Yup, you heard it right! Universal, the biggest major record label has dropped its copy protection. Well, not entirely. They’ve agreed to drop DRM from a significant amount of content from their existing repertoire. This move is an Industry experiment to see how does this affect the consumer market and if thing look promising, they might drop DRM entirely.

But the music will not be offered D.R.M.-free through Apple’s iTunes, the leading music service. I think this is to level the playing field and would also be a litmus test to gauge downloads from other stores such as Realnetworks or Wal-Mart. In fact, Universal has notified Apple that it would not commit to a long term agreement to sell music through iTunes. As for the pricing, I’m not sure, they might price it US1.29 per download, something similar to EMI’s move, but nevertheless, this shall pressure other record labels to follow suit. Based on predictions, DRM will be dropped entirely by end of this year.

I would really like to see the progress of this, now with the shackles removed, lets put money where our mouth is!

I woke up this morning feeling inspirational. When I was driving to work, I had some serious thought on what should be done to make the music Industry better. It was the longest drive to work ever. I’m starting to feel angry at myself for not finding any answers. The more I blog and research, the more my head starts to fill itself with anger and negativity. My blog has turned into something very negative for the past few months and I strongly feel that this is not healthy. I realized that if I don’t put a stop to this, death threats will fill up my junk box.

So…..

I’m going to turn this around and start offering insights and solutions from now onwards on possible angles that we can tackle in order to up the local music industry, before I begin, please study this diagram:

…And here are some facts on the worldwide music industry now:

1- Tower records has went out of business, and followed by 2,699 other record stores in the US alone

2- Even sales from digital music can’t recoup the losses from plunging CD sales

3- More than 5000 record company employees have been laid-off since 2000 and the remaining suffer from an “existiantial crisis”

4- The Majors killed the industry and themselves when they decided to sue Napster, costing them unrecoverable US billions

5- Like it or not, but the Industry’s fate is hanging onto iTunes, EMI took the move of lifting off DRM to make way for Apple’s Fairplay

6- The Majors are fighting a losing battle with….the internet users

7- Music CD sales in 2000 were being saved by Nsync, like it or not, boybands were the true heroes

8-…Eminem followed in 2002, but CD sales were starting to plunge

9-When Starbucks signed Paul McCartney and Video game companies are starting a label, you know that there is something really really wrong somewhere

10-Music now has no real economic value, just emotional value

11-On a local tip, word has it that Sandy Monteiro is leaving for Indonesia. There goes another forward thinker in our Industry..eh, what industry?

There you have it, the current scenario of our industry, so in days and weeks to come, I shall try to give some suggestions on how we can help and ascertain the future of malaysian music…crossing fingers

Oh, you can read the full article of my summary here