Universal music downloads for all players long way off

Cannes, FRANCE- It's bad news for music enthusiasts! A world where music-lovers can buy from Apple's iTunes or any of the hundreds of online music stores and services, then listen to it the way they want, looks a long way off.

This is what is emerging this week at the world's biggest music industry trade fair, MIDEM, where major record labels have come under increasing pressure from all sides to sell music in unprotected formats.

Music fans have been voicing increasing frustration at being prevented from being able to listen to music legally bought on different devices because of codes, known as DRM (digital rights management), which were initially designed to protect the artist.

"Each of the majors is wrestling with the advantages and disadvantages of going with MP3s without any restrictions at all," John Kennedy, who heads the international record industry trade association, the IFPI, said at press conference. "But I think this is an experimental year," he added.

A move to release "unrestricted" music by the world's four record majors would be great news for music lovers.

But it would be a different story for the record industry, struggling to survive in a new digital world where sales of digital music, though growing fast, fall far short of compensating for the sharp drop in physical CD sales.

DRM notably has been used by music and computer giant Apple to lock in millions of iPod owners to buying exclusively from its iTunes online music store, currently the world's number one.

Owners of MP3 format players have a different problem.

They can buy music from the iTunes store and enjoy it on their mobile jukebox but they cannot buy music distributed by the four big record labels, EMI, Universal, Sony BMG and Warner.

MP3 however is the main reason behind the phenomenal success of the biggest newcomer on the online block, eMusic. The world's largest retailer of independent music, it has become the world's second largest digital music service in a very short space of time.

On Monday, it announced it had more than 250,000 subscribers, just four months after hitting 200,000.

An inexpensive subscription-based service that sells music for around 23 euro cents a track compared with iTunes' 99 cents, eMusic says it has also proven there are many music fans who want more than just a store.

"eMusic has been successful in Europe and the US because we offer customers a combination that other digital music services don't -- music that plays on any device, high quality editorial and music discovery tools, and a commanding focus on interesting music beyond the mundane commercial mainstream," David Parkman, who heads up eMusic, said in an interview.

Parkman is one of a number of major music figures who believe the music sector will free up in the coming years. "It has to change and it will change over the year or two as they (the record majors) don't have any other choices," he told AFP.

EMI has already put forward a toe in these troubled waters. It announced last week that it would offer free streaming music on Baidu.com, China's version of Google and the world's fourth most popular Internet search site.

Another major showing signs of wavering is Warner Music. It said Monday that it had struck a deal to make its video and music clips available on the world's second largest video-sharing site, Dailymotion. Warner in return will share advertisement-derived revenues.

On the consumer front, European consumer groups stepped onto centre-stage of the MIDEM trade fair this week to step up pressure on Apple and the music industry to lift restrictions by the end of September 2007.

But some big music retailers have already changed their tune, with France's highly popular Virginmega and Fnacmusic stores recently deciding to make 200,000 titles available in MP3 format.

Calls to free up the music market were voiced by speaker after speaker at the conferences held in parallel to the buying and selling that makes MIDEM one of the biggest dates for the industry.

But experts said that Apple is unlikely to change its stance until there was a clear competitive commercial reason to do so.