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

Is Apple going to extend that grant?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

A good start (if the labels take up Apples offer), but is Apple going to extend that grant to itself (for the DRM that attempts to prevents you from running os x on other PCs) and movie studios (particularly the Disney studio)?

Or is it just other people's content they want drm-free?

Re:Is Apple going to extend that grant?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Sure - as soon as you want to let us know how much music Apple produces and sells...

(not trying to be smarmy or anything, but seriously - Jobs, Apple et al have been talking about making music DRM-free

As you point out, Jobs, Apple et al have been talking about making products they don't produce DRM free.

Apple talkin' the talk without walkin' the walk again.

What we reallly want...

[djfake]

As I said before, we want better quality music (although this 256 nonsense is not it - what about lossless or flac?!) and what Apple wants is their AAC to become the defacto standard over mp3.