[Infowarrior] - EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music

Mon Apr 2 13:02:12 UTC 2007

EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music

By Caroline McCarthy
http://news.com.com/EMI%2C+Apple+partner+on+DRM-free+premium+music/2100-1027
_3-6172398.html

Story last modified Mon Apr 02 06:00:11 PDT 2007

EMI Group will soon sell digital music with better sound quality and no
digital rights management restrictions through Apple's iTunes Store.

iTunes will begin offering EMI's entire music catalog in premium DRM-free
form in May, the music label said at a press conference Monday.

The higher-quality, DRM-free music, which can be played on any computer and
any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected downloads on
iTunes. Rather, it will complement the standard music for download through
iTunes and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song instead of Apple's
standard 99 cents.

Consumers who have already purchased EMI tracks with Apple's DRM will be
able to upgrade them to the premium version for 30 cents, EMI said. Full
albums in DRM-free form can be bought at the same price as standard iTunes
albums.

"We are committed to embracing change and to developing products and
services that consumers really want to buy," said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI
Group.

After initially selling the premium DRM-free music through Apple, EMI plans
to expand the program to other music outlets. Retailers partnering with EMI,
which also plans to remove DRM from its video downloads, will be able to
choose from a variety of levels of sound quality. They will also be able to
choose between selling files in the MP3, WMA and AAC formats. In iTunes,
music will be sold in a 256 kilobits-per-second AAC format, the company
said.

The packed press conference at EMI's London headquarters featured a
performance by EMI recording artist The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, as
well as a guest appearance by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs, who stressed the need for higher-quality music with the rise of
high-fidelity home speaker systems, called EMI's move "the next big step
forward in the digital-music revolution--the movement to completely
interoperable DRM-free music." He added that "Apple will reach out to all
the major and independent labels to give them the same opportunity" and
suggested that half of iTunes' music tracks will be available in both
DRM-loaded and DRM-free form by the end of 2007.

In February, Jobs released an open letter to record companies, encouraging
them to abandon DRM restrictions and claiming that Apple had only
implemented the controversial system in the first place because the four
major record labels would not have otherwise signed up with iTunes.

In the recent past, EMI has put forth some initiatives in digital-music
distribution that could be considered somewhat experimental, most notably
offering its music catalog to peer-to-peer services like Mashboxx and iMesh.
But until this point, DRM-free music had been largely the domain of services
like eMusic, with offerings limited to independent labels.

Last year, iTunes rival Yahoo Music tested the DRM-free waters by offering a
Jesse McCartney album and a Jessica Simpson single for sale with no copy
protection.

A reporter at the press conference asked whether iTunes would soon be
selling songs by The Beatles, whose music has been distributed by EMI since
1962 and is currently not available for legal digital download anywhere on
the Internet.

"I want to know that, too," Jobs replied. Nicoli stressed that "we're
working on it."