Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, iTS, iTunes, Steve Jobs, Apple
EMI to say goodbye to DRM?
Early today we posted about tomorrow's EMI press conference in London featuring the one and only Steve Jobs. May people thought this could mean that the Beatles music catalog would be coming to the iTunes store. While this would be interesting, the Wall Street Journal reports that EMI is doing something much more interesting than simply adding the Beatles to iTunes.According to the Wall Street Journal (the whole article requires a log in) EMI has decided to offer a significant portion of its music catalog sans DRM. That's right, one of the Major Labels (notice those capital letters) is taking Steve up on his thoughts on DRM. Let's hope that the other Labels (and movie studios) follow suit. DRM is cold comfort to content creators, and an annoyance to legitimate consumers.
[via Daring Fireball]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian Andrews said 10:22PM on 4-01-2007
This is very interesting. I'm not sure if it will be the beginning of the end for DRM. If it is it will send shock waves. We are distributing DRM-free movies at http://www.hungryflix.com. It is time to move past DRM and into new solutions that benefit both content providers and consumers.
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Leonard Nimrod said 10:25PM on 4-01-2007
I've been overly concerned with iTunes DRM. For DRM, it's very fair. Sony and MS have made the initalism DRM seem like a bad thing all around.
If I had a choice I'd rather see see higher bitrate audio come out of this.
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Jeremy said 10:51PM on 4-01-2007
While this would be good news, I'm not sure how much it'll really matter. Selling 128k files with no DRM, I'd probably still go elsewhere for music. If they offered the music in Lossless format, though, I'd buy from them even with the DRM.
It's the 128k thing that keeps me from buying from iTunes, not the DRM, much as I'd like to see that go away.
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Jon said 11:15PM on 4-01-2007
I saw this earlier but I thought it was an April Fool's joke. Cool if true.
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Leonard Nimrod said 11:11PM on 4-01-2007
Loseless is out of the question. Apple will raise the bitrate of ACC first. Once that has reached "near-CD quality" then you can expect Apple Loseless. But I wouldn't hold your breath.
AAC is a better codec over MP3 in terms of compression ration, but MP3 is better at scaling to higher bitrates than AAC.
The question we need to asking is: If the WSJ has this right, will we be seeing DRM-free MP3s from EMI sold on iTunes or will they stick with AAC? I assume AAC will remain the standard.
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Quix said 11:38PM on 4-01-2007
I agree with Jeremy - lossless quality would draw my dollars far more than DRM-free music at 128 kbps.
I think Apple could offer lossless without the massive impact to their servers that everyone would expect. Give buyers the option for lossless in their iTMS purchase preferences, but leave the default at 128 kbps. The vast majority of the buying public wouldn't care about lossless (128 kbps = more songs would fit on their iPods!), and would stick to the status quo. But the optional lossless choice would draw in a new segment of the market that won't touch 128 kbps.
And don't make the change with a bunch of fanfare. Keep it low key. Let the word spread via the audio aficionados. Watch sales rise without a major spike in bandwidth.
I, for one, would start buying if I could get lossless through iTMS. In the meantime, I buy a "throwaway" song here and there, but nothing more. And never a complete album. Just like I refused to buy TV shows until they offered 640x480, I won't buy music until I can get better than 128 kbps. Much better.
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Nique said 4:07AM on 4-02-2007
This, if absolutely accurate, could explain why iTunes has been acting whacky when searching in the music store.
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Tommy said 8:43AM on 4-02-2007
It's confirmed: just listened the live webcast. EMI is offering DRM free, higher quality music to retailers, inluding ITMS. They charge a higher price though.
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