Following EMI, and Universal, Warner is the next and now second-to-last major label to drop digital protections and offer it’s whole catalog of digital music DRM-free though the Amazon media store. This is a big win for Amazon and one wonders if Itunes will follow.
The lone holdout? Of course, the company that practically invented the term incompatibility, good old Sony. No doubt Sony will smartly abandon DRM sometime just after the last Blueray is prised from their cold dead fingers.
The other elephant in the room: Is this just a desperation play by Warner? While independent music is flourishing in the market like never before, the majors are all getting killed by the internet. So who cares about major labels business models anymore? Well those back catalogs are certainly worth something, and somebody’s got to do the hard work of marketing and promoting top40 “artists” to the slower, possibly bulging, end of the bell curve.
Meanwhile Kudos to Warner Music’s execs on this call. You can clearly tell a hawk from a handsaw. You might just make it yet. [and please slap some sense be talking to your friends across the hall in Warner’s television and film divisions kthx.]