Apple’s deal with EMI to sell DRM-free, high-quality music “marks a fundamental change in the digital music landscape, a feat Apple is pulling off with increasing regularity of late. If I were an employee of Microsoft and involved with its confusing digital-music efforts, built around its highly DRM-protected WMA format, I’d be sweating right now,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for BusinessWeek.
“But one of the truly remarkable aspects of the pact is how Apple is pulling it off. Having floated the rhetorical trial balloon for selling unprotected music files via iTunes in his landmark essay ‘Thoughts on Music,’ Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in hindsight appears to have been deliberately ambiguous about the file format he preferred. It’s now clear why. He didn’t mean selling unprotected MP3s, but unprotected AAC songs. The decision will have important long-term effects, especially as more labels follow EMI’s lead.” Hesseldahl writes.
Hesseldahl writes, “Using AAC is brilliant for several reasons. First, for Apple, whose stated market aim is to do everything in its power to sell more of its highly profitable iPods (and beginning in June, presumably profitable iPhones), the choice of AAC means more non-Apple devices will be able to play songs purchased on iTunes.”
“AAC-format supporters include some notable names, including Microsoft’s Zune. So come May, the 16 people who own one will be able to buy EMI tracks from iTunes and presumably play them on that device. Sony’s PlayStation Portable also supports the format, as do a few of its Walkman-branded MP3 players. I can find one player each from SanDisk, Creative Technology, and Sharp that include AAC support. Palm and Research In Motion both support AAC via software that runs on the Treo and BlackBerry Pearl smartphones. IPod sales, which are crucial to Apple’s bottom line are unlikely to get much competition from these devices, as none are as good at the stripped-down interface, and none can touch the iPod’s inherent status factor,” Hesseldahl writes.
Hesseldahl writes, “The real target is Microsoft. What we now have is a good old-fashioned standards war heating up, and it is pitting the old foes Apple and Microsoft against each other once again. Saying Apple has the upper hand is giving Microsoft more credit than it deserves… All of those companies that have been ‘partners’ of Microsoft—Samsung, Creative, Archos, and SanDisk, to name a few—have been treated pretty poorly by Redmond recently… Those partners were all left holding the bag as Microsoft walked away from PlaysForSure, when it launched the Zune and the companion Zune Marketplace… The next generation of non-Apple MP3 players heading to market will be notable for two things: AAC support, and maybe, just maybe, a lack of WMA support.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: From EMI’s press release, April 2, 2007: “EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice.”
These retailers desperately want to sell music for the market-dominating device, Apple’s iPod, which supports AAC and MP3, among others, but not WMA.
Related articles:
InformationWeek blows it again: accuses Apple and EMI of ‘price gouging’ on DRM-free tunes – April 04, 2007
InformationWeek blows it: calls AAC Apple’s closed format – April 04, 2007
Red Herring reporter is quite confused about MP3 vs. AAC – April 03, 2007
JupiterResearch analyst blows it: ‘AAC isn’t supported by majority of digital music players’ – April 03, 2007
Apple’s DRM-free EMI deal ‘a master stroke that should cement Apple’s dominance’ – April 03, 2007
In Apple’s DRM-free EMI music deal, the big loser may be Microsoft – April 03, 2007
Apple’s DRM-free iTunes play trumps Microsoft’s huge bet on DRM – April 02, 2007
Norwegian Consumer Council senior advisor applauds Apple’s iTunes Store DRM-free music – April 02, 2007
CNBC video: Apple CEO Steve Jobs and EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli – April 02, 2007
EMI’s Nicoli on DRM-free iTunes: ‘We have to trust our consumers,’ Apple’s Jobs: ‘right thing to do’ – April 02, 2007
Kudos to Steve Jobs and Apple for having courage to call for end of DRM and making it happen – April 02, 2007
Analyst Gartenberg: iTunes Store’s DRM-free music ‘a great win for Apple’ – April 02, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs to appear live on CNBC within the hour – April 02, 2007
Apple: Higher quality 256 kbps AAC DRM-free music on iTunes Store coming in May – April 02, 2007
Warner’s DRM-loving Middlebronfman warns wireless industry it may lose music market to Apple iPhone – February 14, 2007
Monster Cable announces full support of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ call for DRM-free music – February 13, 2007
BBC columnist doesn’t believe Steve Jobs’ Apple would stop using DRM if music labels would allow it – February 12, 2007
EMI may sell entire music catalog DRM-free – February 09, 2007
Recording Industry Association of America wants their DRM, calls for Apple to license FairPlay – February 08, 2007
Warner’s Middlebronfman: Jobs’ DRM-free music call ‘without logic and merit, we’ll not abandon DRM’ – February 08, 2007
Technology Review editor gets a lot wrong in his article about Apple CEO Jobs’ push to end DRM – February 07, 2007
Apple’s Jobs jolts music industry; Zune exec calls Jobs’ call for DRM-free music ‘irresponsible’ – February 07, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ posts rare open letter: ‘Thoughts on Music’ – calls for DRM-free music – February 06, 2007
WMA= crapware
good!
mw: very
“…the 16 people that own a Zune…” ROTFLMAO!! How many kids has chair-chucker Ballmer got anyway?
I bet most stores and players will still support WMA
“Using AAC is brilliant for several reasons. First, for Apple, whose stated market aim is to do everything in its power to sell more of its highly profitable iPods, the choice of AAC means more non-Apple devices will be able to play songs purchased on iTunes.”
Am I the only one for whom this sentence makes no sense at all? Don’t these folks have editors?
This was from Business Week? The Reader’s Digest/Time for C-class execs and wanna-bees? That’s getting the word out to where it can do some good!
MW: hell … the top floor in Redmond right now
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page
AAC: License available from Dolby Labortories.
http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/press_releases/723_aac_pr_0203_MPEG4.pdf
Better quality, smaller files, better licensing agreement
MP3:
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
Average quality, larger files, average royalty rates
WMA: from “Big Evil” Microsoft. Need I say more?
Wasn’t too hard to figure out what to choose.
Nowhere does anything say these are Apple owned formats, so the implication that AAC is a format war between Apple and Microsoft is wrong.
Apple is just backing a superior format that is open for license from Dolby.
Now Dolby most likely gave a pretty sweet deal to Apple for advancing this format, but Apple has no control. Dolby could go rogue and gouge Apple later.
They’re not going to stock suckling at the WMA teat. It’s a package deal– they get to associate with M$, the “giant” of the tech world in hopes of getting some extra scraps once M$ is done chewing up its partners. Oops, I mean competitors.
The big picture is that Microsoft’s partners are looking for ways to distinguish themselves as separate entities from Microsoft. Indeed, the forward-looking execs know that change is in the air and that the boys from Redmond no longer have the cachet they once had. Look for Creative to lead the charge, followed by others, who will be branding their players as “platform independent”, avoiding the whole EU/US antitrust thing, and hyping up the whole mobility/freedom aspect.
Quote DLMeyer– “This was from Business Week? The Reader’s Digest/Time for C-class execs and wanna-bees? That’s getting the word out to where it can do some good!!”
That kind of press does Apple good wherever it is printed.
PS–Regardless of your opinion of Business Week, it is worth noting that it has the highest circulation amoun general business publications (numbers from MDS):
Business Week 971,435
Forbes 907,266
Fortune 855,208
Mutual Funds 818,231
Fast Company 683,499
Inc. 658,788
Entrepreneur 555,831
Barron’s 302,722
Industry Week 249,940
Business Today 200,000
“Using AAC is brilliant for several reasons. First, for Apple, whose stated market aim is to do everything in its power to sell more of its highly profitable iPods (and beginning in June, presumably profitable iPhones), the choice of AAC means more non-Apple devices will be able to play songs purchased on iTunes.”
I don’t understand that statement. If Apple wanted more non-iPods to be able to play tunes from ITMS then they would’ve gone with MP3. I think they went AAC for 2 reasons. The obvious one is because that’s iPod’s preferred format since everything from ITMS is AAC already. But the 2nd reason just might be because AAC sounds a little better than an equivalent bit-rate MP3 according to blind listening tests. (And a LOT better than WMA.)
http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html
WMA and WMV IS SHIT! period… It seems 100% of MS shitware is soft…. wait.. did I sayt hat right? I did.
Mobile audio device makers are now free to release software for the Macintosh that will load these AAC songs onto their players! Previously there was no point because they needed protected-WMA format support which MS has never released for Mac. Maybe it could use AppleEvents to call iTunes and list unprotected songs and playlists?
Here’s hoping for even more Mac software and innovation.
Shogun
“”Using AAC is brilliant for several reasons. First, for Apple, whose stated market aim is to do everything in its power to sell more of its highly profitable iPods, the choice of AAC means more non-Apple devices will be able to play songs purchased on iTunes.”
Am I the only one for whom this sentence makes no sense at all? Don’t these folks have editors?”
It makes absolutely no sense to me either. It’s a contradiction in a sentence.
Just curious… For CD players in cars & trucks that are listed as MP3 compatible, does this also mean they are ACC compatible?
Spark: Thanks for those stats. I hadn’t seen them before.
———–
Sure, there is no such thing as bad exposure. But when Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and even the IT rags like ComputerWorld have good things to say about Apple, then the real influencers see it and are hopefully impressed. Who care what theat dweeb at [H] Enthusiast had to say in his review of Vista that MDN reported yesterday? Who has even heard of [H] Enthusiast? Compared to the WSJ and BusinessWeek?
(I meant “rags” not in a derogatory way – their paper editions are in tabloid format, and it’s a traditional description of newspapers printed in that format. Though for some, given their editorial quality, it make not be so complimentary. IMO ComputerWorld is one of the better ones.)
…and they were guaranteed to play on devices with the PlaysForSure brand. (Some people had another phrase for it, which I won’t reproduce here, but the third word rhymed with “bit.”)
Hmm…what rhymes with “bit” for the third word of PlaysForSure? PlaysForSit? PlaysForFit? PlaysForTit? Must be “shit,” which is, at least, consistent with the pedigree.
They won’t drop WMA just yet because most of their current customers, who are the people most likely to buy one of their devices, will still have WMA music files (which they can’t re-rip and remove WMA’s DRM). So they’ll keep WMA support for now, but you can be sure they won’t be promoting it or PlaysForSure (aka DeadForSure).
Given the huge lawsuit over MP3, it seems to make sense to move to MP4/AAC. Not to mention the better compression technology.
Did Hesseldahl really say “16 Zune users”? That’s the type of diss only MDN takes would have.
All of those companies that have been ‘partners’ of Microsoft—Samsung, Creative, Archos, and SanDisk, to name a few—have been treated pretty poorly by Redmond recently
Well, someone has been reading their history lessons. He gets the “recently” part wrong, however. Microsoft has *always* treated it’s partners badly, when it didn’t gut their operations and leave them for dead.
He had somehow gotten it into his head that all online music stores, save iTunes, sell MP3s on which there are no copy restrictions. Noting that he was vastly misinformed, I told him that in in fact no online music store sells unprotected MP3s—the exception being eMusic.com—while Napster (NAPS) and Yahoo! Music (YHOO), for instance, sell heavily protected WMA files, which are compatible with a wide range of portable players, but not the iPod. Where he got his set of ideas, I don’t know.
I’m a nerd. A geek. An Apple fanboy and a technician by trade. I consider myself very well informed.
If I had a nickel for every idiot PC “guru” whose opinion of Apple, if not based on information from 1981 (not kidding#), was based on complete and utter falsehoods, I could fill the end of a tube sock and beat a beaver to death.
I mean, really, is it so damn hard to at least *review* your irrational biases every decade to see if they are even *relevant* any more?
#I have some acquaintances thru my girlfriend who own iPods but despise everything Apple(!). I asked one of them if they ever did any work on Macs or Apple computers, and I sh!t you not, they replied “I worked on Apple IIs in high school and I hated them”. I am not making this up.
@Wingsy & Shogun
The author may be right. Or not. But his reasoning is outlined in the article which got cut off by MDN because MDN writes down quotes. That’s why you can’t follow his logic. If you read the article, basically he said that there are two camps: Apple’s and Microsoft’s. Currently only Apple supports Apple’s stuff while many support Microsoft’s stuff. It can’t be helped because music industry wants DRM and Apple does not want to support MS format and MS DRM. Enter EMI. It forces open the DRM-free music download business. Other music stores suddenly have access to the huge iPod market, abandon DRM and support DRM-less AAC. They’ll not want to pay an expensive license for WMA. AAC wins the format war. iPod is more attractive because all stores support DRM-less AAC. Other hardware makers will have the same benefit, but iPod’s position makes it the biggest recipient of that benefit.
Twenty Benson
“”Using AAC is brilliant for several reasons. First, for Apple, whose stated market aim is to do everything in its power to sell more of its highly profitable iPods, the choice of AAC means more non-Apple devices will be able to play songs purchased on iTunes.”
Am I the only one for whom this sentence makes no sense at all?
The author is pointing out that yes, even tho such an announcement means non-Apple players will now be able to play iTunes music, possibly cutting into Apple’s profits, the real aim is to get AAC the industry wide status Apple requires to sink any hope of Microsoft’s DRM ideas regaining traction. It also puts paid to the already nonsense notion that iTunes/iPod is some kind of Steve Jobsian Empire unfairly locking in users.
Apple will more than likely gladly forfeit a few sales of iPods to lead the way with the new standard, somewhat like the crazies who dropped Apple because they did away with floppies and serial ports in favour of going all USB all the time. Those sales mattered not a whit in the face of Apple’s drive to make USB a standard.
The question is, will Apple allow plug-ins to iTunes to allow it to sync directly with other devices? Seems unlikely, but this would kill any anti-trust non-sense still floating around regarding the so-called “closed” iTunes-iPod ecosystem.