Windows Media. Either way it's WinXX only and will be protected at least to "only your machine". The Universal thing is as close to what I want out of one of these services except it's too expensive, should be 50 cents a song Aus$ (i could put up with 99 cents Aus$) and albums should be much less than 10xPrice-Of-Song to encorage entire album purchases... but that ignores artist royalties issues (traditionally by the song)...

I'm mainly interested in the truth of the comment Universal have made about putting everything they have the rights to online. Does that include ancient vinyl only releases people have wanted for years but can only get for $100 at a record fair, b-sides, live tracks, stuff that hasn't been released?

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Fri Nov 22 12:17:05 2002

I guess that in Universal's view, consumers do not have a legitimate right to listen to music on non-Windows systems.

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