A couple of years ago, Trent Reznor released fully editable GarageBand versions of a few Nine Inch Nails songs. Others have followed suit (like Burger King), and now Radiohead joins their number.
They've made all five tracks (or "stems") of the song "Nude" available in iTunes for $0.99 each [iTunes link]. The tracks are in DRM-free iTunes Plus format, so you can pretty much manipulate them however you'd like.
Purchase all five before the end of this week and receive an access code for the full GarageBand file. Once you've finished your remix, you can upload it here. It definitely sounds like fun, especially for Radiohead fans (like me).
Ars Technica first reported yesterday that Apple was ready to lower the price of iTunes Plus tracks from $1.29 for the DRM free music to $.99 which puts it in line with the pricing on the DRM laden tracks in the rest of the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs, and you can't get a better source than that, has confirmed with the Wall Street Journal that this will be happening either today or tomorrow.
Most people credit the strong showing that Amazon MP3 has made to this move. Whatever the cause I'm just happy to be able to purchase DRM free music at a lower price.
Imagine all the people... downloading John Lennon's songs. It isn't hard to do-- John Lennon's music is now available on the iTunes store as of last night. Right around 3AM, reader Ricky (thanks!) saw the graphic above pop onto the store, and noticed that Working Class Hero, among other albums, had arrived, and then disappeared about half an hour later. He speculated that they were working on a full release today.
And he was exactly right-- Apple has announced that sixteen of Lennon's solo works are now for sale on the iTS, including the "digital debuts" of the Lennon Legend and Acoustic collections. Additionally, for the next 30 days, six of the albums will include exclusive video content-- Working Class Hero looks like it has a "Give Peace a Chance" video on it, and Imagine includes a video for the classic title track. And all of the albums are available not only regular price ($.99 a song), but also at iTunes Plus prices, which means $1.29 a song, but completely DRM free.
First Paul McCartney, now Lennon, and the Beatles has to be just around the corner. Power to the people, right on!
It is safe to say that most folks aren't big fans of DRM, though Apple's flavor of DRM (FairPlay) is flexible enough that most will never run afoul of it. You might remember Steve's letter to the music industry in which he extolled the virtues of DRM free music. EMI has been the only major record label to adopt this DRM free stance, and much of its catalog is available via iTunes Plus for $1.29 a song (you can still get the DRMed versions for $.99). EMI is about to have some company in the DRM free music biz, pretty soon.
The New York Times is reporting that the Universal Music Group is going to be selling part of its catalog sans DRM for the next few months to gauge consumer interest. This is great, but the only catch is that these DRM free songs won't be available via iTunes. Universal, in an effort to lessen Apple's dominance of the digital music market, will be offering up the DRM free music via Amazon, Google, RealNetworks, and Wal-Mart for $.99 a song (a price many accredit Apple to pioneering).
You might recall that Universal recently decided not to renew their contract with Apple to sell music in iTunes, and switched their commitment to a month by month basis. What does all this mean? I am betting that this experiment will succeed, and that Universal will reverse their decision and sell DRM free tracks via iTunes, why not sell your wares on the top online music store?
Macworld UK reports that EMI is seeing an uptick in purchases from iTunes since iTunes Plus was introduced. For instance, sales of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon [iTunes Link] have increased 350% (we all know hippies don't like DRM. I kid, I kid).
The real question is whether the uptick in purchases can be attributed to the lack of DRM or the higher bit rate encoding? Either way, this is good news for those of us who welcome a world without DRM.
Posted Jun 20th 2007 2:30PM by Mat Lu Filed under: iTS, iTunes
Our own Erica was one of the first to discover that personal information is encoded in DRM-free iTunes Plus files. If you want to remove that "watermarking," Playlist Magazine has a solution: TUAW favorite audio editor Fission ($32) from Rogue Amoeba "can strip out the identifying information in an iTunes Plus track without changing the file's audio." Basically, you just open the file then resave it as AAC (Original Format, Lossless) and the non-original format identifying information is not saved. Unfortunately, you have to do this for each file individually, but if you don't want your name and Apple ID in the file, this looks like it'll work (though I haven't tried it myself).
I have a TiVo that's on my wireless network. Occasionally, I use it to listen to the music that lives on my iMac as I cook or what have you. It's known that music purchased from the iTunes store won't play via TiVo, and I was hoping that the DRM-free iTunes Plus upgrade would change that.
Wrong.
TiVo still sees them as "format Purchased AAC audio file not mp3 or convertible to mp3." Luckily, The Apple Blog has a workaround. Simply convert your iTunes Plus tracks to either AAC or Mp3, and the file type in iTunes will be changed to "AAC audio file" or "MPEG audio file" respectively. TiVo likes that.
Yes, this will result in quality loss, but my television speakers hardly do the music justice in the first place, so who cares?
Right now, iTunes Plus allows you to upgrade tracks and music videos. So what about TV shows or movies? If Apple started offering High Definition versions, would you upgrade your existing library? After all, it's got to look good on your new Apple TV, right? Or do you think you're already paying a premium price for iTunes content? And you're not even getting the director's commentaries! Let us know what you think of a possible iTunes Plus Video offering in the following poll and in the comments.
With the arrival of iTunes Plus and DRM-free 256kbs AAC files Maximum PC decided to put the higher encoding rate to the test. Running a double-blind experiment with ten subjects and both Apple's included earbuds as well as high-end Shure SE420 canalphones, the results were disappointing. Overall, while most of the subjects did prefer the higher bit rate encoding, "there wasn't a tremendous distinction between the tracks encoded at 128Kb/s and those encoded at 256Kb/s. None of [of the subjects] were absolutely sure about their choices with either set of earphones, even after an average of five back-to-back A/B listening tests."
Personally, I'm skeptical. I listen to quite a bit of classical music and jazz, and I'm very much more inclined to buy these at the higher bit rate. Maximum PC concluded that the lack of DRM and not audio quality is the most important aspect of iTunes Plus (though they don't think it's worth 30 cents a track). So, dear TUAW readers, what do you think? Can you hear the difference between 128 and 256kbps AAC?
Wow. After all that fuss, it turns out that I don't own a single upgradable EMI track. My cost for bringing my library out of the dark ages and into the brave new DRM-free world? Nothing. At least that's nothing until I go out and buy a $1.29 track later this morning so I can play with the data file and see whether it will play back on my, you know, Zune. Curiously enough I do own EMI plus-worthy tracks (for example, David Bowie's "Life on Mars") but I have not been offered an option to upgrade them.
So here's the challenge: Who of you out there in reader land has the biggest collection of upgradable tracks and how much is iTunes asking you to fork over to pay for those upgrades? Let us know in the comments. The winner gets bragging rights ands we will issue him or her a virtual TUAW huzzah (try saying that three times fast.)
Posted May 30th 2007 10:50AM by Erica Sadun Filed under: iTS
Gallery: iTunes 7.2
If you're stuck at work and can't get away to take a peek at the new iTunes 7.2 update, we've put together this handy gallery of screen shots showing you the new 7.2 features. In iTunes 7.2, you'll find a new link to iTunes Plus in the iTunes Quick Links. Select it and iTunes will prompt you to update preferences (whether to use iTunes plus for your albums whenever possible) and your licensing agreement--that's another agreement on top of the one you had to agree to just to install the program.
TUAW's 7.2 gallery is a work in progress. Expect updates throughout the day as the new features come on line.
Late last night/early this morning Apple pushed out an update to iTunes via Software Update, bringing it to version 7.2. The only obvious change is support for "iTunes Plus," which is apparently what Apple is calling the new DRM free $1.29 tracks announced back in April with EMI. The "What's New" section of the iTunes 7.2 Help includes this line: "With iTunes 7.2, preview and purchase iTunes Plus music-new higher-quality, DRM-free music downloads from participating music labels." As of this writing, however, the iTunes Store does not appear to have been updated with the DRM free tracks; presumably this will be forthcoming shortly.
A couple of years ago, Trent Reznor released fully editable GarageBand versions of a few Nine Inch Nails songs. Others have followed suit (like Burger King), and now Radiohead joins their number.
Ars Technica 
It is safe to say that most folks aren't big fans of DRM, though Apple's flavor of DRM (FairPlay) is flexible enough that most will never run afoul of it. You might remember 
Macworld UK 
Our own Erica was one of the first to 
I have a TiVo that's on my wireless network. Occasionally, I use it to listen to the music that lives on my iMac as I cook or what have you. It's known that music purchased from the iTunes store won't play via TiVo, and I was hoping that the DRM-free iTunes Plus upgrade would change that.
With the 
Wow. After all that fuss, it turns out that I don't own a single upgradable EMI track. My cost for bringing my library out of the dark ages and into the brave new DRM-free world? Nothing. At least that's nothing until I go out and buy a $1.29 track later this morning so I can play with the data file and see whether it will play back on my, you know, Zune. Curiously enough I do own EMI plus-worthy tracks (for example, David Bowie's "Life on Mars") but I have not been offered an option to upgrade them.
Late last night/early this morning Apple pushed out an update to iTunes via Software Update, bringing it to version 7.2. The only obvious change is support for "iTunes Plus," which is apparently what Apple is calling the new DRM free $1.29 tracks 
