After so much anticipation on this, the talks seem to have ended, reports Bloomberg. The story says talks aimed at removing copyright protection from songs didn’t go anywhere because they couldn’t agree on the size of an advance payment.
EMI demanded an upfront payment to compensate for its risk in releasing the music sans DRM, but the retailers countered with a lower offer, which EMI rejected, and negotiations with the likes of Microsoft, Apple, RealNetworks, Yahoo and Amazon.com are now on hold. The upfront demanded by EMI would come on top of the per-song charge that retailers pay…the new fee would make it less profitable for retailers unless they raise prices, these companies argued.
Apple wasn’t initially involved in the talks with EMI and was added after the famous Jobs letter.
Related:
—EMI In Talks To Sell Music Online Sans DRM; Potential Deal Could Change Industry
—Music Industry Begins to Imagine a Post-DRM World; Will Movie Studios Follow Suit?