News for Monday, 13 August 2007

A couple of weeks ago, we were reporting about rumours regarding the conflict between Vivendi Universal and Apple concerning conditions, prices and way to offer online music to customers.
In its choice to regain control over Apple iTunes, the largest music label Vivendi Universal decided to follow EMI's move towards DRM-free music, but without allowing Apple to be part of it.
Universal claims that Apple's iTunes with its DRM-loaded catalog will be used as a reference for measuring the impact of sales on pricing, piracy and sales. This DRM-free trial includes many online music stores among them: Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, BestBuy, RealNetworks’s Rhapsody, Transworld, PassAlong Networks and Puretracks. DRM-free tracks will be provided in MP3 format, but it remains unclear if encoding quality will equal current EMI DRM-free tracks on itunes. The four-month test will begin Aug. 21 and will run through the end of January 2008.
This move from Vivendi Universal looks like the last action of a battle initiated with Cupertino to force them to adopt variable pricing while reducing Apple's influence in online music business. It might also be the last card in Universal's hand to make Apple following major's policies.
With Universal's trial and the encouraging results recorded by EMI regarding sales of DRM-free music, the 2 other large music majors, Warner and Sony BMG, might be forced to follow the same way and at the end they might all follow the strategy developed by Steve Jobs in its "Thoughts on Music".