Apple iTunes now DRM-free but prices may go up as a result
There wasn’t much worth noting announced at the 2009 Macworld Expo, and most of the attention therefore focused on the absence of Steve Jobs as he undergoes treatment for a hormone deficiency. But the move to make iTunes completely free of DRM is at least one to make note of, even if it means prices will now be changing.
DRM (Digital Rights Management) has long been the bane of buyers of digital music, movies, and PC games. Put in place to prevent copies of songs being shared amongst multiple devices, be that mp3 players, computers, or whatever, the restrictions usually just result in consumers feeling disenfranchised by the whole experience.
Apple iTunes is currently the biggest music retailer in the United States, but there’s still one thing that is preventing many people from using the service to buy songs and albums. That is the restrictive DRM that the four major record labels have up until now insisted on forcing onto consumers. EMI was already offering some content free of DRM and now Apple has done a deal which will see Warner, Sony BMG, and Universal follow suit.
As detailed in Apple’s press release, which coincided with the keynote speech delivered by Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, at the Macworld Expo, 8 million of the 10 million currently on iTunes will switch to DRM-free immediately, while the remaining two million will switch by the end of March.
Unfortunately, in order to push this deal through, Apple has had to give up its long-held control over the pricing of songs on iTunes. The majors have been requesting more flexibility on pricing than the flat $0.99 per track for some time now. And that request has now been granted. From April all tracks on iTunes will be priced at either 69 cents, 99 cents, or $1.29.
It’s expected that new and in-demand songs will be sold in the top pricing tier while many older tracks will be available in the lowest tier. Although I personally feel that 69 cents is still too much to ask for some songs and a sub-50 cents asking price would have been more suitable. Current iTunes customers can convert all of their tracks to the new DRM-free format for 30 cents per song.
This is a welcome move on the part of both Apple and the record labels, and is likely to gain iTunes even more customers than it currently has. Maybe the draconian DRM measures put in place by copyright holders are now coming to an end at last. Whether this will see levels of piracy increase or decrease will be shown in time and an interesting trend to watch.
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January 7th, 2009
For those of us with an extensive iTunes library, $.30 per song will add up quickly and could actually wind up in the hundreds of dollars.
April 9th, 2009
im pissed the fuck off… fuck