Glad to know the CEO of Universal Music holds me, one of his customers, in such high esteem.
Yesterday, Microsoft agreed to share revenue from Zune sales with record labels and artists. Forcing the issue was Universal Music Group, which at deadline is the only label named in the program. UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions.
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”
I do not share music. I do not steal music. And the 19+ Gb of music on my PC (and, soon, on my wife’s iPod) will be from CDs we purchased (including some belonging to UMG).
Oh, and to the proprietors of Edel Media GmbH, I purchased through Amazon one of your artists’ CDs — Gregorian, in fact — only to discover that (as the cover says in teeny tiny print) “This CD cannot be played on a computer disk drive.” Thus rending it, to me, nearly worthless, and meaning I’m exceedingly unlikely to ever purchase any music from you — or by them — again.
Swift move.
At least it was printed on the outside cover, there several there a year ago that had a little cardlet on the inside telling you that you could not play it on any player that could also read MP3 files (which is also increasingly becoming if not a option, standard equipment on most cars).
Also, most portable CD players also read MP3’s now, rendering them useless as well and thus forcing folks to either not buy the music, get them via something like iTunes or find someone who has a MP3 copy, thus defeating the purpose of the thing in the first place.