Blog . Jiboneus

This is a great time for music and digital media. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs writes an open letter to the industry regarding selling music with out DRM (Digital Rights Management). Record labels like DRM because users can’t easily copy songs. The consumers, those who actually are paying for the music, hate it because they are locked in to one device or one service.

EMI announced recently in London together with Apple that EMI’s entire music and video catalog will be available in May on iTunes DRM free. They are also at a higher quality and price (256kbps AAC at $1.29).

Although iTunes is still not (and wont be anytime soon) able to sync contents with other portable music player on the market, but with DRM free media from iTunes, in theory one could export music purchased form the iTunes Store to other software players that sync with other portable devices. It is not ideal but it is something.

This makes EMI as the first of the four major record labels to make the move in distributing DRM free digital media. It is a bold pro-consumer move by EMI. However Engadget did manage to point out some dubious facts regarding this whole announcement.

One of them is the fact that DRM free music are 30% higher in price then the other DRM version. Apple is selling both the 128-bit AAC with DRM on the normal 99 cent price tag and the bumped up version 256kbps AAC at a higher price $1.29. In other words Apple is still selling crippled EMI music on its iTunes Store.

The fact is that only techie and geeks really know what the whole DRM issue is, non-techie and non-geeks would have cared less about it. Apple’s iTunes Store on the other hand is so successful in getting the non-tech-centric consumer on board. Looking at the price tag I’m pretty sure most of them would choose the cheaper version even if it is crippled with DRM.

This move might just be a test bed for EMI and other music label to see if a DRM free digital content does really make a different. Do people willing to pay a little extra for non-DRM content? This is also how Apple does things, in handling transitions. They didn’t release all the Intel Macs at once.

This is purely a speculation. Another reason for the bumped up version of DRM free music on iTunes is because it is easier to track them on P2P networks. These ‘larger’ files will stand out like a sore thumb in P2P networks. In theory, it is much easier to pirate these files since you do not have to strip the DRM of.

If this is true and it turns out that more music is being pirated then ever with this move, it might just end all argument regarding DRM. The DRM-free community will be at a lost and music industry will then impose stronger control on their digital music. Sony rootkit anyone? Lets hope that it will not come to that.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs called EMI’s move “the next step forward in the digital music revolution, the movement to completely interoperable DRM free music�. While it might just be baby steps, it is still a huge step.

Now my hope is that this move will carry on to other types of digital media, videos especially. Could we one day be able to buy a DVD, rip it via iTunes and sync it on our iPods? With out any shady third party software in between.

Will this whole region thing on DVD just go away, so I could buy a DVD anywhere in the world without worrying if it will play on my DVD player or not?

Could we one day could buy a movie and download it online via bittorent (if during that time our broadband bandwidth is not sufficient enough)? Imagine a setup box that you plug to your TV set and downloads digital movies over night for you. The content is DRM free which means that you could then transfer or sync the video content to other video devices, iPod, PSP and what not.

I like to think we are getting there with media center devices from Apple TV and the next Gen gaming console like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii but are still a long way to go.

The future of digital content distribution will much brighter if major players would start to let go some of its restrictive control on their digital media contents.

If you are not sure what DRM free music means to you, then head over to myMacBUZZ, there is a nice write-up of what this means for you.

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