Apple, EMI and Digital Rights Management
Earlier today, music company EMI and Apple announced that EMI music would be sold on iTunes with out Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection. Antitrust Review has repeatedly covered Apple and DRM.
Reuters (via the Washington Post) reports:
EMI said Apple Inc.’s iTunes online music store would be its first retail outlet using its new global pricing model for the higher-quality format without DRM. The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI’s existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available, EMI said at a press conference in central London with Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs. Earlier this year, Jobs called on the world’s four major record companies, including EMI, to start selling songs online without DRM copy-protection software. DRM is designed to thwart piracy but also makes using music cumbersome for many consumers. Jobs argued that there appeared to be no benefit for the record companies in selling more than 90 percent of their music without DRM on compact discs, while selling the remaining small percentage of music online encumbered with DRM. “Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry,” Jobs said on Monday.
One interesting aspect is the pricing:
Apple said iTunes would make individual tracks on the AAC format available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29, 1.29 euros and 99 pence. ITunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay 99 cents for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied.
It appears that Apple and EMI believe that the added value of songs without DRM over songs with DRM is 30 cents per song.
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