It’s getting so that when someone says DRM free, we just HAVE to assume that there is DRM lurking everywhere. Another story where that is the case this week is Sony Ericsson’s unexpected revamp of its PlayNow strategy.
First it was a burgeoning global portal which offers music, video and games, and now yes it’s a portal, but it is also a while label version of MusicStation from UK’s Omnifone, which will be sold as PlayNow Plus, while the original in called PlayNow Arena.
So this week’s news is that Sony Ericsson has launched both PlayNow Arena, the portal, in five new countries – the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland, having already launched in Scandinavia in August. Universal Music has now come on board and immediately Sony Ericsson describes its services as DRM free and the first to have content from all of the major and independent labels.
‘The launch of PlayNow arena is a milestone in a la carte music services to mobile phones’, said Rob Wells, Senior Vice President, Digital, at Universal Music Group International. The combination of TrackID and the variety of digital products on offer through PlayNow arena is a highly compelling proposition on its own, but when the full track downloads are available DRM-free, the offer is even more compelling for consumers.’
Now we’re pretty sure that statement about DRM-free is just not true. What we think it means is that since you get a sideloaded version of all content, you are able to keep it on your PC and on your Walkman handset, and of course the ability to copy it backwards and forwards. It used to be that when a PlayNow Arena song is copied onto the PC it had to be compatible with Microsoft Windows Media DRM, and we doubt that has changed. Perhaps, like Nokia, this has been upgraded to using the soon to be announced PlayReady DRM, which allows intra domain copying. But if not there is sure to be at least copy protection on the handset.
What is perhaps confusing is that there are a number of tracks which are available without any form of protection, because these are considered already heavily pirated and are supplied free of charge. In the past Sony Ericsson said that the majority of the music catalog was offered in DRM-free format, which we now take to only mean in MP3 format.
But the addition of PlayNow plus, also garners a mention of DRM-free tracks. This is the MusicStation service that Vodafone launched in the UK, but which has been bought by over 30 operators over the world from as far afield as Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the UK. Now it is being launched on a Sony Ericsson handset and what is really going on is that this is the same kind of compromise that Nokia was forced to accept to get its Nokia Music Store accepted on Vodafone handsets, where it was sat side by side with the MusicStation service, which is an all you can eat, download and store as many tracks as you like service, for a monthly fee of around £8 ($15).
Vodafone would only let the Nokia Store onto its devices if Nokia gave the two services equal billing on the handsets. It looks like Telenor has done the same in Sweden, which is where the PlayNow Plus service will be launched. The reason for the DRM-free statement here is that up to 300 tracks are left on your handset unencrypted once you cancel your subscription, the number depending upon how much you’ve paid over what period of time, and the tracks are selected from your ‘most played’ lists. The rest of the music is DRM encrypted and copy protected, even though the service allows copies on the handset and the PC, same as the PlayNow Arena service.
The service is due to launch commercially in the fourth quarter of this year, with further roll-outs around the world beginning in early 2009. A special edition of the Sony Ericsson W902 Walkman phone will be the first product released with an integrated PlayNow plus service, which looks to us like a music player and DRM stack of software being pre-loaded.
Both services will have access to TrackID charts, a system generated by Sony Ericsson using the requests from consumers around the world to identify tracks which are made to the Gracenote database that Sony now owns. One neat idea which we agree will kick-start the PlayNow plus experience right out of the box, is that Sony Ericsson will preload 1000 recent popular tracks on each PlayNow plus phone, saving customers having to download in order to build up a collection.
There is a real concern here that the two rival PlayNow offerings will confuse customers and both services will only be offered where operators are insisting on integrating their MusicStation services into all their devices, including Sony Ericsson Walkmans.