Milking that beatles money for all its worth huh?

Wait a second here, you mean to tell me that all this time people have been paying 99 cents for a DRM'd 128kbps mp3? ROFLMFAO. That is just too funny.

Now we just need more labels to take it up too, and other stores than iTunes to start selling them. Apple's generally smarmy attitude has made me determined not to buy anything they sell.

This of course allows Apple to appear to be the good guys who never wanted DRM in the first place, but I do question that.. the iTunes music store isn't primarily there to make money in of itself, but to add value to the high-margin iPod and lock users into the platform using FairPlay. Perhaps now they've succeeded in making the iPod synonymous with music they no longer need that leverage, and can instead switch tack to become the liberators of music from the evil labels, something they were quite happy with before. Unfortunately a lot of people have bought into the 'Microsoft = evil, Apple = good' view when they're both just multi-billion-dollar multinational companies trying to make money.

My argument against the use of iTMS was always the AACs' being only 128k. Personally I have heard many AACs' encoded at 256k (ripped from CDs) and they sound every bit as good as the CD originals...
This Is A Step In The Right Direction...

Everyone seems to be upset that it costs more and thinks it costs more because of the removal of DRM. It costs more because its supposedly 2x the bitrate. That means more storage, redundant copies, and more bandwidth to send it to you. So it DOES cost Apple more money to sell you a larger file that has no DRM and also has a seperate copy at a lower bitrate WITH DRM, and thus uses more than 2x the storage space because of it.

Finally we have some idea of what kind of "premium" is expected for removal of DRM. This action also basically confirms that the whole issue of DRM is purely about money---charging the consumer for the exercise of their fair use rights over and over again for the same content. EMI is basically saying they're willing to take an extra 30% up front in exchange for potential "lost revenues" due to not being able to charge you for the same stuff you already bought. Arbitrarily a 30% is a bit steep, but it really is a small price to pay for the "principle" of it, plus it hardly sounds like the "billions" lost to piracy every year.

I wonder if this means that DRM-free albums are $12.99?

Now I actually have a reason to be interested in iTunes.

EDIT: Actually I just had an idea, kind of obvious, but---who wants to take bets that this is purely a political move on the part of Apple?

We've all heard that in the various discussions with the music industry the main sticking point is the massive upfront payments that they've been demanding to open their catalogs to be DRM free. However, with the current interoperability, "open ecosystem" regulatory rumblings in Europe, what if Apple is just setting up a counter argument, by accepting EMI's offer (ostensibly the most palatable of all the other record companies), in order to be able to point to this deal as an example of how interoperability could work on the iPod in the EU without having to break FairPlay open, and without giving up the entire EU market. (It's one thing to pull out when countries like Denmark and Belgium complain, Germany and France, etc. are quite another.) At the very least this deal has got to buy them some time and/or sow doubt in that regard. Especially since EMI is a UK firm.

I think it's interesting that during the Q&A somebody asked Jobs about video, and he basically said that video is an entirely different ballgame. He argued the difference is that DVDs have never been DRM-free (unlike CDs).

Somehow that is not a very satisfying answer, particularly since DVD DRM is pretty easy to circumvent, and there's plenty of downloads of video off of the Internet.

Did they mention anything about the Classical catalogue?

The best part IMO, is that they will be selling all the albums DRM free and with the upped bit rate and no extra charge, you only pay the premium on singles.

meh, who cares about the beatles.. ?

Looks like the Beatles' greed continues unabated.

IF i had i iTunes i would pay the extra for the DRM free version, but it would be harder to swallow since you would only be getting it DRM free, but the fact they paired it with a quality increase is nice to see too, and makes it even more worth it IMO. Hopefully this is a trend that will catch on.

Wow.

Lets watch the other labels and see if they grow the coconuts to take this kind of chance.

Actually, you may wish to re-write the story to note that all Beatles songs will not be un-DRM'ed. It was just mentioned in this morning's CBS radio news.

"The iTunes music store will begin offering EMI's entire catalog apart from The Beatles without DRM software starting next month, he said.

EMI has acted as the distributor for The Beatles since the early 1960s, but The Beatles' music holding company, Apple Corps Ltd., has so far declined to allow the Fab Four's music on any Internet music services, including iTunes.

The situation was exacerbated by a long-running trademark dispute between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps. That legal feud was resolved in February when the two companies agreed on joint use of the apple logo and name, a deal many saw as paving the way for an agreement for online access to the Fab Four's songs.

Apple Corps was founded by the Beatles in 1968 and is still owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the widow of John Lennon and the estate of George Harrison."

http://www.wcbs880.com/topic/ap_news.php?story=AP/APTV/National/f/f...