iTunes, EMI reach deal to sell higher quality songs with NO DRM

[SirFozzie]

Hopefully this is just the first of the majors to do so. I am willing to pay $0.30 more for higher quality and NO DRM.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/02/emi.apple.ap/index.html

LONDON, England (AP) -- Breaking from the rest of the recording industry, EMI Group said Monday it will begin selling songs online that are free of copy-protection technology through Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. The deal, however, doesn't include music from the label's biggest act, The Beatles.

ITunes customers will soon be able to buy songs by the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Coldplay and other top-selling artists for $1.29, or 30 cents more than the copy-protected version. The premium tunes also will be offered in a higher quality than the 99-cent tracks.

EMI Chief Executive Eric Nicoli said The Beatles music catalog is excluded from the deal, but said the company was "working on it." He declined to set a time frame for negotiations over the catalog.

The announcement followed calls by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs earlier this year for the world's four major record companies, including EMI Group PLC, to start selling songs online without copy-protection software.

The technology, known as digital rights management, or DRM, is designed to combat piracy by preventing unauthorized copying or sharing, but it also can be a consumer headache. Some music players, for instance, support one type of DRM software but not others.

The DRM used by Apple does not work with competing services or devices, meaning that consumers can only download songs from iTunes to work on their computers or iPod music players.

The lock between the download services and players has drawn criticism from European industry regulators, who argue that it limits buyer choice.

"Doing the right thing for the customer going forward is to tear down the walls that impede interoperability," Jobs told a London news conference.

He has previously argued there was little benefit to record companies selling more than 90 percent of their music without DRM on compact discs, then selling the remaining percentage online with DRM.

Some analysts suggest that lifting the software restrictions could boost sales of online music, which currently account for around 10 percent of global music sales.

Jobs said that he planned to offer around half of all music in the iTunes store under the premium package by the end of the year, but declined to say whether the company was in discussions with other leading record companies.

"Consumers tell us overwhelmingly that they would be prepared to pay a higher price for digital music that they could use on any player," Nicoli said. "It is key to unlocking and energizing the digital music business."

The iTunes music store will begin offering EMI's entire catalog -- apart from The Beatles -- without DRM software starting next month, he said.

EMI has acted as the distributor for The Beatles since the early 1960s, but The Beatles' music holding company, Apple Corps Ltd., has so far declined to allow the Fab Four's music on any Internet music services, including iTunes.

The situation was exacerbated by a long-running trademark dispute between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps. That legal feud was resolved in February when the two companies agreed on joint use of the apple logo and name, a deal many saw as paving the way for an agreement for online access to the Fab Four's songs.

Apple Corps was founded by the Beatles in 1968 and is still owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the widow of John Lennon and the estate of George Harrison.

[Peregrine]

Yeah this is definitely huge, it will put a lot of pressure on the other labels to do the same thing.

[Hammer755]

Bah. I was hoping this announcement would concern the Beatles.

[Easy Mac]

I am not willing to pay more money for the same content.

[jeff061]

I am not willing to pay more money for the same content.

I am. Then again I wasn't willing to pay .99 for that other crap. I may jump on the bandwagon with this, it addresses exactly the two things that caused me to steer clear of online distribution.

[cthomer5000]

sweet, even higher prices. *pulls out credit card*

[Celeval]

I am not willing to pay more money for the same content.

I have a feeling that there are plenty of people who would pay the extra $0.30 for the higher quality alone.

[wade moore]

I have a feeling that there are plenty of people who would pay the extra $0.30 for the higher quality alone.

I think it's going to be a pretty small minority.

I'm not willing to pay more for this and I think only your real hardcore music people (again, small majority who is buying from iTunes) will be willing to.

[wade moore]

Dola:

I really don't think this sends some message to other labels. I just don't think this is a big impact unless it is for the same cost. Most consumers don't even know what DRM is.

[Peregrine]

I think it does have a big impact, because how long have people been complaining that they want to be able to play a song they downloaded on any player? Apple's pretty smart in getting ahead of the curve on this, since they've been making a good profit from DRM music in a way.

Also, albums are the same cost, it's just single songs that cost more.

[Young Drachma]

This is overdue. I'm glad to hear it and hope others follow suit. Seriously. DRM is a joke and far worse for artists, especially since people who download music from subscriptions services will simply not buy CDs. They'll either find workarounds or their friends won't hear the music they like long-term, hurting artists who could easily gain viral fanbases that way. Which is what used to happen..

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Dola:

I really don't think this sends some message to other labels. I just don't think this is a big impact unless it is for the same cost. Most consumers don't even know what DRM is.

They may not know what DRM is, but if you buy from Itunes, you're fairly aware that you can't play the files on anything but your Ipod or Itunes. If advertised properly, I would think the Itunes consumer will know what they're getting.

And yes, the album price is the same so in essence, it is the same cost for your favorite artists at least.

[SackAttack]

Also, you're only paying the $0.30 premium if you want the higher quality tunes, correct? If you're okay with stuff at the same quality level, isn't that still $0.99?

Never mind: I'm an idiot. The 'premium' label implies both DRM-free and higher bitrate sampling.

Carry on!

[Ksyrup]

If it was something I could only get online or an itunes exclusive or something along those lines, I wouldn't hesitate to pay the extra money for a better quality file. I'd be burning it to a disk anyway, so I want it to sound as close to a real CD as possible. So my first option would be to buy the actual disk, but if it was an import or unavailable for some reason and I had to buy it digitally, I'd buy the more expensive file.

[Ksyrup]

I think it's going to be a pretty small minority.

I'm not willing to pay more for this and I think only your real hardcore music people (again, small majority who is buying from iTunes) will be willing to.

I think it's pretty sad that sound quality is so unimportant to people that only "hardcore" music listeners would buy it. I don't necessarily disagree with your assertion, I just find it a sad commentary on people's listening habits that they would willingly accept inferior sound quality (as they have been with digital files since they became available).

[JonInMiddleGA]

I think it's pretty sad that sound quality is so unimportant to people that only "hardcore" music listeners would buy it. I don't necessarily disagree with your assertion, I just find it a sad commentary on people's listening habits that they would willingly accept inferior sound quality (as they have been with digital files since they became available).

I guess I'm just too old to get the existence of any angst over this.

But then again I remember music on AM, I'm right at the end of the demo that still remembers sneaking a transistor radio to bed at night to listen to ball games in far away markets, and records that had pops, hisses, and skips. All of which adds up to being pretty satisfied as long as there isn't any static included in what I hear.

More importantly perhaps, after a certain point I simply can't hear any difference between one bit rate & the next (maybe it was all that metal for all those years). I've tried, to the point that I can look at a graphic display of two samples side-by-side and see differences, so I know they're there but there's no recognizable difference in what I hear.

And at the end of the day music is just background noise for the average person which means the distinctions just aren't that big a deal, we're only half listening half the time anyway.

[Ksyrup]

And at the end of the day music is just background noise for the average person which means the distinctions just aren't that big a deal, we're only half listening half the time anyway.

Yeah, I guess that's the difference for me. I'm the guy who won't roll down the windows in the car on a nice day because it interferes with listening to my music, or when my wife/kids wants to talk, I don't just turn down the sound on the radio, I turn it off so I can pick back up where I left off. I can hear the differences in bit rate (DESPITE my continued listening to metal for all these years :p ), and there's nothing more amazing than listening to a DVDA in my car and hearing the separation between layers of harmony vocals and the effects of the music/vocals switching from front to back and left to right.

Music for me is rarely background noise, so I deplore the general attempts to cheapen the medium by making crappy sound quality the standard. So, in sum, there is definitely a market for enhanced digital files, although as I stated earlier, digital is really a secondary consideration for me, after all attempts to purchase the physical CD have failed or are too expensive.

[st.cronin]

I guess I'm just too old to get the existence of any angst over this.

But then again I remember music on AM, I'm right at the end of the demo that still remembers sneaking a transistor radio to bed at night to listen to ball games in far away markets, and records that had pops, hisses, and skips. All of which adds up to being pretty satisfied as long as there isn't any static included in what I hear.

More importantly perhaps, after a certain point I simply can't hear any difference between one bit rate & the next (maybe it was all that metal for all those years). I've tried, to the point that I can look at a graphic display of two samples side-by-side and see differences, so I know they're there but there's no recognizable difference in what I hear.

And at the end of the day music is just background noise for the average person which means the distinctions just aren't that big a deal, we're only half listening half the time anyway.

Agree 100%, although I do notice a big difference from analog to digital. Within digital, though, I have to really strain to hear a difference.

[Desnudo]

So what else are you going to play it on besides your ipod? Or is the main benefit going to be in sharing music?

[Drake]

I'll likely continue doing what I've always done -- I'll buy the CD and rip the songs myself. If I want a DRM-free version of a song or a CD I've purchased and the medium prevents me (for whatever bizarre technical reasons), then I'll just get it from bit torrent.

What I'm not going to do is pay a premium (or, God forbid, pay twice) because the record labels are asshats.

[gstelmack]

So what else are you going to play it on besides your ipod? Or is the main benefit going to be in sharing music?

Well, it opens up iTunes to people like me who don't own an iPod and likely never will. But I could put the music on my PocketPC, or stream it from my Vista PC to my 360, or any of a number of other music listening venues that don't involve something made by Apple...