Sony drops locks on music albums
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Sony has announced trials of a service that will offer downloadble albums that have no digital locks on them.
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Sony's Walkman entered a new era Thursday, as the company introduced two new models capable of playing not just audio, but also video. Sony also announced it would shutter its Connect music download service, effectively killing its ATRAC format in exchange for Windows Media.
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Sony&#39;s music unit is abandoning its CDs that use built-in technology that limits copying them, after pushing the program for two years.
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Its proprietary audio technology was a flop, says Sony, as it announces at a Berlin consumer electronics trade fair it will shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
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Sony's three-year effort to beat Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store is over. The company will shutter its Connect music store and adopt Windows Media DRM.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the last major music label holding out against selling music online without copy protection, relented Thursday and announced Amazon.com Inc.'s digital music store will carry songs by its artists.
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Sony has announced trials of a service that will offer downloadble music tracks that have no digital locks on them.
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BusinessWeek.com reports that Sony BMG will offer some of its collection free of copy-protection software in coming weeks.
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As major record labels complete their retreat from digital rights management, Apple's online music store will likely face new competition. Will consumers' love of unrestricted files make a dent in the iTunes Store's popularity?
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Music sales as we know them take another step toward obsolescence.
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Sony Corp. will begin shuttering its  Connect Music Store in March, the company confirmed Thursday.
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Sony's decision to drop its ATRAC file format and shutter the Connect music store signals a radical departure for the electronics giant, which has tried for 15 years to market its proprietary file format as a viable competitor to MP3 and other digital music formats.
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In a major strategic reversal, Sony Corp. said Wednesday it plans to add support for MP3 music files to some of its portable music players.
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Acknowledging its proprietary audio technology was a marketplace flop, Sony Corp. said Thursday it plans to shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
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Hammered by iPod, Sony will retool, adding native MP3 support to some digital music players by next summer. Cnet -- SAN FRANCISCO--Sony Electronics missed an opportunity when it nodded off with the emergence
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TOKYO -- Sony BMG will start selling music downloads in the copy-protection-free MP3 format later this month in North America, as even the last holdout among the major record labels crumbled to the growing trend.
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(InfoWorld) - Just because three major online music retailers bind their music stores to specific portable players doesn't make it acceptable, a Norwegian consumer group leading the charge against Apple's DRM (digital rights management) policy says. "ITunes Music Store and others are unfair to consumers no matter how many download services follow the proprietary approach," wrote Torgeir Waterhouse, a senior advisor at The Norwegian Consumer Council, in response to a letter written by Apple CEO Steve Jobs andÂ posted on the Apple Web siteÂ on Tuesday. Jobs examined why DRM exists and discusses alternatives to the current set-up in his open response to calls for Apple to allow users to buy songs from the iTunes store and play them on any device. Norway's consumer representative hasÂ threatened legal action against AppleÂ for violating Norwegian law by limiting iTunes customers to playing their music only on iPods. Consumer groups in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, and Germany haveÂ joined Norway's complaintÂ against Apple. Jobs points out that Microsoft and Sony also sell music that can only be played on their players, supporting a model that serves customers well with choice and a continuing stream of innovative products. He also suggests that groups like Waterhouse's "redirect their energies" toward convincing the music labels to sell music without DRM, technology that aims to restrict how buyers can copy or use the music. The four biggest record labels forced Apple to employ a proprietary DRM system as a condition of the agreement that allows Apple to sell their music, he said. Ideally, he said, the labels wouldn't require DRM. "This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat," Jobs wrote. While Waterhouse agrees that the record companies carry some fault for the situation, the iTunes music store and others like it are ultimately responsible. "They're still the company that's selling music to the consumers and are responsible for offering a fair deal according to Norwegian law," he said. Still, with his letter, Jobs' appears to have stirred up some additional pressure on the record labels to change their DRM policies. EMusic.com Inc., which claims to be the second largest music download site, only sells DRM-free music from thousands of independent labels. But the site would like be able to sell music from the four biggest labels. "We are hopeful the remaining four will one day join [the independent labels] by licensing their complete catalogs and reap the benefits of consumer demand," David Pakman, president and CEO of eMusic, wrote in a response to Jobs' letter. Even though Jobs didn't hint that a solution might be impending, Waterhouse appeared to see a glimmer of hope. "If this means that Apple is willing to the kick the lock in technology from the [iTunes/iPod] combination this is really good news -- news that should be put into action as soon as possible to bring us all one important step closer to a well functioning digital society," he wrote.