Steve Jobs (Apple) and Eric Nicoli (EMI) announced today that they will start selling DRM-free music! Now why exactly is that good news?
a) your purchased songs from iTunes will no longer be tied to your iPod. You can transfer them to any other device you like.
b) now that EMI decided to drop DRM, other labels will probably follow in the coming period.
Is there also a downside? Well, unfortunately yes. The DRM-free music will be sold at 30c more than the current offer on iTunes. For these 30 cents, the DRM has been removed and you will receive a higher quality audio (256kbps).
I’m still wondering why it took the music industry that long to understand that the online music sales are lacking behind because most people don’t really appreciate DRM on mediafiles. To be honest, I’m sure that they did know but just didn’t have the guts to give DRM-free music a try. I’m glad that EMI responded to Steve Jobs’ request back in february. It’s a good start which will probably give the online music sales a big boost.
Oh, by the way, what EMI did is definitively a good step but we shouldn’t give them too many credits. As Steve Jobs mentioned today: “we are offering people nothing more than what they get when they buy a cd directly and rip it.”.
That’s it. Nothing more.
