Wrong. This is a big deal.
1... Jobs said in January that he would like to sell music without DRM, but the labels wouldn't let him. Now one label will.
2... The folks who said that Jobs was blowing smoke were wrong.
3... 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.
4... Microsoft's lame attempts at DRM are dead (Plays for Maybe).
5... Nobody will encode for WMA, and exclude themselves from 80% of the players out there.
6... I get to do what I want with the music that I buy. If I want to run that ABB song thru SndSampler just so I can learn that Dickey Betts lick, I can do it without some Hijack tool.
Besides, the Beatles will be there before the end of the year.
“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...
Whats SndSampler? some sort of tempo changer?