Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store
From apple.com:
Apple® today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as todayâ€â€128 kbps AAC encoding with DRMâ€â€at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.
This is fantastic news. The DRM and low bit rate is what has prevented me from ever purchasing anything on iTunes. When these tracks hit the virtual shelves in May, I guarantee I’ll be buying a few of them. I wonder how the $0.30 increase per-track for the added quality will affect the album prices.
It’s great to see that Steve Jobs is following through on his recent open letter on Apple’s web site calling for the removal of DRM.
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“I wonder how the $0.30 increase per-track for the added quality will affect the album prices.”
Ricky, there is no affect on the prices. Premium albums are the same price as DRM-protected albums.
BJ
The release says music videos will be DRM free with no change in price but I don’t see any mention of albums. Where did you get that info? It would be great if what you’re saying is true!
It’s only albums from EMI, so you have to look for an EMI album to see. :)
This is indeed fantastic news. The press release is kind of ridiculous in one aspect however: they actually polled people and announced that people prefer 10:1 Non-DRM to DRM…. I have a hard time understanding that one person.
That 1/10 probably works for the other record labels. ;)