According to The Register and Naked Law Sony looks like it is testing the waters with flat rate music access. Under it you pay a subscription and can get any recording they have. Furthermore you can swap the recordings with other subscribers, so if your cousin is a subscriber you can just email him the latest Doves release legally.
This issue of file sharing is the big concern for the labels: at the moment they have their fingers in their ears yelling “la la la la I can’t hear you” on the whole issue of sharing, Internet business models and the digital commons culture. Desperate to move their business model from the offline world to the online one and keep the control and profit margins of the former they have been suing 12 year olds left and right, buying new laws and employing legions of lawyers (so - not all bad then!).
Desperate unpleasant tactics perhaps but to no avail either. Napster may have been crushed and Aimster too but like a big bucks game of wack-a-mole they are failing to have their way. The labels have been desperately trying to avoid schemes like this so Sony’s move is an interesting one and I imagine the other labels will be looking to see how it plays. Part of the difficulty they have is the issue of uncontrolled sharing: if you have unlimited access and sharing then what is to stop your cousin downloading everything and giving it to you and anyone else when you or they are not subscribers? With current open formats like MP3 that is potentially a huge problem. Sony have approached this by watermarking files and partnering with the UK firm Playlouder (famed for Glastonbury festival broadcasts) who will police the sharing of files. Presumably what will happen is that subscribers will have a download limit and the files they download and will be watermarked with their ID. I imagine they will only play on a DRM’d system such as Microsoft’s WMA. If these files then show up on bittorrent or eDonkey it will be easy to show who downloaded and shared them. That subscriber will then be in a whole world of pain.
Artists are paid out by the pool of funds created by the subscription fees and I guess in amounts based on metrics such as the number of downloads. Flat rate pooled schemes are not without their own problems as the performing rights societies demonstrate frequently. An issue is whether they are administered fairly and treat the artists and the public equitably: a subject that has led to much criticism. there is certainly the risk that some artists will receive unfair amounts or be burdened with unrealistic administration fees as well as other discriminatory problems.
Sony are making themselves a hostage to the strength of DRM and watermarking technology. That would worry me somewhat as both have proven to be vulnerable. Nonetheless it is a brave move. I’ll be interested to see just how it pans out.
No comments yet.