EMI Announces DRM-free Music

Apple and EMI announced today that EMI will be offering DRM-free music on the iTunes Music store beginning in May. This comes after an initial rumor back in February that EMI had this in the works.

Some highlights courtesy of  the Mac User Blog include:

• Steve Jobs has announced that iTunes will be offering DRM-free versions of EMI tunes for $1.29 per song. These songs, Jobs says, will be high-quality (meaning they will be larger files and take up more space, a trade-off I'm sure many consumers will be willing to make) and can be used on any player. iTunes will continue to offer .99 lower-quality options  of the same songs (with DRM) for those who don't care and don't want to pay the extra money.
• EMI is reporting that these tracks will be available on other music services as well including the mobile market.
• If you bought  EMI tracks on iTunes in the past, you can upgrade the files for .29, the difference between the .99 you paid and the new $1.29 price.

Jobs was quoted in the Apple press release as saying:

“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice—the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”

Ars Technica is reporting that the new DRM-free tracks will be available as 256kbps AAC files, up from the 128kbs DRM files offered for .99. Ars is also reporting that EMI plans to sell DRM-free video on iTunes. but Apple has officially denied this saying the deal only involves EMI music, AT reports that Apple and EMI say the price increase is not for the privilege of getting music DRM-free, but for the increase in quality.

Whatever the reason, this is a huge step forward and will change the way music is sold on the Internet. By using the carrot of higher quality, DRM-free downloads, EMI is betting that consumers will respond more positively and this will result in increased sales and increase revenue. I think this is a far better approach than using a DRM stick to beat consumers, your customers, by essentially assuming that every customer is dishonest.

Comments

[Rocket Man]

Irrespectively the reasons, it - a huge step, accelerate and will change a way to which music is sold on the Internet.