Apple, EFI offer higher-quality DRM free downloads.
Now, many of you may be asking, what the heck does that mean, and more importantly, why should I care? I’ll do my best to let you know.
To briefly sum up what the article says, today Apple inc. and music record label company EMI (for a list of the music labels EMI owns, look here, and for a list of EMI’s artists, look here) announced that beginning next month they will start offering digital rights management software (DRM) free songs at a higher bit-rate on the iTunes Store. The nice thing about the higher bit-rate is it will sound better on higher quality speaker systems, e.g. home stereos, car stereos and what is so cool about selling the tracks without DRM is that you will then be able to play them on any device that can play AAC format songs, of which there are quite a few.
Now, what does this mean to you? Well, to be honest it probably does not mean too much to you or me directly. But, there is one thing that, in my opinion, it represents that is earth shattering.
A music label is assuming that their customers will do the Right Thing®.
You see, up until now it has appeared to everyone but the music labels that they were just out to make money, assuming that any and all music fans will do whatever it takes to get the music they want at the lowest price possible, circumventing whatever laws they feel necessary in the process. In fact, one such music label (Universal Music Group, to be precise) has even gone so far as to charge what some (myself included) are calling a Piracy Tax. In short, for every Microsoft Zune sold Universal gets $1, because anyone that buys a portable music player must be stealing music on the net.
But, EMI is willing to test a different perspective. Quoting Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI, “we take the view that we have to ‘trust consumers.’ Some will disappoint us. The idea is to give them the best music experience to grow sales and not diminish them.”
All I have to say is kudos to EMI for putting consumers to the test, props to Apple and Steve Jobs for planting the bug a few months ago, and I can’t wait until the entire iTunes Store Library (videos included) is available in high quality bitrates and resolutions without any DRM at all.
