Sensing that perhaps consumers really hate it when they are sold a product that never really becomes theirs, Yahoo! has decided to see if removing usage restrictions will help to increase music download sales.
Hollywood Record’s senior VP of marketing, Ken Bunt, in a rare mea culpa noted the futility of fighting progress and technological advancement. 
He notes:
“We’re trying to be realistic. Jesse’s single is already online and we haven’t put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we’re going to see how Jesse’s album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward.”
Starting today, users can download Jesse Mcartney’s (?) new album “Right Where You Want Me” in either MP3 or WMA format for only $9.99 DRM free! It’s a bold new step, and I like it but, I have one question. Who the heck is Jesse Mcartney?
onceding that illegal file-sharing on P2P networks is unstoppable, Hollywood Records is then obliged to experiment with ways to persuade these users to try alternative and legal means instead.
David Goldberg, Yahoo! Music chief, also makes an excellent observation about DRM-protected music. “…copy protection is not doing anything to stop people from stealing when you can just get unprotected tracks off of a CD or get music illegally online,” he says. “We think it’s good to make it easy for consumers to get digital music on whatever device they want and for companies like us to not be reliant on one particular technology company for how our consumers can access music.”
Now if only he can get the guys over at iTunes to see the light about DRM and it’s impact as an alternative to illegal P2P networks. This is specially so in light of recent news suggesting that a majority of the music on iPods was not purchased on iTunes but, rather downloaded off of file-sharing and P2P networks instead.
did hell just freeze over or is the the first sign of the apacolypse?