Apple To Grant All Labels DRM-Free Distribution

SexCaptain writes "MacRumors.com reveals a letter circulated by Apple to all producers of content for the iTunes Store, announcing that from May onward they can sell their music at higher quality and free of DRM. Hopefully this opens the doors for labels like Netwerk. This is a big step in the right direction, although it's unclear exactly what Apple means by 'higher quality,' and there is no mention of price changes. (Apple charges $0.30 more per song for DRM-free content from EMI and encodes it at 256K.) Quoting from the letter: 'Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free," Apple wrote in the communication. "Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers."

Competition for emusic

[vakuona (788200)]

This could get really interesting. Of course emusic uses the more ubiquitous mp3, bt I bet eveyr 'mp3' player will now come playing unprotected aac as standard now Apple is making things interesting.

Re:Competition for emusic

[Mr Jazzizle (896331)]

Of course, at 1.30 per song, iTunes' DRM-free AAC cost about 6 times as much as eMusic DRM-free MP3, but for all those people looking for DRM-free top-40-type music, dream come true, eh? (how big is that overlap, anyway?)

Re:Competition for emusic

[vakuona (788200)]

But smaller publishers might also price their music lower. Isn't it conventional slashdot wisdom that they are less greedy than the average big four label?

Re:Competition for emusic

[Ahnteis (746045)]

Agreed. It's now significantly more expensive to buy music from Apple compared to Wal-mart. This is progress?

Re:Competition for emusic

[vought (160908)]

Agreed. It's now significantly more expensive to buy music from Apple compared to Wal-mart. This is progress?

It's also considerably more convenient. And not that much more expensive. Apple doesn't censor the music or movies they carry. You can buy one song at a time or the entire album. And there's no wasteful packaging.

Yeah, I'd call that progress.

Re:Competition for emusic

[DaleGlass (1068434)]

Yay for Apple fan logic.

Generally I would expect that not needing packaging, delivery trucks, shelf space, etc, would result in the end product being cheaper due to the lack of need to pay for all that stuff... but no, somehow delivering less is a "feature" that makes sense to pay extra money for.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care much for the packaging either, but calling it progress to pay extra for the lack of something is quite bizarre.

Re:Competition for emusic

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I am not really a fan of the iTMS -- I've bought maybe a half-dozen songs from there since it opened, and most of those in the first few weeks it was running, on a lark -- but after going down to Target to buy a CD a few days ago (on the assumption -- proved hideously incorrect -- that it would be a little less of a shitshow than WalMart), I would gladly pay 60% extra to not have to fight with the dregs of humanity in order to buy some data.

(And yes, I'm aware there are still real "music stores" around, but I've never been in one where I felt particularly comfortable, or that had ample parking. And if I'm going to give someone my money I figure I should at least get those just as a given.)

Re:Competition for emusic

[Macka (9388)]

And don't forget that by buying off iTunes you're also saving the planet. Just think of all those dirty emissions you avoided creating by staying at home instead of driving. Add to that the emissions saved by by using 1 less CDs worth of plastic, packaging and transport to the store of your choice.

You just got greener .. be happy :)

Re:Competition for emusic

[StikyPad (445176)]

calling it progress to pay extra for the lack of something is quite bizarre.

Not when you can have soup for $1, or bodily-fluid free soup for $5.

Re:Competition for emusic

[plover (150551)]

The cost of downloaded music by all logic should be below the half of what the CD of the same stuff costs.

You are only looking at a fraction of the actual costs. How do you know what Apple's costs are, vs. the costs incurred by a physical distribution company? The costs are not just for the physical media and distribution, or the network bandwidth, iTMS development and hosting costs, but also the negotiated per-title royalties that must be paid. The labels get their cut, and that's probably the most expensive component of the price.

And even after all that, sure, Apple's costs may be lower. But Apple's prices are apparently higher by your measure, and I think that's why you're complaining.

You see, there's this funny idea called 'Capitalism'. Capitalism pretty much means "if you want to sell a product at whatever price you want to sell it, go for it. If you make money, congratulations. If you lose money, tough." The corollary to that is "if you want something and are willing to pay the asked-for price, you can buy it. If you are unwilling to pay that price, you can try to negotiate a new lower price, shop elsewhere, or go without."

So if you think a DRM-free song is worth only $0.25, why not write to Apple and ask them to sell you that song for $0.25? If they're unwilling to negotiate with you, then you are free to go to another source and pay their asking price. Otherwise, contact the record labels yourself and start a music distribution business of your own, set your prices at $0.25, and make lots of money. Let us know how that works out for you.

Re:Competition for emusic

[wall0159 (881759)]

What you're missing is that anyone can now release DRM-free 256kbit/s music. This means that small labels will have advantages against RIAA labels (EMI aside) who might be reluctant to release DRM-free music.

The policy of iTunes has always been (AFAIK) to have a fixed price for individual songs, but a varied price for albums. Hence an indie band can release a DRM-free 256kbit/s album for $8 if they want to... This might mean we see some real competition in the commercial music scene... finally!

Also, allow me to plug eMusic (www.emusic.com) - You can't beat it for discovering great new music. No personal affiliation, just a satisfied customer. Magnatune seems good too.

Re:Competition for emusic

[onepower (513216)]

The album price is the same for DRM free, higher quality... $9.99 for most albums. That makes the convenience and lack of censorship worth every penny. It isn't like you can buy a single DRM free track from Walmart either.

Top 40???

[fyngyrz (762201)]

but for all those people looking for DRM-free top-40-type music, dream come true, eh?

Mmm, no. Not just top 40. Apple carries all manner of classic rock, hard rock, symphonic, blues, and more. beat them up for DRM (OS or other) all you like, but let's not just lie about things, ok?

ITunes Producer now uses Apple Lossless

[by Anonymous Coward]

They used to like 128kbps AAC uploaded to them, but now they want lossless - so it's been on the cards for a while (not the DRM free, but higher quality). Anyway, means they can encode to anything they want for all the new stuff without having to transcode. Hasn't helped with their congested servers though.

Apropo of nothing I suppose, but thought it might be interesting.

Re:ITunes Producer now uses Apple Lossless

[Zaknafein500 (303608)]

And the answer is, they don't want to be in the music business, at least no more than they have to be. The only reason they are curently is because the music business provides content for their hardware business, which is where the real money is made. The iTunes Store is effectively a loss-leader to sell iPods. Jobs has said as much already.

That's what Apple *wants* you to believe....

[PapayaSF (721268)]

they don't want to be in the music business, at least no more than they have to be.

Not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I wonder about this. That is Jobs' pitch to the record companies: "We're not your competition, we just want to sell iPods." But is it really true? Jobs thinks long-term. Maybe he's just lying low, trying not to spook his prey until it's too late. With iTunes becoming huge, what young musician wouldn't be tempted to sign up with iTunes as a label? Particularly if, instead of the artists getting a small slice of the record companies' cut of an iTunes sale, they got most or all of it? Wouldn't that increase the artists' income from digital sales by something like 400%?

The major labels would excrete bricks if this happened, but if iTunes gets much larger, it may be inevitable. At that point Jobs will have the major record companies over a barrel, and could make them obsolete while getting cheers from everyone else by vastly increasing what musicians make for digital sales and giving the fans what they want.

Imagine the PR coup that would be. I see it as a "One more thing..." item at a future MacWorld Expo keynote.

Obvious?

[nine-times (778537)]

This is a big step in the right direction, although it's unclear exactly what Apple means by 'higher quality,' and there is no mention of price changes.

It seems pretty clear to me-- they're offering the same pricing scheme that they've announced with EMI. They will continue to sell 128 kbps DRM-wrapped AACs for $0.99, but will additionally offer 256kbps DRM-free AACs for $1.29. Anyone familiar with Apple's tactics will tell you that they'll want to keep it simple. They'll offer the same pricing for the same product across the board.

I'd guess that this is all transitional anyway. Apple will continue to try to pressure labels to drop prices and remove DRM on everything. In the mean time, this is a step in the right direction.

Perfect quality!

[rmdyer (267137)]

I'll give them $2.00 a song if they will give up on this compressed stuff and sell me lossless. I'd like to have the same music that comes on the real CD. That way I can compare a checksum with a "global public" value, and make sure they haven't watermarked the song. They could even go to $3.00 a song for people who are aficionados and release the 24 bit stuff.

So we have...

          $0.99 = DRM'ed AAC at 128kbps
          $1.30 = Non-DRM'ed AAC at 256kbps
          $2.00 = Non-DRM'ed, lossless.
          $3.00 = Non-DRM'ed, 96KHz-24bit per Channel.

Still dreaming.

Re:Perfect quality!

[QuantumG (50515)]

$3? $3?!!

For $3 per song I want the band to come play live in my drinking establishment.

$3.

Re:Perfect quality!

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

What's funny is that he wants masters that don't even exist for a huge majority of stuff that's out there. Sure, some things have been mastered at 24/96, but those are generally only the things that have been released on DVDA and SACD. A good 95+% of the stuff out there was mastered for a 16-bit, 44.1kHz delivery mechanism. But let's not quibble with the minor details of reality...

Re:Perfect quality!

[Firethorn (177587)]

Please note that I said average pop song. They've been engineered to sound best in the audio quality available on a CD. On the other hand, classical music was designed to be enjoyed in person(no other real choice those days), and generally use a much wider frequency range.

I used classic music as the most obvious example. Still, there's many forms of music that could benefit from a higher rate source, Jazz, rock, even many pop songs.

If it becomes common enough, people will start producing more music for it. Still, that's fairly unlikely because building a music system capable of reproducing the music costs far more than a system barely capable of playing CDs decently.

Re:

[vought (160908)]

But no, this is breaking one of the key laws of consumer marketing - once prices go up, they will not come down, regardless of the expenses.

Convenience has gone up. That's what you are paying extra for.

Pizza delivery proves that people will pay more for convenience, especially in a culture that is moving toward cocooning at home in front of the TV and computer.

Re:

[Penguinisto (415985)]

I suspect that prices will begin to come down once two things happen:

1) iTMS gets some actual competition at the same ease-of-use level, yet maintain complete interoperability with it. It wouldn't take much technically to rig up a competing app that runs across platforms and make it sync tunes in and out of the iPod (gtkpod can almost do this now in Linux, I think?) - the interoperability part is the kicker, however... I don't see Apple making that easy by any stretch.

2) DRM finally dies in music firmw

Now we just need free pricing.

[supabeast! (84658)]

Hopefully Apple will eventually allow labels to set their own prices. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of old songs languishing at barely measurable sales numbers-I think that a hell of a lot of those could sell pretty well at $.25 or $.50. We could see back-catalog price wars! It would also allow smaller labels labels and independent musicians to compete by leveraging their lower overheads--one can sell for less when a album was self-produced in a week with no advance and no A&R guys to feed.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

No, letting the labels set their own prices WON'T result in lower prices. Here major label logic for you:

Popular Tracks: Need to cost more to cover the demand for them
Unpopular: Need to cost more to cover the cost of making them available.

If anything 99 cents will be the 'base' cost and things will just go up for there.

Re:

[Hes Nikke (237581)]

Yes, letting the labels set their own prices WILL result in lower prices. Here [sic] Indy label logic for you:

RIAA Tracks: prices just went up, and customers aren't happy with that
Indy Tracks: 25 - 99, we'll make it up in volume! :D

Re:

[Trailer Trash (60756)]

There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of old songs languishing at barely measurable sales numbers-I think that a hell of a lot of those could sell pretty well at $.25 or $.50.

Or at least $.05, if allofmp3.com proved anything. Whatever the price point is there's a lot of money being left on the table because the labels aren't smart enough to go after it.

Re:Now we just need free pricing.

[Llywelyn (531070)]

Yes, its amazing if you steal something how cheaply you can then sell it for.

Less flippantly: an item is worth what the market will pay for it.

There's the rub

[bill_mcgonigle (4333)]

It would also allow smaller labels labels and independent musicians to compete by leveraging their lower overheads--one can sell for less when a album was self-produced in a week with no advance and no A&R guys to feed.

This is exactly why I'd expect the RIAA to pull out of iTunes if they allow this. No matter what, they don't want an efficient market - not when they're selling artificial scarcity.

It's interesting to see Apple as the potentate with the ability to change the music industry with small changes in policy. I think they're doing a good job as benovolent dictator, but there's some deeper meaning, I'm sure, to the fact that iTunes is only 5 years old and we're talking about things this way. The power of the Internet to change markets, demonstrated, perhaps.

Re:

[supabeast! (84658)]

If they do this... they open the Pandora's box of also making new songs higher priced.

So what if they do? It's just new music; nobody needs it to survive, and nobody is being forced to buy it.

Translation

[suv4x4 (956391)]

"Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free. Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers."

Translation from Jobs-esque:

"People asked for DRM-free content, and EMI said fine, but we'll charge more. So we said, ok, we'll up the bitrate and justify the higher price with that."

Re:

[suv4x4 (956391)]

Translation from Jobs-esque:

"People asked for DRM-free content, and EMI said fine, but we'll charge more. So we said, ok, we'll up the bitrate and justify the higher price with that."

Actually here's an even better translation:

"EU asked for DRM-free content, and EMI wanted higher prices. So we said fine, we give you higher prices (we'll justify with bumping up the bitrate), you give us DRM-free tracks & we got a deal."

Wait a minute

[Richard McBeef (1092673)]

How am I supposed to manage my digital rights now?

This sucks

[catbutt (469582)]

When Jobs came out with his "Thoughts on Music", I made all kinds of cynical comments saying that he was being disingenious for this or that reason. After all, Job's in incredibly successful and people all over the world laud him and his company's products, so he NEEDS to be brought down a notch.

Well now he's making me look like an ass.

Re:

[TPIRman (142895)]

You're hardly an ass, as you're one of few skeptics to admit that your original (hardly outlandish) accusations turned out to be wrong, which makes you more intellectually honest than many self-appointed DRM wonks. That group includes, most notably, Cory Doctorow, who blasted Jobs [salon.com] in a Salon article after "Thoughts on Music" was first posted on Apple's web site. When Jobs came through on his pledge, Doctorow was pleased [boingboing.net] but never saw fit to mention, "Hey, I probably went a bit overboard with that screed in

Jobs and Apple are still EVIL

[Infonaut (96956)]

To sum up the list of objections to this move by Apple:

• Apple is still not offering something for nothing, which pisses me off.
• This is just a big PR stunt. Apple isn't really doing this for the right reasons, so it's still wrong.
• This should have been done a long time ago, so the fact that they're doing it now makes it evil.
• Apple is just trying to make their EVIL, proprietary AAC (Apple Audio Compression) dominate the free, open, wonderful MP3 format!
• I don't like iTunes, therefore this move toward the elimination of DRM in music doesn't help me. This is Apple's fault. They're evil.
• Steve Jobs wears sweaters. I hate sweaters. Sweaters are evil. Therefore, Jobs is evil, and so is Apple.

Re:Jobs and Apple are still EVIL

[QuantumG (50515)]

He wears turtleneck sweaters ok? If that aint Dr Fuckin' Evil, I don't know what is.

Zunior.com

[leoc (4746)]

For the regular price ($8.88 CDN per album) you get 192kbps non-DRM'd MP3's. For $2.00 CDN extra, you get the same album in FLAC format. Their entire catalog [zunior.com] is in non-DRM format and they have been doing it this way for a lot longer than Apple. As an added benefit, they a support all platforms equally, so you can use Windows, OS X or even Linux to browse and buy music.

Re:Zunior.com

[mblase (200735)]

Their entire catalog [zunior.com] is in non-DRM format and they have been doing it this way for a lot longer than Apple.

Your argument is significantly undermined by the fact that their entire catalog consists of artists and labels I've never heard of before in my life.

They could price their albums at $1.25 apiece, and most people still wouldn't be interested.

How DRM-less?

[HTH NE1 (675604)]

But can I import them into iMovie or Final Cut (Express or Pro)?

I'm not a music collector. I can fit all my CDs into one carrying case with their jewel cases. But if I can get per-track purchases able to be mixed into my own video projects without hassle or fee (for my personal use) I may buy a few tracks.

Re:

[RustNeverSleeps (846857)]

They'll be DRM-free so of course you can import them into iMovie or Final Cut. Of course, you can already do so even with DRMed iTunes files. Apple has had support for using iTunes purchases in iMovie for a long time.

Re:

[Donniedarkness (895066)]

I think you misunderstood something-- Apple is offering HIGHER quality AAC's w/ NO DRM for $1.29. The $.99 deal still applies for the DRM'd version, which is the same quality it always has been (or at least, as far back as I remember).

Re:Why Pay more?

[Kenshin (43036)]

The price of DRM-free albums remains unchanged. It's only DRM-free singles that go up in price to $1.29.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle (4333)]

and the need to physically purchase the product.

Don't discount *that* - that's the argument in a nutshell. I have to spend $10 in mileage costs to go buy a physical CD. If I was billing the round-trip time to a client instead of driving to go get it that CD probably costs well over a hundred dollars (not that I work 24/7/365 - I sleep too, but you get the point).

I will admit for single track purchases the money for the DRM free is compelling.

Yeah, especially if you don't have to give up the sound quality

Re:What we reallly want...

[fangorious (1024903)]

what Apple wants is their AAC to become the defacto standard over mp3.

AAC [wikipedia.org] isn't Apple's codec. It's the MPEG group's replacement for MP3.

Re:Is Apple going to extend that grant?

[MightyYar (622222)]

I don't normally respond to trolls, but it brings up an interesting topic for conversation, so why not?

Why is DRM okay in some contexts, but not others? Is it evil to apply DRM to music but not software? What about movies?

I think that music is something that we are naturally possessed with - it probably coincides with the emergence of humanity. We hum, we whistle, we walk around with our Walkmen and our iPods. We even amended our copyright law to give music a special exemption for format-shifting and copying for personal use. I think this is why DRM on music offends us so much... DRM prevents us from doing something that we as a society have already decided we should be able to do!

Movies and software, on the other hand, aren't in the same ball park. Movies have only recently become part of our culture, and it was only 30 years ago that you could realistically bring them into your home. It's only been about 5 years since it became feasible to walk around with them, and that's still awkward. Maybe we'll feel more strongly about movies as technology makes format shifting more important. It already irritates me that I have to jump through hoops to back up stuff.

Software - I think it will be a long time before society gets worked up over software... after all, the best software is invisible. Besides, the whole concept of format-shifting is hard to apply to software. I mean, the kind of software application that you expect to work on you Desktop computer is pretty unsuitable for your cell phone.

Re:

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

You make some reasonable points, but I couldn't disagree with you more about software & movies. The point you used to illustrate software was particularly misguided:

I mean, the kind of software application that you expect to work on you Desktop computer is pretty unsuitable for your cell phone.

You do realise the iPhone is going to run OS X don't you? Do you realise that you would be able to run OS X in a vmware window if Apple didn't actively prevent you from doing so?

Re:Is Apple going to extend that grant?

[MightyYar (622222)]

I'm very skeptical that it will be OSX in anything but name, or possibly kernel. But almost any application that is suitable for a phone would not be very usable on a desktop and vice versa. Video games have a much higher threshold on a desktop. Excel would be a travesty on a phone. Even the VNC version that I have on my desktop would positively suck on a phone. Even phone-centered apps like Address Book or iCal are not suited to the tiny screen on the iPhone.

Even if the iPhone worked perfectly with all OSX applications, it would be but one example in an ocean of counter-examples. I have never seen a Palm or WindowsMobile application that is as functional as it's desktop equivalent.

I'm not saying that DRM doesn't restrict software - clearly it does (as in your vmware example). I'm just saying that we, as a society, seem to hold software to a different standard than music, and I was simply pontificating on why I thought that was the case.

I think that video is somewhere in between the two - perhaps when it takes less than 2 hours to encode a H264 movie people will start to care more. Right now, ripping a CD takes about 2 minutes and it's pretty bulletproof.

Re:Is Apple going to extend that grant?

[travail_jgd (80602)]

I agree with your point, but not your rationale.

I'm *gasp* 35, and for as long as I can remember music has been freely copyable. Radios with built-in cassette players could often record "free" [1] music directly from the radio, without any external microphone. One radio station even spent Sunday nights playing entire sides of LPs.

The CD era made it even easier to make high quality tapes. It was easy to record, and in some cases the quality was better than a mastered cassette. Some of the "portable systems" [2] could actually calculate optimal song orders to put as many tracks on a tape as possible.

My point is that at least two generations have grown up with the ideas of "free music" and "freely copying music". Right or wrong, it's a part of the American culture. The sudden appearance of DRM when freely copied/format shifted music has been permitted for decades is a culture shock, and is only turning people away from the big labels.

1: Sure, someone was paying for it, but to the end user the only costs were electricity and cassettes.
2: aka boom boxes. I'm a child of the 80's.

Re:Whoopty-do. AAC itself is proprietary and locke

[UnknowingFool (672806)]

This announcement doesn't mean much at all. AAC is still a proprietary format that only exists in Apple's reality sphere, and outside of iPods and Macs, doesn't have much reason to exist at all other than to have yet another standard out there. AAC is a format only used by two types of people: iTunes customers who have no choice, and the rabid Mac fanatics who will happily jump to a locked, patent encumbered protocol because Apple approves it.

When Apple comes to the table with something industry standard like MP3, OGG, FLAC, uncompressed WAV, or even (gasp!) WMA, then this will be a newsmaking event. Otherwise, its just the same old stuff. People's music is still locked down in a non-standard format nobody would even go near if it wasn't Apple's baby.

You are either a uninformed troll or an MS shill but again for the record: AAC [wikipedia.org] is a part of the MPEG standard that is used by many other players like Sony's PS3, MS Zune, SanDisk Sansa e200R, numerous cell phones, etc. The licensing scheme of AAC is even more generous than MP3 as there is no license on distributed content. Also for the record, WMA has never been the industry standard. It was a standard foisted up us by MS which actually suffers from the same defects that you claim about AAC. If you change AAC in your ranting with WMA and Apple with MS, your statements would actually be true.