EMI Licenses Snocap

EMI Music has now licensed its catalog DRM-free to Snocap, a move that quickly shuttles the label onto the pages of MySpace. Snocap carries a critical partnership with MySpace that enables artists to position downloads on their profile pages, and offers a revenue between all parties. The latest deal follows an earlier arrangement involving Warner Music Group, though EMI is the first major to lend DRM-free content to the alliance.

The Snocap deal follows an earlier DRM-free deal involving the iTunes Store. Like that arrangement, Snocap MyStores will sell EMI tracks at an elevated price point of $1.30. The tracks will also be encoded as higher-quality files, according to information supplied by the companies. That is part of a larger EMI philosophy that consumers are willing to pay more for higher-quality MP3s, though it remains unclear if the proposition is resonating. After positioning its DRM-free catalog on iTunes in late May, EMI has not offered substantive data on the collaboration.