Some good news on the DRM front. If this post is news to you, where have you been this week?
Apple and EMI have agreed to sell on iTunes EMI tracks without DRM. For an extra 20p (in the UK) you can buy tracks encoded at 256Kb/s (rather than the normal 128Kb/s) and with out Apple's Fair Play DRM. They'll still be AAC encoded but playable on any player than can play AAC.
It's a big deal for me as EMI tracks bought on iTunes can now be played on players other than iPods. I'm pleased as we have two Roku Soundbridges which can play iTunes playlists and can now play tracks bought from the iTunes store. Assuming that I pay the extra. Until now I'd not bought anything from iTunes but suspect I'll start now.
To date, the record companies have tried to attack piracy by making it hard for legitimate music buyers to do much with the music by implementing DRM restrictions. They should wise up and make it easier (NOT HARDER) to legitimately buy and play music.
Don't raise the barriers to copying, lower the barriers to purchase.
EMI are the first of the big record companies to sell digital music without DRM. Will the others follow?
A couple of things I find interesting are to do with the higher bit rate and the album discount. Using the higher bit rate provides a marker which could be used to track how widely the DRM free tracks are illegally copied. Also, whole albums can be purchased DRM free at the old price. This is probably an attempt to get people to buy whole albums rather than just cherry pick the good tracks of an album.
Apple and EMI have agreed to sell on iTunes EMI tracks without DRM. For an extra 20p (in the UK) you can buy tracks encoded at 256Kb/s (rather than the normal 128Kb/s) and with out Apple's Fair Play DRM. They'll still be AAC encoded but playable on any player than can play AAC.
It's a big deal for me as EMI tracks bought on iTunes can now be played on players other than iPods. I'm pleased as we have two Roku Soundbridges which can play iTunes playlists and can now play tracks bought from the iTunes store. Assuming that I pay the extra. Until now I'd not bought anything from iTunes but suspect I'll start now.
To date, the record companies have tried to attack piracy by making it hard for legitimate music buyers to do much with the music by implementing DRM restrictions. They should wise up and make it easier (NOT HARDER) to legitimately buy and play music.
Don't raise the barriers to copying, lower the barriers to purchase.
EMI are the first of the big record companies to sell digital music without DRM. Will the others follow?
A couple of things I find interesting are to do with the higher bit rate and the album discount. Using the higher bit rate provides a marker which could be used to track how widely the DRM free tracks are illegally copied. Also, whole albums can be purchased DRM free at the old price. This is probably an attempt to get people to buy whole albums rather than just cherry pick the good tracks of an album.
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