Universal has taken a tentative step towards releasing its music in a format that can be played by any digital audio player: MP3s encoded at 256 Kbps. Despite the high bit rate and lack of digital rights management, Universal will sell thousands of tracks through Amazon, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart, Google, PureTracks, Best Buy, and others, for the same $0.99 price charged for the DRM-ed versions (EMI charges an extra $0.30 per track for high bit rate unprotected files).
Lest anyone get carried away by Google inclusion above -- no, Google isn't launching its own music download store. Instead, Universal plans to buy Google AdWords in order to funnel potential MP3 buyers to GBox, a digital retailer.
Commentators who opined on this topic earlier in the day (as I was busy testing hardware and meeting with iMeem) mentioned that Universal's motivation could be to undermine Apple's dominance of the market, since DRM locks iPod users into buying most major label stuff from iTunes.
But Universal's statement on the topic indicates that the experiment also has a lot to do with testing the DRM-free waters in a number of ways:
Most likely, Universal means by this that they are going to see whether the lack of DRM has an adverse affect on sales of those tracks. Still, I couldn't help but wonder whether Universal would be audacious enough to tags those MP3s with some sort of metadata or other technology that would enable them to find the tracks on P2P networks, should they turn up there.
I doubt they'd risk the sort of backlash that would accompany a move like this, but just in case, I've contacted Universal for a response, and will post that if/when I get it.
