On Monday, EMI made an announcement. They will offer their entire music library for download through iTunes without the incredibly restrictive DRM protection that has put off many from downloading music legally through the internet.
Music has been available to download without restriction for sometime through services such as eMusic, but this only includes music from the independant labels, and not the big four - Sony BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner. This has meant that most of the Top 40 singles and albums have not been available other than through protected formats. The big downside of this has been that if someone wishes to download such music they have to use a Windows or Mac computer and in the case of iTunes, only use an iPod as the digital music player.
Now hopefully the ball has started to roll. No doubt the remaining three music labels will be watching to see what happens with the EMI library and if it is succesfull, will follow suit meaning that music almost all music will be available over the web. The only thing making the CD more attractive is the audio quality.
Actually, audio quality was mentioned as part of EMI's announcement. Tracks downloaded through iTunes will be encoded at 256kbps AAC which is vastly better than the music still encoded with DRM restrictions.
There is one downside to this development though. iTunes will be charging extra for the privilage of having higher quality DRM free tunes which will be made available as a premium download at 99p as opposed to 79p for the standard download.
I will be interested to see if this new deal means that eMusic eventually gets music from EMI and any other label that makes a similar deal. If it does, I also wonder whether there will be alterations in the subscription model that currently exists (£8.99 for 30 downloads).
Music has been available to download without restriction for sometime through services such as eMusic, but this only includes music from the independant labels, and not the big four - Sony BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner. This has meant that most of the Top 40 singles and albums have not been available other than through protected formats. The big downside of this has been that if someone wishes to download such music they have to use a Windows or Mac computer and in the case of iTunes, only use an iPod as the digital music player.
Now hopefully the ball has started to roll. No doubt the remaining three music labels will be watching to see what happens with the EMI library and if it is succesfull, will follow suit meaning that music almost all music will be available over the web. The only thing making the CD more attractive is the audio quality.
Actually, audio quality was mentioned as part of EMI's announcement. Tracks downloaded through iTunes will be encoded at 256kbps AAC which is vastly better than the music still encoded with DRM restrictions.
There is one downside to this development though. iTunes will be charging extra for the privilage of having higher quality DRM free tunes which will be made available as a premium download at 99p as opposed to 79p for the standard download.
I will be interested to see if this new deal means that eMusic eventually gets music from EMI and any other label that makes a similar deal. If it does, I also wonder whether there will be alterations in the subscription model that currently exists (£8.99 for 30 downloads).