Yahoo are planning to differentiate themselves from Apple’s iTunes in the MP3 market by removing DRM.
I’ve long believed in an openness ratchet effect. The simplest, cheapest way for new entrants to differentiate themselves in the market is to offer a slightly more open product than their locked-down competitors. No product development costs, no technology risk.
Are any carriers still getting away with stopping you from transferring your phonecam pictures to your PC via Bluetooth? Not for much longer…
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Welcome Yahoo to the Summer of ‘99 from Doctor Recommended
Guess what online music service is looking to offer unrestricted (i.e. non-DRM) music? Surprisingly, it is Yahoo.
Anyone else remember that little program called Napster? What about Allofmp3.com?
In rememberance of this historical occassion, I would ...
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Quite right too, why should digital music be less flexible than music in other formats? The music industry told us for years that "Home taping is killing music", but they were wrong. Likewise, the ability to copy CDs and make compilations using PCs or specialized hi-fi CD writers has totally failed to kill the music industry. The music industry continues to shoot itself in the foot with fiascos like Sony with its rootkit. All the customers want is to be able to listen to the music on whichever devices they have available, and to keep backups so that entire audio collections aren't lost when hard disks fail, as they often do.
Posted by: at July 22, 2006 03:26 PM