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Apple To Grant All Labels DRM-Free Distribution
SexCaptain writes "MacRumors.com reveals a letter circulated by Apple to all producers of content for the iTunes Store, announcing that from May onward they can sell their music at higher quality and free of DRM. Hopefully this opens the doors for labels like Netwerk. This is a big step in the right direction, although it's unclear exactly what Apple means by 'higher quality,' and there is no mention of price changes. (Apple charges $0.30 more per song for DRM-free content from EMI and encodes it at 256K.) Quoting from the letter: 'Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free," Apple wrote in the communication. "Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers."
It's encoded at a higher bitrate AND DRM-free.
The price of DRM-free albums remains unchanged. It's only DRM-free singles that go up in price to $1.29.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
They'll be DRM-free so of course you can import them into iMovie or Final Cut. Of course, you can already do so even with DRMed iTunes files. Apple has had support for using iTunes purchases in iMovie for a long time.
The album price is the same for DRM free, higher quality... $9.99 for most albums. That makes the convenience and lack of censorship worth every penny. It isn't like you can buy a single DRM free track from Walmart either.
Yeah, I use OS X... so sue me.
what Apple wants is their AAC to become the defacto standard over mp3.
AAC isn't Apple's codec. It's the MPEG group's replacement for MP3.
For the regular price ($8.88 CDN per album) you get 192kbps non-DRM'd MP3's. For $2.00 CDN extra, you get the same album in FLAC format. Their entire catalog is in non-DRM format and they have been doing it this way for a lot longer than Apple. As an added benefit, they a support all platforms equally, so you can use Windows, OS X or even Linux to browse and buy music.
STFU about slashdot bias.
You make some reasonable points, but I couldn't disagree with you more about software & movies. The point you used to illustrate software was particularly misguided:
I mean, the kind of software application that you expect to work on you Desktop computer is pretty unsuitable for your cell phone.
You do realise the iPhone is going to run OS X don't you? Do you realise that you would be able to run OS X in a vmware window if Apple didn't actively prevent you from doing so?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Except that you don't have to burn fossil fuels to get your music to your house. Nor is there any fossil fuel expended in transporting the disk to the store.
Uh, yes you did have to burn fossil fuels..
It takes electrical energy to power all those computers, disks, routers, repeaters and cables. Energy which is in the main generated by burning stuff (Unless you live in France, where 80% odd of the electric grid is powered by nuclear plants).
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Mmm, no. Not just top 40. Apple carries all manner of classic rock, hard rock, symphonic, blues, and more. beat them up for DRM (OS or other) all you like, but let's not just lie about things, ok?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You are either a uninformed troll or an MS shill but again for the record: AAC is a part of the MPEG standard that is used by many other players like Sony's PS3, MS Zune, SanDisk Sansa e200R, numerous cell phones, etc. The licensing scheme of AAC is even more generous than MP3 as there is no license on distributed content. Also for the record, WMA has never been the industry standard. It was a standard foisted up us by MS which actually suffers from the same defects that you claim about AAC. If you change AAC in your ranting with WMA and Apple with MS, your statements would actually be true.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I agree with your point, but not your rationale.
I'm *gasp* 35, and for as long as I can remember music has been freely copyable. Radios with built-in cassette players could often record "free" [1] music directly from the radio, without any external microphone. One radio station even spent Sunday nights playing entire sides of LPs.
The CD era made it even easier to make high quality tapes. It was easy to record, and in some cases the quality was better than a mastered cassette. Some of the "portable systems" [2] could actually calculate optimal song orders to put as many tracks on a tape as possible.
My point is that at least two generations have grown up with the ideas of "free music" and "freely copying music". Right or wrong, it's a part of the American culture. The sudden appearance of DRM when freely copied/format shifted music has been permitted for decades is a culture shock, and is only turning people away from the big labels.
1: Sure, someone was paying for it, but to the end user the only costs were electricity and cassettes.
2: aka boom boxes. I'm a child of the 80's.