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Tag Archives: Music

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.

Dave Brubeck, “Take Five”

Thank you Wil Wheaton.

For several years now I’ve wondered what the name of this song is.  It’s been used in countless soundtracks, commercials, movies, well the list goes on.  And I’ve never been able to find anyone who knows who wrote it, performed it or what the name of it was… until now.

I found this post through my RSS reader tonight (I’m a bit behind on some of my blog reading….).  As I was catching up on the latest from “wwdn: in exile” I found a post entitled joe morello  is a god.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=DDOgYw5-pNs&feature=related]

Now I know that the song is called Take Five, from an album called Time Out. The YouTube clip pictured above is the Dave Brubeck Quartet from 1961.  I was trying to find different clip from the one Wil already posted, but it really does appear to have the best audio of all the original Dave Brubeck clips.

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.