The rumors were true: Apple is releasing the EMI’s entire catalog of music DRM-free. That means no restriction on how or where you play it, how many copies you make of it, what device you play it on, etc. The files are also twice the quality of regular iTunes music store songs. For freedom and quality you pay $0.30 more than the usual buck-a-song fee, which seems not unreasonable to me.
I decided when I first heard the rumors that if and when this came true, I’d be demonstrating my appreciation with my wallet. This kind of thing needs to be encouraged. I fully believe that this is the future of electronic music distribution, and it’s only a matter of time before the other labels jump on the bandwagon [with optional kicking and screaming]. Now, I wonder which of my favorite artists are on EMI…
I also liked that they are allowing you to now buy albums minus the cost of any songs already purchased.
This shows really nice thoughtfulness. Also, they’re allowing you to upgrade to the higher quality for .30 I read.
🙂
I plan on showing much love to them. This is a great move and I will now further support Apple’s iTunes site.
While I’d like to show my appreciation, just… no. A 30% increase in cost? You can bet that none of that goes to the artist, which is bullshit.
At risk of sounding crass… so? It’s OK if N percent of $1 goes to the artist, but not OK if they charge more for a download which is twice the size, thereby costing them more in bandwidth?
Actually, I don’t think N percent of $1 (wherein N is a negligible number) is OK either. So neither of those is fine; shitty, lossy DRM-laden files (mostly the DRM bit) was only half the reason I refused to use iTunes in the first place. The price-jack is just an insult. So yeah, no thanks. 🙂
ps – Still a step in the right direction, though!
I imagine nearly all of the money will still go to fund executive salaries, push marketing, P2P suppression – anything but the artist.
See reply above.