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Tag Archives: DRM

iTunes goes DRM Free

It has finally happened! iTunes has gone DRM free for all its tracks from Sony-BMG, EMI, Warner Music and Universal Music as well as several independent labels. This news is a huge nail in the coffin for DRM as a whole.

The announcement, made by Apple’s Chief Marketing exec Phil Schiller at the keynote for the 2009 Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The changes to iTunes also include a change in the iTunes pricing model. Tracks in iTunes will start to appear at three different price points depending on what the labels want to charge for the tracks. The price points will be $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. This is a significant departure from the “one-size-fits-all” model that Apple has used in the past.

Some people are complaining that the DRM free tracks rely on Apple’s AAC format which means that they’re less compatible than more widely used formats like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.  But at the same time now that the format is no longer DRM protected, there’s nothing stopping other companies from supporting AAC on their media players.

So good for Apple.  Good for the labels.  And goodbye and good riddance to DRM.

EMI Kills DRM

down_with_drm.jpgToday, EMI and Apple announced the availability of the entire 5 Million song EMI catalog on iTunes DRM Free. This is the first major step towards a DRM free music Universe.

This undoubtedly was affected by Steve Jobs’ open letter to the 4 Major RIAA partners, and is an extremely important development in the world of music sharing and the ability to discover new music through the network of your friends.

This step will hail a new wave of iTunes consumers because people like me want to have copies of music they can freely move around without the worry of DRM getting in the way. This has been the main reason that I have not purchased anything (except for Mine Again for BRTC) from the iTunes Music Store.

The message is simple: Trust your consumers, and they’ll be more likely to buy your product.

Edit (2007-04-02 22:10 pdt): The one thing I did forget to mention is that this will be treated as a premium service, with iTunes offering higher bitrate tracks (256kbps it would seem) without DRM for $.30 (US) more per track. Money well spent if you ask me.

I’m in. Are you? – Make your mark for Podsafe Music

Bum Rush The ChartsOn March 22nd an illustration of the power of citizen-journalism and the reach of the blogging and podcasting community will take over the Internet… well at least the iTunes music store. There’s a movement afoot called Bum Rush the Charts to drive a track from a podsafe artist to number one on the iTunes music store charts.

The artist of the hour is Black Lab, and their track Mine Again the lead-off track from their latest album Passion Leaves a Trace. The point of this is to prove the power, reach and credibility that bloggers and podcasters have in the Internet community. I’ve included an excerpt from the BRTC site:

We can do better. We can match and exceed the reach of big media, corporate media, labels, and the entrenched interests. On March 22nd, we are going to take an indie podsafe music artist to number one on the iTunes singles charts as a demonstration of our reach to Main Street and our purchasing power to Wall Street. The track we’ve chosen is “Mine Again” by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on – and who they ignore at their peril.

I’ll be posting a new post and a link directly to the iTunes store on March 22nd. There will also be links from the BRTC website, who have signed up as an iTunes affiliate. They will be donating the proceeds of any commissions made to college scholarships. A way to pay back students who are a major part of the music industry’s paying customer base.

This initiative has support from some fairly significant players in the podcasting world, including Adam Curry founder of Podshow, and host of the Daily Source Code. So do your part. Spend your $0.99 to support podsafe artists and the dream of a DRM-free tomorrow.

iTunes Alternatives

So you have an iPod. Great, now that you’ve got it home and are ready to rock-out, what do you do? Put in the iPod CD and install all the software and iTunes? NO! For those of you who dislike iTunes as much as I do, here’s a different suite of tools to get your tunes in your pocket.

If you already have the misfortune of having iTunes installed, you’ll want to uninstall it before continuing.

Step 1: Get your iPod set up

The first thing you need to do is make sure your iPod is set up on your computer, and that it has the latest version of the iPod firmware. You can download the iPod Updater from Apple’s website. Install this, follow and follow the instructions to flash your iPod to the latest version of the firmware.

Step 2: Replace iTunes

The next step is to set up an alternative to iTunes itself. Though there are many different media players out there that can do the job to one degree or another, my recommendation is to use a classic bit of software from Nullsoft.

Yes, I’m talking about Winamp! Grab and install the latest version of Winamp (5.22 as of this writing) from the website. Out of the box, Winamp doesn’t support iPods.

Download the ml_iPod plugin from its Sourceforge page, and run the installer. It will prompt you to disable the built-in ml_pmp.dll file that comes with the newer versions of Winamp. This is the attempt at bundling iPod support with Winamp, but the two components don’t play nicely with each other.

Thats it! Once you’ve got that installed you’ll be able to sync to your iPod all you want from Winamp…. on ANY computer.

Note: If you had already sync’d your iPod with iTunes, you may need to format and re-sync with Winamp. Doesn’t happen every time, but DRM will get ya….