Bright and early yesterday morning, the planet’s third largest record label, EMI, announced that it would begin selling music without digital rights management (DRM). Apple’s iTunes store will be the first online retailer for the copy-protection-free EMI music files, but other vendors are expected to sell the DRM-free music files “within the coming weeks.”
In addition to stripping DRM from its music files, EMI will also distribute its music files encoded at a higher bit rate, resulting in better music quality. No one yet knows for sure what bit rate will be used, but the EMI media release says “EMI’s retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality.” This could—hypothetically—mean that some retailers may offer music files in the .flac lossless file format, which would almost certainly prove to be real competition to Apple’s iTunes store. If, and only if, customers educate themselves.
The DRM-free music is being positioned as a premium product at a price point that’s about 30 percent higher than the DRM-encumbered versions. EMI Group CEO, Eric Nicoli referred to internal EMI tests in which higher-quality, DRM-free files outsold lower-quality, copy-protected files by a factor of 10.
The big question remains: will the other major record labels follow EMI’s lead and universally drop DRM. I think it’s inevitable; the real question is how soon. At any rate, make no mistake. This is all about EMI and not Apple or Steve Jobs. After all, Jobs is Disney’s biggest shareholder and could remove the DRM shackles from all Disney media pretty dang close to overnight. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. He’s going to be dragged into this kicking and screaming just like the others, his open letter notwithstanding.
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