Probably a decent hit to your wallet.
The anticipated “one more thing” announcement made at the annual spectacle known as Macworld was Apple’s decision to (finally) remove digital rights management from its iTunes store.
This means that songs purchased from the iTunes store won’t be tied solely to an iPod device. Not that that must have been a huge concern for Apple as I believe they more than have the mp3 player market cornered.
These DRM-free tracks are also in the higher quality AAC format, compared to outdated mp3s.
The stink seems to have come from the music labels themselves, the big four EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal.
Well, not EMI, it has been offering DRM-free tracks through iTunes for about a year, known as iTunes Plus tracks.
The four labels together have offered their tracks to Amazon’s music store as DRM-free for a year.
Before the Macworld announcement about 3m tracks were available as iTunes Plus, mostly from EMI.
Finally, the three remaining labels conceded, but it seems to come as a cost to the consumer.
iTunes will now offer more than 8m of its 10m tracks at DRM-free as iTunes Plus, however they twisted Apple’s arm in creating a staggered pricing scheme for the new tracks.
On April Fools Day (natch) Apple will adopt the three-tiered pricing structure (in the US) at $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29 accordingly.
iTunes Plus tracks presently cost $0.99, however, Macworld keynote speaker Phil Schiller pinky-swore that more songs will cost $0.69 rather than $1.29 after the April 1 passover.
Another, rather unreported clause comes in the iTunes Plus upgrade option. Users can choose to upgrade their non-DRM-free tracks to iTunes Plus for a nominal fee of $0.30.
However, there’s a catch.
It’s an all or nothing sort of deal. Users can not choose which tracks they want to upgrade, it’s either the entire library, or nothing.
Peculiar.
However, not all songs are available for upgrade, meaning Apple will scour your library for all your upgradable tracks and throw you an offer for the whole deal.
An average music library can vary, but lets diagram a user with 2,000 songs, who could look at shelling out $700 for the DRM-free upgrade. And that number would increase on a daily basis as Apple includes new tracks available for upgrade.
It’s evil no doubt, but who’s to blame, Apple or those ill-fated music labels?
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