EMI's music is going digital
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.THE MUSIC giant EMI is to encode its vast back catalogue of millions of songs in digital format, so that they can be sold and downloaded over the Internet by Christmas.
The move is the biggest by a major record label towards selling music online, and indicates the music industry's growing anxiety over the popularity of music encoded in the MP3 format which can be copied for free over the global network.
EMI said yesterday that it will digitise its back catalogue in the new Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) format, under which the music creator can prevent a file being copied or played more than a specified number of times. That means that the record company would receive and control the royalty payments from files.
MP3 files, by contrast, can be created quickly from CDs and then posted on the Net for downloading by others, meaning that they have become the equivalent of a global home-taping system. Recently, a site for MP3 files - mp3.com - became one of the most popular destinations on the Net, while across the network, searches for MP3 files have become more frequent than for sex sites.
Even though EMI will not have to make any physical object for the new digitised versions of its songs, the cost to buyers "will not be massively cheaper" than for physical ones, said an EMI spokesman. Prices have not yet been set.
EMI oversees labels such as Capitol, Virgin and Blue note and owns the rights to songs by a huge range of artists, with millions of albums in its back catalogue.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments