stuart test blog

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has certainly been generating lots of news over the last few days. I’ve got a couple of posts lined with my opinions on some of the more interesting items, starting with the news that Sony have released news that they will be joining the rest of the "Big Four" record companies in selling music tracks without the crippling DRM that all consumers loathe.

David Farrar’s Kiwiblog, and Ben Kepes both posted about this when the news broke declaring that Sony now gets it, and that DRM is finally dead.

Well, that was before the real details came out about Sony’s strategy in the non-DRM playing world…

Turns out, that to obtain these DRM-free tracks, you need to: visit a physical retail store; purchase a special card; go back to your computer at home; scratch off the back of the card revealing a code; log in to the Sony MusicPass website; enter the code; then download the glorious, DRM-free MP3 tracks.

And if that’s not bad enough, there are currently only 37 titles available to choose from. No, that’s not a typo.

I’ve had a quick glance over the titles available and I can see several Celine Dion albums, Barry Manilow, Tony Bennett, and several compilation albums (with imaginative titles like, "70’s Pop Hits", "80’s Pop HIts", "Sensational 60’s", "Rock of the 70’s", "Country Gold The 90’s", you get the idea…) There are also a couple of recent albums from the likes of Avril Lavigne, Alicia Keys, Sean Kingston, and Pink – but those make up the minority.

The best description of how the service works comes from writer, John Scalzi’s blog "Whatever", titled: "Why it won’t work" – including this excerpt:

Kid #2: So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.

Sony BMG dude: Er.

Kid #1: Why don’t you just sell non-DRM’d MP3s off Amazon, like every other major music corporation?

Sony BMG dude: Well.

Kid #2: You don’t actually want to sell unprotected MP3s, do you? You want to be able to say you’re doing it, but really, you want to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that people keep just keep buying CDs and DRM’d tracks off iTunes. Just admit it, bro.

Sony – you still don’t get it.