As I mentioned last week in the News Roundup, Universal Music Group is planning on trying out DRM-free music on a limited number of services. This trial is to last 6 months and it has been recently reported that the muisc files will contain unique digital watermarks within the file itself. Ars Technica has a great article breaking down why Universal is doing this but most importatly, why this won’t prove a thing.

Universal’s plan appears to be rather simple: sell watermarked tunes to users, then sit back and scan the P2P networks for music files with Universal watermarks. While the data won’t lead them back to pirates, they will be able to detect the presence of watermarked music online. Doing so would confirm for them which tracks have been purchased and then shared online.

So why would Universal do this? One possible goal, if you take the pessimistic approach to large labels, is to “prove” that DRM-free music doesn’t work. Another is that they are legitimately are interested in seeing how fast digital music leaks on the internet and then at what rate it proliferates. Ars mentions the illogical angle to either of these thoughts but it will be interesting to see what the mothership does with all there newly found data.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 8:07 am and is filed under Digital Music Industry, Digital Rights Management (DRM), Distribution, Music Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.