EMI Announces DRM-free Deal with iTunes

Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 8:20 AM - by

During its special media event with Apple Inc. on Monday, EMI Group announced that it plans to offer DRM-free music downloads through the iTunes Store. The copy protection-free tracks will offer twice the audio quality as current tracks, and can be transfered to non-iPod portable music players.

EMI pointed out that users in several European countries including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary and Sweden, want to be able to transfer songs between competing media devices. That statement is no small coincidence considering Norway's pressure on Apple to open music on iTunes to multiple players.

The DRM-free songs will cost more than Fairplay-encoded tracks, and users will have the ability to upgrade already purchased tracks. If purchased as part of an album, tracks will cost the same as DRM-encoded songs.

[Thanks to engadget for locating the information in EMI's PowerPoint presentation.]

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Engine Joe said:

member since 29 Jun 2004 with 412 posts, unranked , send him a message or view his profile

Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:37 am

Don't forget to mention the new 256 Kbps encoding!!!

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DrD said:

member since 28 Apr 2003 with 40 posts, unranked , send him a message or view his profile

Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:09 am

This is good news on so many fronts. It defuses the EU argument on iTunes interoperability and will make it very difficult for individual countries to act against Apple as it reiterates that to DRM or not to DRM is a decision for the music industry not Apple. It interestingly adds to the recent 'complete my album' functions in promoting albums rather than singles.

In the long run, I'd really hope this could lead to an eventual relaxation of the DRM on DVD's so they could be streamed to the TV but that seems unlikely for now.