Yahoo is selling a new Jessica Simpson single in mp3 format (with no DRM) and it’s personalized to specific names. I made the list of names but poor Ramanan did not. I know he’ll be crying himself to sleep this evening.
There’s two things about this that strike me as quite interesting. First, it’s a prime example of the massive amount of customization that the music industry could exploit online. I just finished reading The Long Tail by Wired’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson. It details how there is a lot of money to be made in niches, even niches as small as 1 person (or in this case, 1 name). The second interesting part is this post on yahoo’s music blog. They’re bascially begging the music industry to let them create an emusic competitor. They also make a great point about how DRM adds nothing since labels already sell DRM-free music in the form of CDs. Maybe there’s a chance the labels will come to their senses and give this a try. The Carrot: major labels realizing that DRM really just means they’re locked into iTunes. The Stick: companies like Yahoo saying it’s the only way to compete with Apple.