Holger’s weblog

DRM free music – EMI teams up with Apple

April 2nd, 2007

The press conference in London is still underway, but the press release is already available on EMI’s website and earlier rumours that were started by a Wall Street Journal article yesterday have been confirmed: EMI is releasing “DRM-free superior quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire” and “Apple’s iTunes Store will be the first online music store to sell EMI’s new downloads”.

This is exciting news indeed – regular readers know that I have explained more than once why DRM is not a good idea and will hurt our cultural heritage as well as the music industry’s bottom line in the long run. Let’s hope that this is the beginning of the end of DRM – EMI is only the third largest label, but if this is a success (and my prediction is that it will be), the others will have to follow suit. And there is hope that what works in the music industry might work in the movie download business as well.

Why is this a good idea for EMI and won’t it hurt their sales figures? I believe that it’s a good idea because finally consumers are given a choice. So far, illegal downloads have provided a better user experience than legal downloads – it was always possible to freely copy illegally downloaded music, burn it to as many CDs as the user wanted, use it on many different digital devices etc., whereas DRM prevented a lot of legitimate uses. I resorted to buying CDs, others may have just downloaded DRM-free tracks from illegal sources. Now, for the first time, will I even consider buying downloadable music – and chances are that EMI will have most of what I’m looking for because many bands I like are with christian labels that are part of EMI’s christian music group. I personally wish EMI a lot of success with their smart move, which many in the industry may see as bold and some even as suicidal.

Technorati : Apple, DRM, EMI, iTunes, legal downloads

Entry Filed under: Christian Music,Technology