Apple and EMI will begin offering DRM-free songs via iTunes in May. I honestly never saw this day coming… Not on a voluntary basis without the might of several European countries behind it. There’ll be a 30 cent premium here in the US for unprotected tracks, but with it comes higher audio quality (256kbps versus 128). Jobs expects other labels will get on board and 50% of the iTunes music catalog will be DRM-free by year-end.
While I wonder if this opens the door for other (new?) hardware audio devices to gain a foothold, Michael Gartenberg has his doubts. As a consumer, if I can upgrade all my iTunes-purchased tracks to the unprotected version (as described) I might just make whatever my current cell phone is (not the iPhone) into my portable music player.
The time was definitly coming… Jobs spoke out two months ago and certain artists rebelled against DRM.
Appple will probably get more margin at $1.29 and the entire market will explode (whereas it would otherwise start to stagnate,) so yes Apple will have to deal with competition, but there are benefits.
ooops, forgot my link, sorry…
http://hdtivo.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/major-break-in-music-drm/
This is what I needed to go back to iTunes.