Posts Tagged with ‘drm’

You would have thought that companies involved in selling digital media (especially those with DRM content) would have learned a lesson after the fiasco Google went through when the company decided to close its video marketplace. That was last August, when Google abruptly cut off access to the videos that many customers had rightfully purchased or rented. Then, after heavy internet criticism, all customers received an apology and full refunds.
Schizophrenic Microsoft must not have heard about that news story however, [...]

I will never understand how VCs make their decisions. Some companies that get funding seem doomed to fail, and falling under that very confusing category is last week's news that doubleTwist was funded by Index Ventures.
In theory, doubleTwist has all the Web 2.0 buzzwords that should lead to success. It's tagline is “liberate your media” and the only text other than news on their entry page is “doubleTwist desktop enables you to easily share media with friends and sync with [...]

Amazon today announced that its completely DRM-free catalog of MP3 downloads was expanded through the addition of Sony BMG music, which should be available to consumers by the end of the month.
With all four major music labels now on board, it looks like AmazonMP3 can now be considered a real threat to iTunes and its more limited variety of DRM-free music (over 3 million at AmazonMP3 compared to just 2 million at iTunes). “All four major labels will [...]

Well, it?s happened. Sony BMG announced it is ?finalizing plans to sell songs without copyright protection? sold via the Web.
And here we were just starting to appreciate the resistance the recording giant had thus far erected in the face of inevitable change.
Okay, actually, to be straight with you, no, we didn?t so much as give the company a passing smirk in our own coverage of its stubborn refusal to bend to consumer demand. But let?s shelve the nasty talk [...]

Yesterday, Amazon let known its establishment of a partnership between itself and the European startup SellABand. The association it will have with SellABand is simple: it will sell music released by artists developed through the independent service.
Why do we share this piece of information with you? Well, as many already know, Amazon several months ago unveiled its long-awaited music download service, appropriately named AmazonMP3. It was generally hailed by the blogosphere as welcome competition to Apple’s dominant iTunes [...]

Today, BusinessWeek has reported that Universal Music Group, the largest record label in the world, is in the process of developing a digital music service that will compete with Apple's iTunes.
What seems most interesting about this news is the fact that Universal is trying to convince other major record labels to get on board. “Morris has already enlisted Sony BMG Music Entertainment as a potential partner and is talking to Warner Music Group .”
Total Music, as the service is [...]

You have to hand it to brokep and rest of The Pirate Bay. Juggling raids, location shifts, development plans, and lots else, the team behind the most brazen (and arguably most chivalrous) anti-Big-Media effort known and celebrated by millions upon millions across the seven seas is using what little free time it has to converse about such delicious things as its plans to continue searching for a solitary spot that it can call its own. With the help of a [...]

Azureus, the company behind the popular BitTorrent client of the same name, has today unveiled that their hi-def online video service known as Vuze will open up to independent video and film producers.
The main difference between Vuze and some of the existing competition (Joost, Babelgum, VeohTV) is that this one is based on the BitTorrent protocol, which can be bad news or good news because download speeds depend on how many users are sharing and downloading the content that you [...]

Everyone knows that Apple has the most successful online music store, with iTunes selling more than 3 billion songs.
Recently Amazon entered the digital music market with AmazonMP3, offering only DRM-free songs at a price more affordable than the $1.29 customers pay for non-DRM tracks on iTunes.
Now, according to Nick O'Neill of AllFacebook, Facebook could be the next company to take on iTunes. While this sounds fishy, as no one has received any previous word of such news, it does seem [...]