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Steve Jobs Announces (some) DRM-free iTunes
Fjan11 writes "Steve Jobs just announced that starting next month on you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs for $1.29. Upgrades to songs you've already bought will be available at the $0.30 price difference. Currently EMI is the only publisher participating, accounting for about 20% of the songs available." There's also reports from Reuters and ABC News. The deal excludes the Beatles. You can also read the official press release from Apple if you still think this a late joke; this story confirms earlier speculation.
There's also an EMI Press Release.
I didn't see it mentioned in a brief look at the articles above, but albums will automatically be 256kbps and DRM free at the normal price. This should help encourage album sales. Ideally, they would offer the lower quality songs without DRM as well, but this is undoubtedly prevented by their current contracts with the other labels. Only by offering a new "product" were they able to remove the DRM. This is the same reason that they are unable to remove the DRM from songs released by indie labels that requested no DRM.
Actually, albums are the same price, DRM or not. Only individual songs have the surcharge. Can't understand the logic, but I prefer albums anyway.
This is excellent news! I love that they are offering the option to upgrade any previously purchased songs to the 256 kbps DRM free version for 30 cents a track. I plan on upgrading all of my tracks as soon as they are available. While I think that $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release [apple.com]:
The press conference has only streaming WindowsMedia and Real, no Quicktime?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
But the more important issue is... I'm currently interested in Japanese bands and they don't seem to want to sell this to me in Canada. I would literally jump at the chance to buy music, DRM free, at $1.20 per song. Shipping the damn CD's into Canada costs me a mint. Luckily I can bundle it with my manga purchases, but I'm still looking at close to $30 for most CDs (each) to get it here.
How about buying some Japanese iTunes gift cards on eBay?
Certainly I use US iTunes gift cards in Australia...
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
A few bands...
Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Kraftwerk, and Kate Bush. These are some listed on their website EMI Records UK. I don't know if that's the label, or if it's the entire EMI Group.
If that's the case, You've got the Beach Boys, David Bowie, Coldplay, Duran Duran, Gorillaz...OK Go, Liz Phair...
Wow, I might be upgrading a few of those.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
New albums from EMI are $9.99, 256kbps, and DRM free. RTFA.
Now, sure, if you build a MIX AND MATCH album of you're fav singles at 256kbps, it would wind up costing you $20. But name me a music store where I can go in and buy a mix-and-match CD?
You're comparing apples to oranges there.
There are all kinds of players that can play AAC besides the iPod.
And lots of other players are format-upgradeable , and thus will probably support AAC soon now that DRM free tracks will be on the iTunes site.
AAC is an open standard. Sure it is patent encumbered, but so is MP3.
If you bought some WMA/MP3 only player that's not upgradeable, that's your own fault. You locked yourself in.
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
Yes, the Zune supports AAC.
There are other reasons why Apple would stick with AAC beyond lock-in. First, AAC was designed to provide better sound quality at the same bitrate-- whether it delivers on this seems to depend on a few things, particularly the encoders you're comparing, but AAC is an MPEG standard developed to be better than MP3. Also, MP3 has additional legal (patent) issues which might be important for someone running an online store. According to the Wikipedia article, AAC doesn't require royalty payments for distribution. In other words, using MP3 would force Apple to pay royalties on their music sales, and AAC doesn't.
Beyond that, Apple can't prevent anyone from making AAC encoders/decoders, so there really is no lock-in to complain of.
OF course, there would be more players that can play MP3s than any other format. But to say only a few can play AAC is pure humbug.
Of the players in my house:
SonyEricsson K800i: MP3, AAC, Real
SonyEricsson W880i: MP3, AAC, Real
Panasonic DVD player: MP3, WMA
Jaguar Audio Connectivity Module: MP3, AAC
iPaq (with TCP): MP3, Vorbis, WMA, AAC (and many more)
PSP portable: MP3, AAC (maybe ATRAC, but not sure)
CD Player: MP3, AAC (m4a), WMA
in this list.. AAC is well represented in all but the Panasonic DVD player.
But more so, the current future is Phones with Music Players, Nokia, Sony Ericssons (both walkman and non walkman) Motorola and SAmsung seem committed to providing AAC, as opposed to WMA.
Have a nice day!
From Wikipedia:
I imagine a few more hardware vendors will now be looking to try to add support, however.
1. Critics have maintained that Apple should allow independent artists to offer their music iTMS without DRM, but the standard response is that this would be technically infeasible.
Complete the sentence: "this would be technically infeasible given their current contracts with the labels." You know, like EMI.
From what I understand of AAC audio, an essentially lossless CD rip of most CD's can be done in far less than the 320kbps used by mp3.
In fact, some have said that 128kbps is almost as good as 320kbps.
Couple that, with the fact that that you can sample AAC up to 96khz rather than just 48khz, you can encode up to 48 separate channels, and that EMI encodes their tracks from the digital masters rather than a lossy CD.
I suspect that the quality of these tracks may actually rival that of CD's... perhaps be superior in some regards.
I especially like the multi-track encoding idea. Labels could release the music so that the lead vocal, background vocals, and music were all on separate tracks... instant karaoke and instant remix ability. I don't suspect we can expect anything like this very soon, but the AAC format allows for it.
Can anyone confirm, is 256kbps enough for an AAC file to be indistinguishable from a CD in a true double blind listening test?
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
First off: bitrate is bitrate. One song in 256kbps MP3 is almost exactly the size of another song in 256kbps AAC/OGG/WMA/Whatever. Slight differences are mostly due to overhead (ID3-tags and album art). The sound quality will most likely differ though, with 256kbps AAC sounding a lot better than its MP3 counterpart.
And yes, unless you have some pretty nice equipment with good range, you're not likely to hear any difference between 256kbps AAC and the CD you bought. You do, however, have the songs in a digital form that will last quite a while, quality-wise. That's why I encode all my CDs to V0 MP3 (variable bit rate, mostly ranging from 250+ up to 320 kbps). With disk space as cheap as it is, it's an assurance that I don't have to re-rip my albums in a very long while. I can buy pretty much any stereo I want, and it'll still sound completely indistinguishable from my store bought CDs.
So ultimately I agree with you. Now that DRM is moot, all I want is higher bitrates. Preferably FLAC or any other lossless format that I can transcode to whatever codec I want. If I'm going to pay close to the same amount as I would the original CD, at the very least supply the same quality.
Blog -
the nytimes article says the album upgrade fee is $0.00, the bump is only for per track purchases.
AAC is an MPEG standard format and is the official successor to MP3; a.k.a. it's "MP4."
I'm glad someone finally stated that. AAC is not just any standard, it is the MPEG/ISO standard.
IOW, AAC is to MPEG4 what MP3 is to MPEG2. As you stated, AAC is the official successor to MP3. That's why Apple chose it when they did. At the same time MPEG4 became their standard for video AAC became their standard for audio. That was before the iTMS even went on line.