Lights That Blink

Today’s big news is a goodie: Apple has announced that the entire catalog of EMI, one of the “big four” record companies, is to be offered completely free of digital rights management on the iTunes store in May! This is a major coup for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who wrote a very candid treatise on the subject in February. Higher quality 256K tracks are $1.29 compared to their 99-cent crippled brethren, but if you’ve already bought music from EMI artists, you’ll be able to upgrade your purchases by paying the difference. Music videos will be totally unencumbered for $1.99, and there’s no extra charge for DRM-free albums, which are usually $9.99.

What does this mean? Well, I believe this is a major step forward in the media revolution of the 21st century. As more and more people store their entire movie and music collections on PCs, they’ve rightfully become disenfranchised with the desire of the resident media cartels to make them pay for entertainment every single time it’s consumed. Jobs has recognized the foolishness of this notion, and I applaud him for his efforts (which I hope will extend to motion pictures someday). According to the press release, other record companies intend to follow suit, and despite the increase in price, I bet they’ll be surprised with the results. (However, no one should be surprised when these tracks inevitably show up on the freeloader’s paradise of peer-to-peer services.)

So, for those of you who are like me and have only indulged in the weekly free offerings of iTunes, I’d encourage you to drop a few dollars there come May. Without DRM, tracks will play on any device that uses the AAC audio codec, and you’ll be able to enjoy digital music the way it’s supposed to be!
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tags: apple, drm, music

Posted by Jamie | No Comments »

There is an interesting post on Slashdot today about DRM. It takes a different angle than the usual post presenting two sides, “DRM sucks!” and “Piracy sucks!”

I continue to endure stories on Slashdot and elsewhere complaining about EMI, itunes and other organizations maybe (or maybe not) releasing material in DRM free format. Well- here’s some news there’s LOTS of material out there. So instead of complaining, download what you like.

He makes a great point. Most of the time the DRM debate is caught up in the issue of whether this label or that service is going to offer DRM-free music. But really, the marketplace will fix this once enough customers start voting with our feet…or ears.

I’ve discovered tons of great Argentine rock, a favorite genre of mine, from DRM-free sources. Finding English-language music is even easier. And this commenter makes a great point responding to a comment about the service the major labels provide:

I certainly don’t have time to listen to 100 bad tunes to find one good one.

I need filtering, or i’m just going to keep on listening to Zeppelin.

The major labels do perform the filtering service for you, but you’d be amazed at how much excellent stuff gets filtered out. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve been able to expose myself to a lot of music from all over the world that I didn’t even know existed back when I was a slave to the majors, and it pisses me off that I didn’t discover it earlier. Your favorite music? Probably you haven’t heard it yet…

In my experience this is especially true.

Sure you may have to listen to 30 seconds of a bad song, but there really is a ton of good undiscovered music out there. And listening to 30 seconds of a bad song to find a couple good songs that I’ll listen to again and again is a small price to pay. I mean, if we’re using the radio we station-surf occasionally, don’t we?

In a coming post I’ll put some links of places to find DRM free music. Here is one site I happened upon a couple weeks ago - purevolume. You can download some of the music and listen to the rest on the site.

tags: drm, music

Posted by Doug | No Comments »