Jobs left -- so did DRM

With only one new product revelation, a rather unattractive $2,799 MacBook, this year's Macworld keynote was nothing like we have been used to. It could only have been described as a disappointment until Philip Schiller, who replaced Steve Jobs, revealed DRM-free iTunes. According to Schiller iTunes will be entirely DRM-free with over 10 million songs at the end of the first quarter of 2009.

The iTunes Plus section should already feature 8 million songs DRM-free. The pricing of the songs has also gone through some changes. iTunes has now three price points for songs - 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. 69 cents is for older releases and $1.29 for new hit songs.

Most of the albums will still be priced at $9.99.

iTunes Plus allows users to upgrade their songs to new higher quality DRM-free versions for 30 cents per song or 30 percent of the album price for the whole album. iTunes Plus uses 256kbps AAC audio format.

Written by: Matti Robinson @ 7 Jan 2009 4:03

Advertisement - News comments available below the ad

27 comments

Run4two

To call this year's event disappointing in an understatement. Apple always had something to show.

7.1.2009 10:16 #1

emugamer

What a BS price scheme. Paying more for a track just for a higher quality. Ripping the music from a CD at varying qualities doesn't cost more. You pay one price for a physical CD. Why should downloading different qualities cost more? A person should pay $.99 for a song. And have the ability to download 128k, 260k, 192k, 320k, vbr, or whatever, whenever. Access to the song should be what the customer is paying for. Or just make them all available in 320k and let the savy user downsample to whatever for whatever. But most likely the savy user will be ripping on their own and would not be using iTunes.

With this line of reasoning, you would think that lawsuits and fines would be measured the same way. A smaller fine and less jail time for sharing 128k or less. Behind bars for life for sharing lossless FLAC :P

7.1.2009 10:51 #2

SProdigy

Emugamer, I can't agree more. I don't purchase too much DRM-screwed music, but of the stuff I do have, I would like to have the DRM removed instead of being conned into spending more money.

Imagine the users that own thousands of songs that will "upgrade" with Apple making an additional 30% profit off of the original purchase!

Apple, give us a DRM removal tool for our existing music ... I'd be willing to spend a $1.29 on that!

7.1.2009 11:10 #3

emugamer

Originally posted by SProdigy: Emugamer, I can't agree more. I don't purchase too much DRM-screwed music, but of the stuff I do have, I would like to have the DRM removed instead of being conned into spending more money.

Imagine the users that own thousands of songs that will "upgrade" with Apple making an additional 30% profit off of the original purchase!

Apple, give us a DRM removal tool for our existing music ... I'd be willing to spend a $1.29 on that!Yeah, I don't think $1.29 is bad for a song at the highest bitrate, especially if I know I'm not interested in buying the entire album. But the whole $/bitrate scheme is lame. In the perfect digital age, every artist will have their own storefront and you pay them $.99 or less per song.

7.1.2009 12:33 #4

zoomaj

guys all u have to do is use some recording software like windows audio recorder play the song on media player and hit record on the audio recorder and it should record the music internally then hit save and u will have the same music recorded onto the seperate file DRM free, just rename it after to the song name,SIMPLE

im totally ANTI DRM!!!

7.1.2009 13:06 #5

emugamer

Originally posted by zoomaj: guys all u have to do is use some recording software like windows audio recorder play the song on media player and hit record on the audio recorder and it should record the music internally then hit save and u will have the same music recorded onto the seperate file DRM free, just rename it after to the song name,SIMPLE

im totally ANTI DRM!!!That's common knowledge and not what we're talking about. Plus it's a ridiculous task if you have many songs, as SProdigy mentioned. I wouldn't want to sit at my PC doing that for any number of songs. Which is why I never purchased a single song from iTunes. Would be better having a DRM-removal tool for people who have purchased tons of songs over the years from iTunes (I really hope no one has $1,000 worth of iTunes songs...lol). We are talking about (well at least me) the pricing scheme of music that is already DRM free, where there is no need for lame circumvention techniques.

7.1.2009 13:53 #6

zoomaj

listen mate im just giving some extra tips i download my music free of charge so i dont realy care about this DRM, it doesnt really affect me, all my tunes are VBR, and i can do what i like, play them on any player transfer via bluetooth or woteva.

7.1.2009 14:21 #7

zylene

i get all my albums from rapidshare - 320kbps

7.1.2009 17:20 #8

zoomaj

ur ryt mate rapidshare rocks shame about the 2.66 gig limit though!

7.1.2009 17:24 #9

borhan9

This may have been a low key affair but i like the fact that the itunes dept is heading in the right direction.

Well it looks like Job's will be looking for himself for awhile since the world is in the current economic situation it is atm :)

7.1.2009 17:33 #10

Jason92

Sad and happy day for apple. Hopefully Jobs has a speedy recovery.

7.1.2009 18:23 #11

BTFan

This year's Macworld was the worst out of all of them!
Every Macworld had a really cool / unexpected thing:
2007: iPhone
2008: MacBook Air

This year, nothing new came out. The 17" unibody MacBook Pro was really expected because it wasn't released in October. Seriously everything that was released didn't need a keynote except for the 17" MacBook Pro which could've have been squished in the October event. DRM-Free tracks is a very small feature. It's like if the software updates for the iPod touch and iPhones in the Macworld 2008 keynote would have a keynote JUST for them. I always look forward to these keynotes. This one was a real dissapointment.

Microsoft Xbox 360 HDMI - Gamertag: BTFan
Apple iPod touch 32GB (2nd gen)

7.1.2009 18:24 #12

Worse

You are paying to upgrade because you are using their bandwidth again. Which makes sense.

Originally posted by emugamer: What a BS price scheme. Paying more for a track just for a higher quality. Ripping the music from a CD at varying qualities doesn't cost more. You pay one price for a physical CD. Why should downloading different qualities cost more? A person should pay $.99 for a song. And have the ability to download 128k, 260k, 192k, 320k, vbr, or whatever, whenever. Access to the song should be what the customer is paying for. Or just make them all available in 320k and let the savy user downsample to whatever for whatever. But most likely the savy user will be ripping on their own and would not be using iTunes.

With this line of reasoning, you would think that lawsuits and fines would be measured the same way. A smaller fine and less jail time for sharing 128k or less. Behind bars for life for sharing lossless FLAC :P

7.1.2009 20:10 #13

Sophocles

Quote:Emugamer, I can't agree more.
I also prefer to purchase the CD and make my own Mp3s, which I only listen to on my portable player. At home I either listen to my CDs or make a play list saved in Flac.

7.1.2009 20:34 #14

shummyr

its too bad they did not start out drm free

7.1.2009 21:22 #15

david89

russian websites has best pricing like .03 a song $2 for whole album at high quality.

7.1.2009 21:30 #16

Sophocles

Quote:russian websites has best pricing like .03 a song $2 for whole album at high quality.
I'm betting that these Russian sites aren't sanctioned sites by the copyright holders, and that the artists don't get any royalties from them whatsoever. The Russians are making 100% on their sales.

7.1.2009 21:53 #17

pensfan12

Quote:You are paying to upgrade because you are using their bandwidth again. Which makes sense.

Originally posted by emugamer: What a BS price scheme. Paying more for a track just for a higher quality. Ripping the music from a CD at varying qualities doesn't cost more. You pay one price for a physical CD. Why should downloading different qualities cost more? A person should pay $.99 for a song. And have the ability to download 128k, 260k, 192k, 320k, vbr, or whatever, whenever. Access to the song should be what the customer is paying for. Or just make them all available in 320k and let the savy user downsample to whatever for whatever. But most likely the savy user will be ripping on their own and would not be using iTunes.

With this line of reasoning, you would think that lawsuits and fines would be measured the same way. A smaller fine and less jail time for sharing 128k or less. Behind bars for life for sharing lossless FLAC :Pso it costs Apple 30cents to handle around 7mb more bandwidth. Riiiiiiiiiight.

8.1.2009 05:37 #18

emugamer

8.1.2009 07:49 #19

sammorris

Sophocles is right. The russian sites are cheap because they're not legal, in essence, you're basically paying to use Limewire or Bit-Torrent to download music illegally.
emugamer: Try and see it from apple's perspective. If there's something you can be charged for, don't you think they'll charge you for it?

8.1.2009 17:33 #20

emugamer

Originally posted by sammorris: emugamer: Try and see it from apple's perspective. If there's something you can be charged for, don't you think they'll charge you for it?Yeah, I agree. If they didn't try to squeeze every dime out of their customers, then I would think there was something wrong with them, because that's just the nature of capitalism. It just bothers me that the reason they can do this is because there are people who will buy into it, and accept it blindly. It's just a vicious cycle. Oh well, if it wasn't like this, then I wouldn't have anything to complain about. And I do enjoy the satisfaction of seeing through these schemes and complaining. I hate big business and politics and hypocrites and all that good stuff that comes wrapped up with corporate America. But I do have to say that charging different prices for different bitrates is the icing on the cake of absurdity for me. Just when you think a Corporation can't get an greedier....funny thing is, any of these executive probably know how stupid this idea is, but they know that there are many individuals who will accept it and they're laughing all the way to the bank. Of all the money making schemes I've read about in the past couple of years, this one actually makes me want Apple to crash and burn into a pile of hot ash.

8.1.2009 22:39 #21

varnull

Quote:Quote:russian websites has best pricing like .03 a song $2 for whole album at high quality.
I'm betting that these Russian sites aren't sanctioned sites by the copyright holders, and that the artists don't get any royalties from them whatsoever. The Russians are making 100% on their sales.I bet the artists don't see anything from these sales either.. after crapple and the riaa and the record company take their cut XD

9.1.2009 04:54 #22

sammorris

I would probably place the RIAA above Apple in that regard, but yes, the artist sees practically nothing.

9.1.2009 07:19 #23

emugamer

And at an extra $.30/song, a person who may buy 50 songs a year essentially throws $15 out the window, and for "high quality" audio - well the highest quality an iPod will play without any hacks implemented. I'll take that $15 and buy 2 CD's from a number of discount sources.

9.1.2009 07:59 #24

Mez

Originally posted by sammorris
Quote:Try and see it from apple's perspective. If there's something you can be charged for, don't you think they'll charge you for it? They will only make a fraction of what they could until they try seeing it from the customer's prospective. The greedy pigs steal from the artists and the customers and pretend they are trying to please the customer. They cry foul because they can't sell many gallons of milk at $10/gal. No one wants to be ripped off that badly. They take the whole world as their toilet!

They, the RIAA, wants to sell a tune they bought the rights in the 50s for a flat grand for a dollar. They have made their money back 1,000 times over but they wouldn't be satisfied if they made a billion times their investment. They are evil morons.

DO you think that is OK?

20.1.2009 12:50 #25

sammorris

At least Apple give something in return. The RIAA give nothing and take as much...

20.1.2009 13:07 #26

Mez

Yes, I don't like Apple but most of the problems I complained about were not Apple's making. It is the RIAA who are the greedy pigs not Apple. At most, Apple is greedy, not greedy pigs. It is the RIAA that suffers the most under their own stupidity.

21.1.2009 12:13 #27

AfterDawn: News