Derek Bodner’s Blog

Sony releases DRM free music “downloads”.

So let’s see. I:
- Go to a brick and mortar store to buy a card with an “Access code”
- Take the access code home, and sign up for a service to download the songs
- Download the songs to my computer.

And for this privilege, I get:
- To pay the same amount of money for the album as I would for a CD
- Get limited to only 37 albums, rather than a full store
- Get the privilege of wasting more time downloading songs I could already be listening to had I bought the CD at he store I was already at.
- Get inferior quality to the CD I, once again, could have bought at the store I was already at.

?

Why would I not just buy the CD at the store, and rip it to my hard drive?

The only way this makes sense is if it’s an alternative to buying music online, so that people without credit cards can use the service too. But it’s not. Purchasing the card in the store is a requirement.

Can’t wait for Sony to claim in 6 months that it was a failure, and use it as “proof” that people won’t pay for DRM-free downloads.