While we don’t normally cover this kind of news here at Silent Sound Waves, we feel that this is well worth mentioning. Apple have announced today that they have finally negotiated a deal with the major labels about selling all the music in the iTunes Music Store without any sort of DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection. In addition to this the music store is also adopting a new pricing strategy.

For those of you who are just as technically inept as the SSW staff, we have looked it up and found out exactly what the fact that the days of the DRM is over means. Previously while purchasing a DRM protected song (which would be pretty much each and every song from a band on one of the major labels) you would be limited to playing this song on only five different units. For instance, a Mac or PC and four different iPods. You were also locked in to Apple’s own software, meaning that you could only play it on iPods or other iTunes compatible music players.

Without the DRM, this is no longer the case. The file is no longer digitally protected with a “key”, and you can play the file on as many different units as you please, and you can easily share it with others as well (not that the removal of the DRM makes it any less illegal). Most other competing digital music stores were already offering DRM free songs and albums, and Amazon in particular have marked themselves as a worthy competitor. Unfortunately the Amazon Music Store and many others have, unlike iTunes, been limited to US customers only. That is why this is exceptionally good news for those of us living outside of America; we now have a viable option to legally acquire DRM free songs and albums.

Greedy as they are though however, Apple are now offering you to upgrade your library of DRM protected files to open, higher quality files for 30% of the original price. It is atrocious that they have the nerve to recharge us for something we’ve already paid for, but that is the deal we are being offered.

On top of this, Apple also announced today that the iTunes store would drop the flat pricing policy it has been utilizing since its release in favour of a new one that prices single songs at either $0.69, $0.99 cents or $1.29, based on what the label is charging Apple for the sale of the song. Most albums will still be priced at $9.99.

Source: Apple

/ Posted: Jan 06, 2009
/ Written by: Lars-Christian
/ Category: News
/ Artist(s):