Posted on 04/02/2007 8:32:03 AM PDT by Mr. Blonde
EMI Group PLC on Monday announced a deal that will allow computer company Apple Inc. to sell the record company's songs online without copy protection software.
The agreement means that customers of Apple's iTunes store will soon be able to play downloaded songs by the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Coldplay and other top-selling artists without the copying restrictions once imposed by their label.
EMI said almost all of its catalog, excluding music by The Beatles, is included in the deal.
Singles and albums free from copy-protection software and with a higher sound quality will be offered as a premium product, the companies announced at a London news conference.
Consumers will pay a higher price for the premium singles, but the same price for albums either with or without the copy protection software.
The announcement follows calls by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs earlier this year for the world's four major record companies, including EMI, to start selling songs online without copy-protection software.
The software, known as DRM, is designed to combat piracy by preventing unauthorized copying, but can make downloading music difficult for consumers.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
“If non-DRM’ed music sells (and the premium is $1.29 vs. $0.99), then the other labels will wake up and smell the dinero.”
I wonder if the premium is for the 256kbs quality or the no DRM? Both? This does not seem to provide any material cost incentive to purchase digitally versus purchasing the CD itslef as a 12 song album would be around $13.99 (they’ll likely discount the $15.48 per song to $13.99 or so). If you have the CD you can record it in any format you wish ( AAC, mp3, Ogg Vorbis, whatever) and at any bitrate you wish. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out...
But they recently made nice. Jobs playing the Beatles' Lovely Rita at the iPhone intro was the big hint. After that they reached a settlement and Apple Computer changed its name Apple, Inc. I'm guessing Apple paid off the Beatles.
It goes beyond that; you can't legally buy Beatles songs from any online music service. Basically, they think their music is too exceptional to be sold on an equal footing with that of any other artist. (Why this is such a big deal online, when they're just filed under "B" like everyone else in a record store, I have no idea.)
I read an article last year where some Apple executive recounted a negotiation with the Beatles' "people" sometime in 2005 or so about finally getting them on iTunes. The offer the Beatles made: Okay, you can sell our stuff, but only in a separate, walled-off area of iTunes that sold only Beatles material, was controlled by the Beatles, and couldn't even be linked to from anywhere else in iTunes ... the only ways in would have been via beatles.com and (maybe) by manually typing something like "beatles.itunes.com" into your address bar. On top of it all, Apple would have had to charge far more for a Beatles track than the usual 99 cents, for the same 128k AAC quality.
Needless to say, Steve Jobs told them to shove it.
Well, any player that supports AAC, unless you want to transcode. OTOH, 256kbps AAC transcoded to 128kpbs mp3 or wma probably still sounds close to what those would sound ripped from an original source.
iTunes made a killing when the old-guard was saying file traders would make online music unprofitable. I’m hoping this proves right again and EMI makes a killing off of this.
My personal plea to any file traders: Please, please, please do not trade any DRM-free songs you buy from iTunes. You’ll only be hurting yourself and the rest of us. If EMI sees sales surge then DRM — and all the industry (il)logic behind it — will be dealt a serious blow.
Whats SndSampler? some sort of tempo changer?
For one, there's convenience. You don't have go to to a store, and you don't have to rip your CD. If you still use CDs, you can still burn any CDs you want with only a practically imperceptible lower quality than an original.
There's also the ability of per-song purchasing. Often, several of the songs on a CD are just filler. But Apple currently prices albums at 10x the song price, so I'd expect $12.99 for an album.
Convenience is less of an issue with internet ordering especially with the number of free shipping options. Agree on the per song but it’s no different now. Will a majority of people pay 30% more for non-DRM music? Considering the vast majority of peolpe who buy music literally can’t tell the difference in quality of a 128kbps and 256kbps and a lossless file, I’ll be interested to see if they pay that much more. Some will for the “convenience” factor of having truly portible music. Even then, how many players outside of the iPod can play AAC files?
The Beatles and Led Zep have been on my ipod since the day I got it. I had most of what I wanted on cd already. Doubtful I will be buying the songs again on itunes.
SndSampler is an audio editor. I don't know if it will change tempo or not, I just use it to create a loop that plays over and over while I figure out the guitar licks.
Cool, Thanks!
Yeah. That'll do it!
Now, could you ask Hillary
to drop from the race?
I am a subscriber to eMusic.com which gives me 30 DRM-free tracks per month. I've even gotten some of the booster packs. Lots of great independent music waiting to be discovered on eMusic.com. Explosions In The Sky, Of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, Joanna Newsom, etc.
But when iTunes begins offering DRM-free tunes, I pledge to spend at least ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS over the next year buying up these tunes. If just 100 million Americans pledge to do the same, that will be $100 BILLION in iTunes sales over the next year. This would bury the RIAA and utterly destroy DRM. That would be cool.
I can't promise that. But I have avoided buying from iTunes because of the DRM issue even though I've had the urge to buy many times. I do promise to start buying non-DRM tracks and albums that interest me.
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