Offering Incentives To Get People To Buy Into Copy Protection Experience

from the making-things-worse dept

The latest company to jump on the CD copy protection bandwagon is Sony who will be selling new CDs with copy protection in Germany. They say, though, that they're offering this CD with added incentives to make people want to buy it. This is a little bit good, but mostly very bad. The little bit of good is the slow realization that if you're selling music on CDs, you've got to add additional incentives with it to make it worth buying the actual CD. This Sony system is offering access to bonus songs and concert tickets - but only if you have the CD. The rest is all bad. The copy protection makes the value of the CD go way down by taking away the many uses that people expect to get from their CD. To listen to the music on a computer, you have to use Sony software or Sony music players. Instead of using standards that everyone agrees on, here we have yet another different standard and different format for music. This is making life much worse for the consumer by setting up a world where you have to make an early bet on which company you want to supply your music and then live with it for the rest of your life. If the incentive to buy the CD is access to additional access or materials, then why not do that separate from the copy protection?

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