Non-Copy Protected Songs Offered On iTunes For First Time
Posted May 31, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Music downloading may have led to the closure of Toronto icon Sam the Record Man, but the practice isn’t perfect. Nothing irks MP3 player users more than buying a song off the Internet and finding it’s protected by something called DRM – digital rights management. The special copy protection prevents that tune from being duplicated to other devices to stop piracy. But many argue if they paid for it, they should be able to put it wherever they want.
And now Apple iTunes has become the first mainstream service to answer that call, taking off the DRM on thousands of the tracks available on its service. Under the scheme, you’ll be able to buy any of the non-protected tunes for $1.39 each, 40 cents above the famous 99 cents offering the company pioneered. All the songs are being offered at 256 kbps, bringing the quality closer to CD sound. Users can also upgrade their existing versions for 40 cents per song or about $3 an album.
Among the non-protected artists being served up in the first batch: Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Norah Jones and Frank Sinatra. The change means some of the songs will also work on players other than Apple’s best selling iPod, a restriction that also bugged buyers.
“Our customers told us two things deterred them from buying digital,” explains Barney Wragg of EMI. “They weren’t 100 percent confident that the songs they’d purchase could play on their devices, and they wanted something closer to CD quality.” Industry analyst Susan Kevorkian believes other music labels will have no choice but to follow suit. “They absolutely have to reach the Internet to drive music sales, and part of that is to remove the hurdle that comes with the lack of interoperability.”
And what about the fears of increased piracy? “People who aren’t going to pay for things aren’t going to pay for things,” feels analyst Michael Gartenberg. “And DRM just adds an unnecessary layer of complexity here for people who do embrace this medium and have already bought billions of songs on iTunes.”
Thousands more unrestricted songs are expected to be added to iTunes and other services over the next few months.
Photo credit: Getty Images/Scott Barbour
