EMI deals with iTunes: no protection
It looks Apple’s iTunes tries to get some glance lately. We’ve informed about their new album discount few days ago, and even more interesting news were announced today. Customers of iTunes store will soon be able to play downloaded songs by the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones and other top-selling artists free of the copying restrictions once imposed by their label. EMI Group, the world’s fourth-largest record label, and Apple, the biggest seller of digital music and players, plan to announce a landmark deal today that would remove copying protections from songs, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. The decision is likely to pressure other major recording companies to follow suit. The agreement covers nearly all of EMI’s catalog, which also includes the likes of Coldplay, Gorillaz and Janet Jackson.
London-based EMI became the first of the four major record labels to heed Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs’ call to sell songs free of the software designed to protect music against theft. Jobs has maintained that copying protections are ineffective in stemming piracy and only create hassles for consumers. I’m really happy someone finally realized that, although it won’t convince many p2p users to move to iTunes probably. Forrester Research Inc. found that only 3% of U.S. online households buy anything from iTunes, and one-third of iTunes buyers make 80% of the purchases. Let’s see how this change moves things forward…
Comments(9)
you mean they may of realized that DRM hurts sales and forces legit customers into becoming “pirates”? not to mention that all evidence points to DRM never having worked to prevent any form of piracy and has only enraged paying customers. small step, along with RIAA’s recent legal losses, but it’s far from over. i still want the RIAA out of business, it’s an unneeded, and what should be illegal, corporate mafia.
april fools?
If this is indeed true (I’m still a little sceptic) this could be a breakthrough for the sale of music online. Not only will this propably also force other musiccompanies to follow suit, but it could also force other companies that sell music online to remove drm from their content.
but a lot of people would propably rather pay for easy access to digital music without drm than go through all the hassle of downloading it (not everyone is as computer-smart as the visitors of rlslog).
And if both of them do this could be a real boost to legal buying and downloading of music online…ok, maybe not for the people visiting this site
Well don’t take this the wrong way. I can only speak one language and really don’t have much ability to learn another. So I am jealous firstly and understand the problems of a second language. Well that being said, this is my new favorite sentence ever:
“It looks Apple’s iTunes tries to get some glance lately”
This step will certainly encourage me to spread the good word about itunes to everyone now. Maybe one day, when I get a little green card with that ipod I’ll never buy, I can use it – better yet just download a 3MB song from usenet in 3 seconds. (folks: 1MB/s speed is no lie).
whats so special about 1MB/s?
“whats so special about 1MB/s?” For the cheap bastards with 384kbps down like me…its heaven….
Then again I don’t think my two 80 HD would be enough to handle all the things I would manage to download with that speed…decisions….decisions…
Well it’s a step in the right direction at least. Next step: Don’t give the RIAA a cent and sell flac or wav files for the same price. Then I would gladly pay for supporting the artists that I like.
Not everything off course, but some songs/albums at least
I guess this news was to good to be true, iTunes will sell EMI songs drm free, but at a cost of 1.29$ which is 30 cents more than the drm plagued songs. Those will also stay for sale btw.