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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.
If you were one of the thousands of bloggers/netcitizens demanding DRM free music, give yourself a hand. This is a win for us.
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
.. everyone who wanted DRM-free music put your money where your mouth is!
Uh, no? Jobs isn't stupid. As the summary says, these files are encoded at a much higher bitrate. So what you're really paying more for is higher quality files. Of course, you could get higher quality files on anti-DRM principles, but the result is still the same: You get twice the "standard" bitrate for about 30% more. You can decide for yourself if that's a deal or not.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There's also an EMI Press Release.
Just like McDonalds you can Super size for $0.30 more that gives you more than you actually need to consume.
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.
I hereby rescind my Apple-phobia. Jobs has achieved a BIG GOOD THING. /you'll still have to pry my iRiver out of my twitching, techno-spazzed fingers.
Good on ya, Steve!
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
So what exactly is their justification for leaving DRM on the $0.99 tracks? It can't be that they are afraid people will release them into the wild if the higher quality tracks are now DRM free, so why not remove it?
No, it doesn't. As others (who have read the article) said, the .30 price increase is due to the doubled bitrate. It might be a convenient cop-out, but it still doesn't give anyone the right to distribute the file.
Starmen.net
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 $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release [apple.com]:
The format is still locked to the Ipod, which is entirely the problem!
Ummm, no it's not. AAC is a fairly standard format (though not as ubiquitous as mp3). Many players out there will play non-DRM'd AAC files with no problem. The Zune comes to mind. Hell, my Samsung phone will play them. This is a good thing all around. And since album prices are staying the same, I can only view this as a good move.
This guy's the limit!
Man, say what you want about Steve Jobs. He's got a famous temper, he doesn't compromise, he likes closed systems, etc. and so on. But one thing he definitely has is balls, and sometimes we can benefit from it.
So, he apparently finally has convinced one label to drop the DRM, and yes, he's charging more for the content, but he goes and ups the bitrate, just so the content from the non-participating labels looks like shit in comparison. That takes some cojones, and I gotta say, I admire him for that. Could it possibly be that DRM will become one of those horrible memories from the past that we can all suppress? Time will tell, but at least today, I say this is relatively good news.
And, you know..."fuck the RIAA" goes without saying.
gameDB
How is the DRM going to make a profit if their product's marginal utility (apparently) is -$.30?
Without DRM there'd be far less excuse to charge extra for the DRM-free version. The $1.30 version will subsidise the $1 DRM-encumbered version.
It's a bit like the way the supermarkets virtually wiped out tastier (but odd-looking) varieties of fruit and veg for cosmetic reasons. They're then selling them back to us as luxury items now we're used to eating the pretty (but tasteless) varieties.
Another advantage of the higher bitrates is the ability to slip in watermarking. Thanks to perfect digital replication the instant this appeared on P2P they could trace the file back to the person that purchased the media.
Think about it. Apple has not released the details of the tracks other then "256kb aac" w/o DRM. They don't say that it will be delayed downloading (rather then the buy, download, listen now) could be "Thanks for purchasing. Your music will arrive shortly in you library and purchased media areas." Then about 5 minutes later the track downloads. And seeing how apple doesn't allow for a redownloading (i think) they simply add the watermarking into the database and delete the track.
EMI find a DRM free version of the music on the internet (Coldplay-Clocks.m4a) and downloads it from people. They compare the watermark, it comes back to you, you get sued like no other on the planet as an example.
(the old tired method of this but):
1) Announce DRM Free media
2) Release DRM free media w/ Watermarking
3) Download version from internet
4) Link watermarking to individual
5) SUE THE PANTS OFF OF THEM!!!
6) ??? (Repeat?)
7) Profit somehow.
Its a possibility. Don't just celebrate yet. I've got a feeling this wont be with out some strings
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
After Jobs made his "get rid of DRM" speech a month or two ago, they were coming out of the woodwork blasting him for being a hypocrite. Maybe these know-nothings will now realize that he couldn't make these changes on his own, he needed the labels themselves to come along.
NOW that one of them is promoting anti-DRM versions, expect the indy stuff to follow suit. These same anti-Jobs people will lament the fact Jobs didn't do this with indy bands 1st. It's called negotiations people. Getting a major label to do this is 10 times better than having ONLY the indy bands DRM free. This is a major change in thinking for the big labels. And that made it well worth the wait.
Maybe if the anti-Jobs people would focus more on Microsoft and their disabling of the Zune wifi for a change, even more progress can be made in the DRM free world. But I'm guessing that the anti-Job reaction to his speech wasn't atually about his speech, it was more about being Microsoft lap dogs.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Yeah, it's important to have some perspective here. You can argue till your face turns blue that DRM doesn't work/doesn't make sense/is evil/whatever, but the reality of it is that there are people out there with different opinions. And a bunch of those people are old businessmen who run big companies that see, over the horizon, the end of the business model on which they've built their little empires and made their fortunes.
/. mentality is correct, and DRM is not a workable solution, then the market will flesh that out and we can all get on with our lives. But to expect and preach anti-DRM like the heavens will open up and everyone will see the light and hold hands and all DRM will disappear tomorrow is not only unrealistic, it makes you look silly.
It's easy for you as a consumer or a musician to argue for the new "music economy" because you have little to lose and much to gain. A lot of these big record companies have plenty to lose. You might be able to make an argument that with the right business savvy and some smart decisions that they have a lot to gain as well, but nothing is guaranteed, and big companies tend to be risk adverse.
The point is, if the general
Baby steps are what we should expect and really hope for. Each sign of progress should be a reason for celebration, not a bitch session about everything you still don't like about the music industry. Yay for steps in the right direction!
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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
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.
From Wikipedia:
I imagine a few more hardware vendors will now be looking to try to add support, however.
Without DRM there'd be far less excuse to charge extra for the DRM-free version. The $1.30 version will subsidise the $1 DRM-encumbered version.
Don't ignore the other tidbit in the announcement about the re-release of the music. It's all going to be released 256kbps, rather than the current iTunes Store standard of 128kbps. So if you buy DRM-free music from iTunes, you're actually getting a higher quality rip than they previously sold. There's a very small number of people who can hear the difference, although a larger number of people think it matters. Either way, Apple has actually improved the quality of the deliverable, not just removed DRM.
At twice the bitrate, the songs use twice the bandwidth when downloaded, so Apple even has slightly higher real costs on the new downloads, although I doubt that the incremental increase in cost is as high as 30 cents per song...
-JMP
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.
Fuck the RIAA, except for EMI. We do have to hand it to them for taking the courageous step, breaking rank from the other big labels, and taking a chance on selling standard format music. Now if they can just distance themselves from the suing of little old grandmothers, I might even be motivated to exclude them from my RIAA boycott, provided they have music I'm interested in...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
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.
Would you care to explain how having DRM-free indy bands' tracks on iTMS would have made such negotiation with major labels somehow more difficult?
Why certainly.
Having indie labels sell DRM free music first, would have had a different structure than the current deal. Apple needed a way to figure out how to move forward with DRM free music in a way that labels would accept - so they had to work through negotiations with EMI to see how the could arrange pricing and quality options in a way that would appeal to them. Once that framework was laid, then other indie labels could get the same deal, only now there is a single clear option for DRM free music going forward and also a clear path for other larger labels to follow down a road that one has already found to be acceptable. It took a little longer but now everything is simpler both for the consumer, and the music studio large and small.
How many contracts with giant paranoid music studios have YOU managed, Mr. backseat negotiator?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do they realize that an entire album, which I can purchase at a brick-and-mortar or an online retailer, will now be cheaper. I can rip that CD using Apple Lossless encoding. Maybe I'm missing the point???
True, but it's worth a significant amount of money to me (and I expect a lot of other people besides) to not have to go anywhere near a shopping mall or other B&M retailer.
Going out to a store, round-trip, is probably an hour of my time, not to mention gas for the car, and is just a giant hassle. It means fighting for a parking space, and then getting into the store, and finding what I want, and waiting in line behind a bunch of teeny-boppers while some stoned clerk plods along through the checkout procedure. I can feel my blood-pressure going up just thinking about it. That's not how I want to spend one of my few free hours after work or on the weekends, thanks much.
If Apple charges a slight premium to allow me to buy DRM-free music from the comfort of my own home, where I can decide to buy something and have it on my computer to listen to, through my stereo, while drinking my beer, in five minutes -- that's value added.
Apple's real competition, at least for me, isn't B&M stores, it's online stores that sell physical CDs, particularly used ones (Half.com). There, it becomes a trade-off between how much I want to pay, and how long I want to wait. Although waiting in a line in a store gives me the urge to stab people, I'm not normally enough of an impulse-buyer to mind waiting a few days for a $4 CD. I could see buying particular tracks that I want to listen to right now from iTunes at $1.30/each, but it's probably not going to be the primary source of my music.
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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.
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Now, if they'll go just one more step, and sell lossless music with no DRM, I'll be one of the first in line to purchase it!!!
I want my 'source' to be as good as I can get it...and I'll transcode to lower qualities myself for poor listening environments like portable players, the car etc. I can do that and have the higher quality sound for my home soundsystem.
So close...so close....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In case you're reading this, Apple, I'm ready to be a customer. And a moderately large one at that (I have about $5,000 worth of CDs). Unfortunately I only have Linux machines - is there a good path for me to buy from you?
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the nytimes article says the album upgrade fee is $0.00, the bump is only for per track purchases.