Zune crippled by Universal? | The Coffeehouse

Another_Darren
... than you can shake a stick at

engadet wrote:

It appears Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that just because you've paid for a song...

Full article

Is MS getting screwed by Universal even after agreeing to give the a royalty payment for each Zune sold? Maybe the agreement over the royalty made Universal greedy, do they see the Zune as there music player not MS's?

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

Another_Darren wrote:

engadet wrote:
It appears Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that just because you've paid for a song...

Full article

Is MS getting screwed by Universal even after agreeing to give the a royalty payment for each Zune sold? Maybe the agreement over the royalty made Universal greedy, do they see the Zune as there music player not MS's?

Out of interesting why aren't you lambasting Sony too?

Certainly the initial payment was a stupid thing to do; I'd far rather MS had some backbone and simply didn't put Universal and Sony on the store and forced everyone to play by the same rules, like Apple forced the labels to. However because iTunes has all the players I guess the labels were in a stronger position when talking to MS.

Another_Darren
... than you can shake a stick at

blowdart wrote:

Another_Darren wrote:
engadet wrote:
It appears Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that just because you've paid for a song...

Full article

Is MS getting screwed by Universal even after agreeing to give the a royalty payment for each Zune sold? Maybe the agreement over the royalty made Universal greedy, do they see the Zune as there music player not MS's?

Out of interesting why aren't you lambasting Sony too?

Certainly the initial payment was a stupid thing to do; I'd far rather MS had some backbone and simply didn't put Universal and Sony on the store and forced everyone to play by the same rules, like Apple forced the labels to. However because iTunes has all the players I guess the labels were in a stronger position when talking to MS.

Because Sony is Sony, would you ever expect them to be fair to their customers? My point was that MS have be screwed by Universal even though MS was good enough to make the royalty agreement with them. It's a real stab in the back for MS. I agree with you that MS should stop selling music from both companies but then that would cripple the Zune more.

The whole Zune social thing (squirting) has been disabled on some Sony and Universal artists, which impacts the Zune and probably peeves customers who have bought these songs and wanted to send it. When will the labels realising that it's them that are destroying music sales by crippling the music, each attempt to control music downloads drives more people to illegal sources to get music they can play on their devices without all these restrictions.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

Another_Darren wrote:

engadet wrote:
It appears Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that just because you've paid for a song...

Full article

Is MS getting screwed by Universal even after agreeing to give the a royalty payment for each Zune sold? Maybe the agreement over the royalty made Universal greedy, do they see the Zune as there music player not MS's?

That smells about right to me. They need to be careful. The honest folks will have enouph and go back to downloading free mp3.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

Another_Darren wrote:

engadet wrote:
It appears Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that just because you've paid for a song...

Full article

Is MS getting screwed by Universal even after agreeing to give the a royalty payment for each Zune sold? Maybe the agreement over the royalty made Universal greedy, do they see the Zune as there music player not MS's?

It is also one of the dumbest things they could do IMO. I mean the real point of the sharing and 3 plays is to get that music into the ears of another user so they will *buy the track. It is actually a very creative pyramid scheme that can only *help artists and Universal make more money. There is no downside for them to have someone listen to a song for 3 plays for free as they would never sell that song in the first place had user X not beamed it to me. In effect, they are marketing against themselfs. Maybe they are not smart enouph to notice that yet and are just playing with technology options like a new toy.

nightski

staceyw wrote:

It is also one of the dumbest things they could do IMO. I mean the real point of the sharing and 3 plays is to get that music into the ears of another user so they will *buy the track. It is actually a very creative pyramid scheme that can only *help artists and Universal make more money. There is no downside for them to have someone listen to a song for 3 plays for free as they would never sell that song in the first place had user X not beamed it to me. In effect, they are marketing against themselfs. Maybe they are not smart enouph to notice that yet and are just playing with technology options like a new toy.

It is also possible that Microsoft is planning to lighten the 3 play restriction (which has been rumored on several news sites lately), and this is the result of that.

We may never know all ends. I just say why not just scrap the whole sharing thing and make it sync/stream music over WiFi Smiley

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

nightski wrote:

staceyw wrote:
It is also one of the dumbest things they could do IMO. I mean the real point of the sharing and 3 plays is to get that music into the ears of another user so they will *buy the track. It is actually a very creative pyramid scheme that can only *help artists and Universal make more money. There is no downside for them to have someone listen to a song for 3 plays for free as they would never sell that song in the first place had user X not beamed it to me. In effect, they are marketing against themselfs. Maybe they are not smart enouph to notice that yet and are just playing with technology options like a new toy.

It is also possible that Microsoft is planning to lighten the 3 play restriction (which has been rumored on several news sites lately), and this is the result of that.

We may never know all ends. I just say why not just scrap the whole sharing thing and make it sync/stream music over WiFi

Only thing I can figure is it keeps in a closed system so easier to make gaureentees when you know only another zune has the song. That zune puts it in the inbox so it can easily control the 3 plays and delete old files from the inbox. Kinda a tidy way to do. If you could squirt it to any wifi device, that would make the whole protection system harder to reason about.