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."

Comments

This sucks

[catbutt]

When Jobs came out with his "Thoughts on Music", I made all kinds of cynical comments saying that he was being disingenious for this or that reason. After all, Job's in incredibly successful and people all over the world laud him and his company's products, so he NEEDS to be brought down a notch.

Well now he's making me look like an ass.

Re:Competition for emusic

[plover]

The cost of downloaded music by all logic should be below the half of what the CD of the same stuff costs.

You are only looking at a fraction of the actual costs. How do you know what Apple's costs are, vs. the costs incurred by a physical distribution company? The costs are not just for the physical media and distribution, or the network bandwidth, iTMS development and hosting costs, but also the negotiated per-title royalties that must be paid. The labels get their cut, and that's probably the most expensive component of the price.

And even after all that, sure, Apple's costs may be lower. But Apple's prices are apparently higher by your measure, and I think that's why you're complaining.

You see, there's this funny idea called 'Capitalism'. Capitalism pretty much means "if you want to sell a product at whatever price you want to sell it, go for it. If you make money, congratulations. If you lose money, tough." The corollary to that is "if you want something and are willing to pay the asked-for price, you can buy it. If you are unwilling to pay that price, you can try to negotiate a new lower price, shop elsewhere, or go without."

So if you think a DRM-free song is worth only $0.25, why not write to Apple and ask them to sell you that song for $0.25? If they're unwilling to negotiate with you, then you are free to go to another source and pay their asking price. Otherwise, contact the record labels yourself and start a music distribution business of your own, set your prices at $0.25, and make lots of money. Let us know how that works out for you.