Liquid Audio files are scrambled so they can't be freely copied from computer to computer. But Universal has decided to let buyers burn the files onto conventional CDs in unscrambled formats, meaning they could be copied or moved freely from that point.
The files are Liquid Audio (evil) and are watermarked so each copy of each song is marked with the id of person who bought it.
99 cents ($2 Australian) is still to much in my opinion but much closer to what I'm willing to pay, especially if songs come out earlier on-line than on CDs in the shops as promised.
"Forty-nine cents seems like the appropriate amount," said Ron Stone, president of Gold Mountain Entertainment, an artist management firm. "If you can get kids to spend 49 cents, consider it a gift. Make it 99 cents, you won't sell any, particularly if the singles market is a kids market."
It would be nice to see Australian online music stores (*cough* wiredrecords.com *cough*) follow suit with price cuts. Single tracks online at WR are $3.59 with albums costing up to $32! Singles (including all b-sides) are around $6.
I'm all for 99 cent (Australian cents) songs online, as long as full albums are about $3. A single in Australia costs $10, an album about $26 to $30. So in theory an album is three times the cost of a single... you figure it out.
And ooo. Just yesterday I was thinking it would be cool if my DVD player could play DivX like some of them can play MP3. Someone has hacked the X-Box so it can do just that. Excellent! No more lengthy DivX to VCD conversions.