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its about time..this means you can now play itunes purchases on other players besides the ipod
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Re: ITUNES does away with DRM
What was their motivation? People not buying as much due to DRM, or people who find ways to bypass the DRM? -
Re: ITUNES does away with DRM
<span style="font-style: italic">general concensus seems to be that it was the increasing amount of DRM free players on the market...</span>
Starting today, you can feast on all the Digital Rights Management-free music you want at iTunes. Yes, there's a weird, tiered pricing scheme and Apple is making you pay to "upgrade" your old music to DRM-free status, but none of that really matters. The last soldier has fallen and DRM—at least for music—is officially dead.
Truth be told, I'm neither happy nor sad about this turn of events. Frankly, it was inevitable. As more and more music services started rolling out DRM-free MP3s, I knew that the tide was turning. The music industry stopped fighting and decided to work with what they had to save what's left of their business. So it's good news for music lovers and—to a certain extent—musicians and the record industry. Musicians who were likely feeling the pinch of diminishing revenues, as consumers bought fewer albums and more singles (kind of like the old days), are probably relieved that they don't have to worry about their record labels further disenfranchising their audiences. People can love music in any way they want now—on iTunes, any player that likes iTunes file formats, or on one or more iPods. They can even share the music if they so choose. This should make all those DRM-hating music fans very happy. Perhaps they'll even stop carping about how horrible DRM is and what monsters record label execs must be. That makes me happy because I was tired of hearing their complaints.
Thing is, I have this gnawing feeling that things could still go horribly wrong. Musical content, for all intents and purposes, has officially lost its content protection. I'm not talking about copyright protection, mind you. You still can't take samples of music and turn it into your own commercial sound—unless you license that sample up front. But music content as a product has no protection after the initial purchase. This has to further limit the number of song sales for everyone from Kanye West to Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps they don't care because the real money is in concerts, endorsements, and other image licensing deals. New artists, though, don't have those opportunities. They'll have to work harder than ever to make a million-selling album.
And, what does this all mean for video? I've heard numerous reports explain that the movie industry is not ready to give up DRM. They see it as a lynchpin for protecting their business. The music industry once saw it that way, too. Eventually, you know that some studio and video service will agree to remove DRM from streaming and downloadable video content. Disney's decision to include digital copies of some of its movies with DVD purchases is likely the first step in this direction. I'm not saying that Disney intends to kill video DRM. However, just by showing consumers that it's willing to offer a portable version of its movie content with every purchase is enough to convince consumers that Disney will bend further. DRM for video will die, too. Movies will soon go from DVD to iPods to USB keys to a couple of home PCs. In the end, consumers will do what they want with the video they purchased, just as they do with music.
Again, this change will signal a paradigm shift in the movie making industry. Post theatrical release revenues could shrink, and the amount of product in the pipeline will likely diminish as revenues to produce new films simply doesn't come in—at least not at the same level as it did before DRM went away.
Look, I'm merely stating facts here. DRM is going to go away from virtually every avenue of our digital lives (Yes, I'm looking at you, e-books.). It'll be a brand new world, with open access and sharing for all the content we enjoy. There just won't be as much of it any more.
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Re: ITUNES does away with DRM
They also raised the price on some of the music. They will sell the more popular music for $1.29 and the less popular for $.99. I used to do I-tunes years ago but do Amazon.com because it was portable.Out of Many One People Online
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