Protest - Credit: bcatch on Flickr (CC BY-SA)
iTunes has dropped DRM, and is allowing artists/labels to customize pricing.
The deal means that iTunes immediately has 8 million DRM-free songs available and will have a total of 10 million by April, as contracts with indie bands and labels are renewed.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Jason Barry, a Los Angeles resident attending the conference. “DRM is the reason piracy is very popular, because people want to own the music they buy.”
Like the DRM-free music already in the iTunes Plus store from EMI and other labels, the digital catalogs of Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group (indie labels to follow in April) will be encoded at a higher level than their DRMed counterparts: 256 Kbps. Those who purchased DRM-ed songs from iTunes will be able to upgrade them to the DRM-free, better-sounding versions for 30 cents a song.
For real this time. Now we have to get them using OGG and FLAC. Once again, sorry for all the lateness. After-holiday slump.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:42
Apple’s only removing DRM from music. There are still locks on apps, videos, books… never Apple’s own software.
January 8th, 2009 at 14:22
Yea, that’s how I feel too. I can’t stand it when people tell me that Apple is better than Microsoft because the core of their operating system is free. Well it’s not like they wrote it, what do they care?
January 8th, 2009 at 22:02
Yeah, it just strikes me as a little hypocritical for Jobs to call out the labels for DRM when you’ve gotta break an security hash on an iTunes.db file to sync it an iPod touch with Amarok, lol.