Later days for DRM?
Do you ever have problems managing, copying, or downloading songs on iTunes? Apparently a lot of people do, but Apple and EMI are teaming up to help resolve the problem.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a technology often used by big labels to control the access of their digital media and to help ensure that their songs are not duplicated without authorization. If a track has DRM, it cannot be copied or distributed, and all of the tracks on iTunes come with these restrictions. Because of this, a lot of iTunes users have had trouble managing the songs that they have paid the $.99 for, and technically own a license to. So, Apple and EMI made a deal this week to sell songs DRM-free in either AAC, MP3, or WMA format, hopefully meaning less trouble for the customers and better sound quality. However, the price per track has been raised to $1.29 (US), though the DRM versions of the songs will still be at $.99 if you prefer to not pay the extra 30 cents.
This movement is projected to help the online music catalog business take a step forward, especially making iTunes music easier to use and more accessible with other digital music players instead of just Apple products (yes, that means that you can play your iTunes songs on all MP3 players, not just iPods!)
What do you think? Is the extra 30 cents per song worth getting rid of the DRM restrictions? Is this going to help make the world of MP3 music better or just complicate things?
Sources: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html
http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm
http://musicians.about.com/
