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iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks
jawtheshark writes "Apple has made the decision to revise the pricing of Plus songs on the iTunes Music store. Whereas previously the DRM-less tracks were more expensive than the 'normal' option (at $1.29 vs. $0.99), DRM-less tracks bought via ITMS will now be priced on the same level as DRM'd tracks. 'Apple plans to expand iTunes Plus to include certain indie music labels starting Wednesday, October 17 (or sometime this week, at least) ... This expansion won't include all independent music labels just yet, although we're optimistic that more will be included in the future. While we have no information on whether the iTunes Plus songs are selling well, we assume that the decision to drop the price is a response to the Amazon MP3 store. Amazon sells individual tracks for between 89 and 99 apiece, all without any DRM restrictions. With that in mind, it's kind of hard for Apple to compete at $1.29.'"
Now I have to figure out how to tell the DRM-tunes from the non-DRM tunes. It was easy when there was a price difference.
...but for now, I'm not terribly impressed. Apple:
- still has only EMI (and the independents) at this new rate (compared to Amazon, which also has Universal)
- still embeds buyer information inside the files
- is still more expensive (ten cents, granted, but still...), and
- chose to react rather than innovate
It's the fourth bullet point that dismays me the most.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Maybe Amazon had something to do with it, but Amazon was only trying to compete with iTunes Store. Personally I think consumers win there is competition like this.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I know it's nothing novel to complain about the quality of Slashdot summaries, but it really would have been nice to mention that the new price for all songs is 99. The last line in the current summary gives the impression that they were all going to be $1.29...
Why are they selling DRM and non-DRM for the same price? Is that sort of like:
"If you want to ride the roller coster you have to get corn holed first, or you can just get on the ride."
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Amazon and Magnatune work on Linux. Or just about any OS, for that matter. And they work with any MP3 player ('cause they're, you know, MP3s).
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Brilliant.
Announce the "intermediate" step of "no DRM, we'll pacify you by raising the price. X months later we'll do what we really wanted to."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yes competition is good. I has caused apple to lower it's price to keep a few of it's customers. It also has caused some music labels to rethink how they sell music. (I know one of them is selling music online with non-DRM).
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
I'm curious if Radiohead's Name-Your-Price album prompted the announcement, Apple thinking they could catch a bit of positive press while the anti-RIAA/DRM sentiments are flowing.
Who knows.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
They're dropping the prices of DRM-free music? But what about us early adopters who've already bought music from them? Are they going to give us a refund since they clearly scammed us of our hard-earned money? Maybe I'll just sue Apple...
I might say something like "Apple has been forced to reduce pricing to compete with other online music stores after losing a major contract with Universal. Combined with the relatively closed nature of the iPod, and negative publicity about the iPhone, Apple looks like it will have to do some major adjusting in order to continue to remain dominant in a market that they helped create."
But I'm not a pundit.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
It seems to me that DRM is digging it's own grave, thanks to the immense popularity of the iPod (I heard in the US like 80% market share).
The iPod uses DRM, but only Apple's DRM. And it can of course play unprotected songs.
Apple does not license it's DRM to other vendor: in effect becoming the only vendor selling DRM'ed songs to 80% of the market of digital music players. The rest of the players can fight of the left-overs.
Apple gets a lot of market power: the labels want to sell music, but only music with DRM. To reach the majority of the market, they must play together with Apple. And Apple has proven not to be very easy a business partner.
Thus the only way the music labels can tap into that 80% of the market, without going through Apple, is by selling non-DRM'ed songs. And there is a good reason for a music label to have multiple resellers for your product: then the resellers have to compete with each other to buy their music. Which likely gives rise to higher prices for the labels.
This way I see DRM having dug it's own grave: one DRM scheme became very popular, giving one player a very powerful virtual monopoly over online music sales. The label-mandated DRM now locks everyone in to that one player: Apple with their iTunes Music Store. And the only way to break this monopoly is to drop DRM, and that is exactly what is happening now.
And already we see the fruits of this development: iTunes forced to lower their prices, other stores offering flexible pricing options ('priced between 89 and 99 cents' - not much of a difference but there is flexibility), and certainly this will start opening the market for more online music resellers. This can not be a bad thing.
Getting even more off-topic: here in Hong Kong recently retail chain HMV started to sell tracks through ATM-style kiosks. Digital sales, but not online. These kiosks are in their retail outlets, offering buyers a huge collection (about half a million tracks or so; that requires quite a large brick 'n mortar store to house), and instant downloads to their digital music player. Again they use DRM: in this case Microsoft's Plays For Sure scheme. Now without DRM I'm sure HMV would have a much bigger market. I have no idea on the market share of Plays For Sure devices, though it's for sure less than half. So DRM free can instantly double one's market. If PFS devices are only 20% of the market (just a guess), they could increase their market five times just by dropping the DRM.
I doubt the record labels will ever agree that DRM limits their sales; confirming the R in DRM stands for Restrictions. Not Rights. Restricting not only what the user can do, but restricting your own market even more in the process.
Wouter.
So the dinosaurs bellow in the night, pull their tracks, and now look at the shelf space for the independents: smaller, hungrier people who see opportunity in the new distribution technologies. The dinosaurs seem to have forgetten the door they left open during the three years they didn't get MTV.
If I were Apple, I'd talk to the independents and help them start some internet radio channels and provide sponsorships so the new channels can afford the air talent and the short-term loan to Sound Exchange (who will be collecting all internet recording performance fees and then giving out to the record companies who hold the copyrights on the recordings.) People only buy what they hear and can find.
Maybe I'm a bit naive but I thought it usually took time, work, and negotiation to reverse the practices of an entire industry. Apple did it first with EMI. EMI is sticking to their strategy hoping that they will survive and has started to offer it to Amazon. Universal is not happy with Apple right now so this is a bit of revenge on their part. Other than that, what is the major complaint here?
Information that is not hidden and can easily be removed. Information that reveals nothing more than the owner of the file. Information that has been embedded in every track Apple has sold (DRM or not) since the begining of iTunes. It's Apple's way of trying to track if someone buys a DRM free track and puts it on a P2P. When you buy anything (especially with a loyalty card), don't you think more information is gathered about you and sold to third parties?
Company 1 offers new product or service.
Company 2 offers more or better features than Company 1 months later.
Company 1 matches Company 2's offer a few months later.
In your scenario, you've called out Company 1 for failure to innovate. Wasn't Apple the first of the two to offer DRM free tracks? Didn't Apple convince EMI to do so? In my world, the two are just competing.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If we look at the situation, we can see that there is a major problem with Amazon's service:
Step 1 - Universal wants higher prices, but Apple refuses.
Step 2 - Universal dumps Apple and goes to Amazon, and Amazon starts selling songs at prices lower than the iTunes Store.
Step 3 - ?
In Step 3, Universal needs to achieve the goals it set out with contract re-negotiations with Apple. The goals were higher prices, with a larger percentage going to Universal for sending over a digital copy of an album four years ago. (The artists, are, as you might imagine, quite irrelevant in their calculations).
So why are they selling tracks at $0.89? To drive people away from the iTunes Store, knock it off its pedestal as the dominant online music retailer, and then jack up the prices once that has occurred and there is a new major player on the block who is more...accommodating...to the wants of the major labels.
Am I suggesting that people abandon Amazon and start paying more of their hard-earned money to Apple? No. What I am suggesting, and what I have done, is to put a moratorium on my online music purchases until things settle down a bit, as I strongly believe Amazon is going to end up screwing us in the end. We have to keep in mind the only reason Universal went with Amazon was because Apple refused to let them dictate terms that would end up raising the price of online music to a point higher than physical CDs themselves.
It's ridiculous to think that these prices are going to last, and that when the "correction" comes, that it will be anything but drastic. Giving Amazon a great deal of business, and thus, the big labels more leverage over operations that have fought for the end users, is detrimental to online music retailing as a whole.
Let me reiterate, the problem is not that the music is being sold by a company other than Apple, but WHY that music is being sold by a company other than Apple at the prices currently asked.
Apple invented this juggernaut knows as online music stores. A billion or more song sales don't happen due to lack of innovation.
Since DRM and DRM-free tracks cost the same, it proves that DRM is worthless!
song_value + DRM_value = song_value
DRM_value = song_value - song_value
DRM_value = 0
...but for now, I'm not terribly impressed. Apple ... still embeds buyer information inside the files
... still has only EMI (and the independents) at this new rate (compared to Amazon, which also has Universal)
... chose to react rather than innovate
... is still more expensive (ten cents, granted, but still...)
What precisely is the problem here? It's not as though you're sharing those files around is it? And it's only your name, in an easily removable tag. I'm yet to hear a serious reason why this is so bad that uses actual logic. At the absolute worst and most cynical, it could be described only as a "minor inconvenience."
Apple
And that's because Apple clearly don't want Universal to go DRM-free, is it? And you know this how, exactly? Could it be because EMI were willing, but other companies wanted different rules or wanted to break Apple's dominance? Will I end every sentence with a question mark? No, I have other punctuation waiting in the wings!
Apple
Other people have reminded you that Apple were doing this before Amazon. Not first in the online world (it's not hard to find other labels like eMusic) but they were the first really big, unquestionably legal player to offer DRM-free tracks.
Apple
Good point. Apple picked the 99 cent price point early on and stuck with it. There have been many accounts of pressure applied to Apple to raise the price, and they've resisted. Hopefully Amazon's lower price will force Apple to compete at that level (really, I mean force the labels to realise this level is the price people are willing to pay).
I think you've tried hard to criticise Apple here, but failed to come up with a compellingly damning criticism. Better points could have revolved around the poor support for indie DRM-free tracks (improving now though) and purchase of lossless media (256kbit versus lossless is hard to hear though). Sadly you didn't grasp the nettle of opportunity when you could've.
Oh my God Apple dropped another price! It's just like the iPhone all over again. SUE!! SUE!!
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
>How is it easier to put songs on your non-iPod from the Amazon store when they DON'T CARRY THE SONGS???
Funny, people griped about iTunes for the same reason when it started... but it got better. Amazon's service is relatively new. It might just get better with time, too. Imagine that.
Stop whining, please? It's tiresome.
That they won't offer anything other than AAC.
AAC is just the MPEG 4 audio codec, it's a publicly defined standard, and somewhat better quality than MP3 for equivalent file sizes. There are a few other media players that support it... but most only support MP3 and Microsoft's proprietary WMA. It's ironic, too, when some company whines about Apple's "non-standard" formats when it's *their* decision, not Apple's, not to support MP4.
One wonders if Microsoft cuts them a deal on the license for WMA if they leave out MP4/AAC, OGG, etcetera...
You can transcode to MP3 if you need to, if you must buy a media player from a company that kowtows to Redmond.
It's ridiculous to think that these prices are going to last, and that when the "correction" comes, that it will be anything but drastic. Giving Amazon a great deal of business, and thus, the big labels more leverage over operations that have fought for the end users, is detrimental to online music retailing as a whole.
It's ridiculous to think that these prices are not going to fall more, maybe even to a point that I will find reasonable. Universal essentially lost the war, and now they're just trying to pick up the pieces. This is how I interpreted the whole series of events:
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I agree with you, but you must be new here. Slashdotters will tell you that ripping a CD causes irreparable file damage rendering the song unlistenable and DRM exists solely to lock consumers into having to buy iPods. I mean, nobody buys iPods because they are the best player on the market, they only buy them because they have to because of all their iTunes songs. And iTunes sucks so hard too, makes you wonder why people need iPods in the first place, since no true slashdotter would ever use such a debilitating business model like iTunes. Yeah, that's my take on it in my first full year of slashdotting, but I'm still here, so I must like the punishment.
"Amazon MP3 does not yet offer the complete Dixie Chicks catalog. Not all record labels have approved all of their music for sale as MP3s, but we're working to expand selection. "
Since these same labels haven't approved non-drm sales in the iTunes store either, what makes you think they will on the Amazon site? The same "matter of time" will never happen, given the current greedy culture of the labels.
- Jam sites. These are websites where you plug your MIDI instrument into your PC, go to the site, find a channel where someone else who is playing their MIDI instrument to the website, and join into the groove. A musician's Napster. Actually I don't know if these even exist. Please let me know if they do. If not, please code it as your senior project.
http://www.ejamming.com/
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I do.
That's false. People were paying more money for the same music. If, as you indicate below, having DRM increases costs, then people were paying more money for something that was cheaper to produce. Either Apple was profiting from people's desires for DRM-free music, or Jobs lied about DRM increasing costs.
This is true, but doesn't support your assertion that Apple wasn't profiting from the desire for DRM-free music, in fact it undermines it. Both the fact that it costs more to produce DRM'ed music and the fact that Jobs opposes DRM'ed music would support the notion that Apple would profit more from DRM-free music.
Huh? There's nothing hypocritical about that. For years, Apple has asserted that their computers are a greater value, and charged more for them. Jobs insists that DRM-free music is a greater value, and that everyone should insist upon having it. What would be at all inconsistent about charging more for a better product?
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
What would be inconsistent and hypocritical is to prop up DRM systems for years only to suddenly decide to drop the DRM...with a price increase. For the music industry, it has always been about taking something away, then slowly selling it back to you at higher cost.
DRM free music is a higher value, but one that other stores have already been selling at $0.99, hence Apple has to cut costs to compete, its that simple. I truly believe they dropped the price because they couldn't compete anymore on the no-drm front.