The mass coverage of the EMI/Apple announcement yesterday has led to all sorts of pronouncements from industry experts, analysts, competitors. Reader, my inbox runneth over.
Most of it was the usual "look at us!" stuff, but my eyes were particularly drawn to a statement put out by Rudy Tambala, the head of VirginDigital.co.uk, which used some very strong language to attack the deal, and suggested the announcement was tantamount to a stitch-up between Apple and EMI.
"A 25% price increase for the removal of something that should never have existed in the first place is hard to swallow," he said. "The fact that EMI has failed to consult with any other digital download service suggests that this move is about enabling Apple to up its prices and continue setting pricing for the entire industry."
All very fine words, if meant sincerely. But what's this?
From VirginDigital.co.uk's "help" pages:
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is how those who own the rights to the music you've purchased prevent you from using it illegally.
DRM limits your usage of your music in a variety of pre-determined ways; the number of times you can burn a track, the number of players you can copy it to and so on.
And it follows up by explaining that:
Music files come in many different shapes and sizes. Right now, all music on Virgin Digital is in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format protected with standard DRM, although we are looking at adding other file formats in the future.
Oh yes, I understand there's a logic that everybody has been forced to follow the DRM route, so a price hike to get rid of something that "should never have been there" is hard to swallow. But eMusic and Wippit have still managed to do business, haven't they?
Given that Virgin currently sells Windows Media files wrapped "with standard DRM", some customers may find those claims equally difficult to stomach.
