Apple today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes Store worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song.
“Apple has dominated the market for digital music players not through lock-in but through product offerings that have resonated with consumers. As Apple itself has pointed out, there’s relatively little iTunes music on each iPod so this offering is not likely to tip the scales in the favor of any other player. iPods have driven customers to the iTunes store, it’s never been the other way around and it’s still the music player itself that drives sales,” Michael Gartenberg blogs for Jupiter Research.
“So what’s the net? This is a great PR win for Apple and Steve Jobs. Apple was seen as the company delivering DRM free music to consumers, a move that will only increase their overall mindshare and of course, mindshare has a funny way of becoming more marketshare. It also goes a long way to address regulators in Europe complaining about the iPod’s lack of interoperability,” Gartenberg writes.
“For other vendors in the hardware space, it will eventually remove the issue of iTunes lock in but if their sales don’t take off, it will be clear that it wasn’t lock in to the iPod economy that prevented their success. For other music sellers, the news isn’t as important. It’s not likely that subscription services will be able to allow those customers to download music without DRM and that’s the core differentiation against iTunes at the moment,” Gartenberg writes.
Gartenberg writes, “It is a good step forward for consumers but more importantly, it showed Apple at the forefront of acting as ‘champion’ for consumer interests. After all, it wasn’t Rob Glaser or Bill Gates up there with EMI.”
Full article here.
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Apple: Higher quality 256 kbps AAC DRM-free music on iTunes Store coming in May – April 02, 2007
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EMI halts talks about selling DRM-free music – February 26, 2007
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An interesting point. AAC is an open format. So, these un-DRM’d tracks can be moved to any player that works with AAC. (Many do) This could free Apple from future issues from Europe about opening up iTunes.
Apple rules.
So exactly what percentage of the music I sell on iTunes is from EMI?
Well I’ll be dammed
Now of course comes the question “Will Apple allow other music players to work with iTunes?”
Because if this DRM free/higher quality trend continues (oh yea baby) that’s the next move.
Then of course comes the shutout by other online music stores. “Our MP3 player doesn’t work with iTunes”
And then Apple’s monopoly falls.
Do you think?
@WiseGuy
The individual MP3 players may not be compatable with iTunes, but that software should be their own problem. The music files are stored on the computer and can be dragged out of iTunes easily.
256 is a bit big for my liking, I prefer to keep my music at 160 for personal use because it gives a good compromise between sound and size when stored on smaller iPods. I know I could re-encode them down to 160 but it won’t be the same. Lossless would have been nice. Or 160 for DRM’ed files.
Hey, the higher bit rate thing is even better than the DRM free (though that’s nice too). I’ll DEFINITELY be updating all my purchased EMI songs to the higher bit rate. I hope the iTunes store can make me a list of EMI songs I’ve purchased as I never pay attention to labels when I buy…
@WiseGuy
What are you babbling about? These songs will be unprotected AAC, so you’ll be able to import any iTunes bought song in that format into any music player that can handle it. Since unprotected AAC is a standard, non-proprietary format (like mp3), many other music players can handle it. And any company dumb enough to sell players that can’t handle it can remedy that fairly easily. This will all be true immediately in May, not “eventualy”–and I predict Apple’s marketshare in the music biz will actually go UP, not DOWN, proving “lock in” had nothing to do with Apple’s success.
MW: “moved”–Jobs just moved the entire music industry in a very positive direction.
“So what’s the net?”
The net, also known as the inter-web, consists of millions of tubes leading into and away from calculating machines, some in people’s homes. These calculating machines are popularly known as “computers” because they can compute numbers, much like an adding machine does. (And like an adding machine, “computers” also can subtract, multiply and divide.) These tubes allow such calculating machines to “talk” to each other.
Though the term “talk,” as an analogy, helps explain the phenomenon, it is more akin to transferring of content. Each calculator can send to another calculator its contents, and each calculator can receive these contents from another calculator.
Some calculator contents, however, can plug up the tubes. This can be avoided if the calculator’s owner pays a bit more for wider tubes that help prevent this. As well, wider tubes transfer contents more quickly. This, of course, also means the subscription prices for wider tubes are more expensive than the subscription prices for narrow tubes.
yeah wiseguy, cause it is iTunes that is the lock in. most people are buying iPods and then going to the iTunes store because they love iTunes so much. if only that worked with other players then Apple would fall!
oops, sorry , forgot to close my sarcasm tag…. </sarcasm>
it is always nice to know that reality doesn’t interfere with a bad argument.
I think not. Apple is not a monopoly. It’s not forcing people to but into the itunes/ipod system. It’s popular by the overwhelming choice of people. At any moment the
majority can switch to a WMP and use a Rio.
Anyone is free to use Creative or Zune and import their CD’s into the alternative player.
There is no consumer friendly alternative to Windows. It’s locked in because MS will not let you use an alternative program to open Office programs. Why aren’t people as angry at the MS monopoly. What’s mom and pop supposed to do?
The big win here is that Apple is really cementing AAC as the “legal” audio standard, and stopping WMA from going any further.
Kudos to MacDailyNews for easily the best coverage of this major news of any of the other Apple news sites.
MXNT41: Yeah, and it would be nice if Apple could send over Natalie Portman to blow you at the particular time and location of your choice, with a cup of hot chocolate for when you’re done. Heated to exactly 151 degrees. Life is a constant struggle.
Investor: You don’t think the Europe iTunes lock-in bitching, EMI “discussing” going DRM free, and Apple calling for DRM music all around the same time a couple of months ago was a coincidence do you?
Wiseguy: On an iPod music files are stored under iTunes-generated file names and directory structure in a hidden directory. On the computer, though, the files are not hidden, are assigned with whatever name the user has given the files, and are stored in an obvious and transparent directory structure. For non-DRM files other players don’t need to work with iTunes–whatever software they package with their player can access iTunes’s file structure directly. Same with other music stores–the downloaded music on my iPod and in my iTunes library isn’t from iTMS–it is from emusic.
Just for those questioning Apple and their iTunes with other players,
iTunes already works with other players. Go ahead and try it if you have a creative player. You can put any drm-free music on it with no hassle at all from iTunes.
> Why aren’t people as angry at the MS monopoly.
People are angry at the MS monopoly. Where have you been hiding?
> The big win here is that Apple is really cementing AAC as the “legal” audio standard…
I agree completely. Apple is out-smarting Microsoft at every turn.
I second Journo’s comment, well done MDN, this is huge groundbreaking story that will literally change the future of music consumption.
The scope of this story I think was entirely lost on the CNBC talking heads, but what it means in a nutshell is the dark forces that wanted to force consumers to “rent” music and take away choice, freedom, and consumer power and limit the rights of people to own and enjoy music… those forces have a giant stake impaled through their black hearts, and Steve Jobs is the Vampire Slayer.
AAC will now become the de-facto audio standard, and could very easily eclipse MP3s soon, WMA as a strategy for MS to control the distribution of music is dead.
The rest will fall into place faster than we expect. I’d be surprised if all the Major lables aren’t DRM free by the end of this year.
If you had the only ice cream store in the country, wouldn’t it be the most profitable to sell only expensive bannana splits?
This is what the monopoly of music labels is doing by endorsing DRM for online music sales and proping up the cd sales.
Well it could also be the ‘brick and mortar’ shops like Walmart which sell the bulk of the labels music pulling strings to slow this new market.
Steve Jobs is so innovative that he’s dangerous, glad he’s on the side of us consumers.
WiseGuy:
“Steve Jobs is so innovative that he’s dangerous, glad he’s on the side of us consumers.”
Amen.
“DRM is the future.”
According to Wikpedia the market share/value etc. of the music companies is as follows:
Nielsen SoundScan reported that the big four accounted for 81.87% of the U.S. music market in 2005:
▪ Universal Music Group (France based) — 31.71%
▪ Sony BMG Music Entertainment, inc. (Japan/Germany
based) — 25.61% (13.83% Sony, 11.78% BMG)
▪ Warner Music Group (USA based) — 15%
▪ EMI Group (UK based) — 9.55%
▪ independent labels — 18.13%
and in 2004, 72.64%:
▪ Universal Music Group — 29.59%
▪ Sony BMG — 28.46% (13.26% Sony, 15.20% BMG)
▪ Warner Music Group — 14.68%
▪ EMI Group — 9.91%
▪ independent labels — 27.36%
World music market sales shares, according to IFPI (2005)
The global market was estimated at $30-40 billion in 2004.
Total annual unit sales (CDs, music videos, mp3s) in 2004 were 3 billion.
According to an IFPI report published in August 2005, the big four accounted for 71.7% of retail music sales:
▪ Universal Music Group — 25.5%
▪ Sony BMG Music Entertainment — 21.5%
▪ EMI Group — 13.4%
▪ Warner Music Group — 11.3%
▪ independent labels — 28.4%
so where does this leave “dvd jon”?
Gartenberg writes, “It is a good step forward for consumers but more importantly, it showed Apple at the forefront of acting as ‘champion’ for consumer interests. After all, it wasn’t Rob Glaser or Bill Gates up there with EMI.”
This further underlines that Apple is a HARDWARE company as far as profits go. (But of course their software makes their hardware incredibly seductive!) This puts Microsoft is a VERY bad position because they have nothing to gain by opening up their DRM—they ain’t gonna sell more Zunes one way or another. Apple can nix the DRM and still sell boatloads of iPods.
How can Microsoft and Real even begin to respond to this flank attack? It TOTALLY undermines their business model. If they still insist on DRM, they look like idiots. If they lose DRM, they have nothing to offer that is unique and nothing to make a profit.
Gates and Glaser and Bronfman must have hoped the Jobs’ “music manifesto” would go away like a bad dream, now it’s here to stay and all their posturing looks like, well, so much posturing. Very bad Monday for these guys.
Well Steve said DRM free music and he definately wasn’t kidding or pulling a PR stunt. It was for real and so to for EMI who said they would consider it also. Cudos to both for coming up with this deal.
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WHEN? How long until iTunes does this?