Apple's iTunes Plus project launched today, giving me the option to strip digital rights management (DRM) from a select subset of my musical library for 30 cents per affected song. As the promotion only covers a fraction of the total available iTunes Store, I was curious to see how many I would be offered, and at the end of the first day for this promotion, I could upgrade 130 songs for $33.75, Apple says.What would I get?
With iTunes Plus, I would remove the iTunes and iPod-only barrier from these songs, letting me pass songs to friends, copy to multiple computers, or in theory, play on other, inferior music devices. Additionally, the songs would be offered in higher quality bit rates.On the first day of announcement, bands in my purchase history that are available include Coldplay, Beastie Boys, Royksopp, The Chemical Brothers, M83, Fatboy Slim and Cosmic Gate.
While others are excited about the move and hate all things DRM-related, I haven't seen Apple's limitations as much of a hindrance to the way I enjoy music. The iTunes and iPod combination work for me, and I won't be paying a premium to convert my library to iTunes Plus any time soon, whether it was $3.75, $33.75 or $337.50.
I don't use anything but iTunes and iPod but I paid it anyway. I really do hate DRM and since money talks louder than anything, I figure that this is the best way to make my voice heard. Plus it only cost me around $15. :)
ReplyDeleteGal
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article1871173.ece
ReplyDeleteLouis, Did you have a comment on this story? Seems to fit in with this topic.
Larry M.
Larry, to answer your question, I think Apple would have been better served to let people know up front that they were going to tag downloaded songs this way. If they could, in fact, tag these songs, without DRM, it should become the new standard. The old rules on copyright still apply. They flubbed the openness story, but are doing right to obey the law.
ReplyDeleteI pretty much just use iTunes (and just on one machine now) and 3 iPods (yeah, that's excessive), but I've ponied up the cash to get what I can from my library.
ReplyDeleteI ended up replying with a blog post iTunes Plus myself. It was getting a bit long...