SubscribeApple & EMI drop DRM
Posted in Music, News on April 3rd, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Yesterday Apple and EMI announced they will start selling DRM free music on iTunes. Non DRM music will cost $1.29/song, or 30 cents more expensive than music with DRM, that will still be available in iTunes. With the price increase there will also be a quality increase, as DRM free music will be sold encoded at a higher bitrate than DRM music.
Although DRM protected music from EMI will still be sold at iTunes, by default the user will find the non DRM tracks if available. Also, full albums will still be priced at $9.99, so the price increase is only for single tracks. This fact will probably make it easier for Apple to sell full albums instead than single songs which, if it works, will more easily attract other studios to the non DRM music alternative.
If this move by Apple and EMI becomes a success, subscription based services actually competing with iTunes such as Napster or Real will be in trouble, as they all require DRM. Also, this would make it easier for AAC (the codec Apple uses in iTunes) to become an standard together with MP3 and in detriment of Microsoft’s WMA. (All this ideas can be found in the comments at this GigaOm post).
As Seth Godin commented in his blog in reference to DRM when the Apple & EMI annoucement was only a rumor:
(…) the idea that you can lock up ideas because they are connected to a physical object is long gone.
Related: Apple and EMI ditching DRM is good, but it’s not good enough - Engadget
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