The Only Fool This April is Sony

Pictured: The Almighty Balding Demi-Lord and Marketing Savior Steve Jobs, and Balding EMI Pink Shirt Guy (should they have announced a iToupee instead?)

It is 2007; a sensible, more profitable and favorable music distribution method emerges in a era once-thought at a standstill. The boys at Cupertino have done it again; Apple has commited another revolutionize the industry move that will propel the company further in the realm of success whilst Sony and Microsoft* grasp at straws accordingly. EMI, one of the bigest music catalogs in the world, is doing the unfathomable: shedding DRM. After nearly a decade of scrutiny, the first real nail is being legally hammered in the coffin of “secure music.”

Apple® today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes® Store worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song.

In our opinion, one of the most shocking aspects of this announcement is the upgrade from 128kbps to 256kbps in audio quality for these DRM-less mp3’s. Not only is the consumer now getting a totally open music file, but it is in higher quality to boot! In a move solely aimed for the aspiring audiophile, Apple is now catering to a large and quickly growing niche that previously relied on allofmp3.com or a lucky torrent/etc for high quality music downloads. Not many people really understand the difference in bitrates, and now their ears will be enlightened. Subconciously, further purchasing choices by the consumer will side towards 256kbps.

Currently, Sony offers their behemoth music catalog in 132kbps ATRAC3. They wonder why the Connect eBookstore is faring better than the Connect Musicstore. There has probably been incessant meetings about core product strategy within the halls of Connect querying what faults lie within the service and why it isn’t successful. The figureheads at Japan strike blows at the division, at the people, at the heart of Connect and scorn programmers for their errors when they are the ones who conform to an error-filled strategy. The AAC format has become almost as universal as MP3; ATRAC has become almost as universal as Betamax. There are two fundamental issues that remain on the table that will prohibit Connect music from ever being a true contender: they offer songs in a restrictive, non-ubiqitous format, and the bitrate offered is sonically inferior. It’s like trying to pass of a webpage coded in 1995 as a Web 2.0 site today; it simply doesn’t work.

Sony Connect offers music to three key areas: NA, Europe, and Japan. Sony, these areas no longer live in a dial-up world. These are all promiment broadband-saturated areas. It is time for you to either bump up Connect’s default offerings to 256kbps ATRAC3plus (keeping the 132kbps ATRAC3 for compatibility if necessary) with no price increase, or dump ATRAC from Connect completely and release your entire catalog in DRM-less mp3’s at 256kbps, oh, for lets say $1.25 each. This would bolster Connect sales by at least 25-35% in the first quarter alone, and if that prediction isn’t plausible, tell us why?

Sonicstage runs wonderfully now, but it’s time to focus on the content. It is 2007, Sony; now you can initate a sensible, more profitable and favorable music distribution method that has true potential for success.

What do you think Sony should do? Do you agree with us? Please respond!

* – Microsoft has announced in response to Apple that they are working towards a lesser form of DRM on their music offerings, but it is unclear how free the tracks will become.