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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul



Monday, April 02, 2007

EMI Drops DRM, iTunes First to Sign On

Me, in WinInfo:
Music giant EMI this morning announced that it would be releasing its entire catalog without digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, the first of the four largest music companies to do so. In addition, EMI announced that Apple's iTunes would be the first online music service to sell these unrestricted files starting in May.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Monday that the DRM-free versions of individual songs will offer twice the quality of the DRM-restricted versions, meaning that they will be encoded using the 256 Kbps AAC audio format, compared to 128 Kbps for the original versions. (In a bit of showmanship, Jobs claimed that the 128 Kbps files already offered "the best audio quality" offered by any mainstream digital music service, which is demonstrably untrue: All Windows Media-based online services already offer dramatically higher quality music files than does Apple.) The new songs will cost $1.29 in the US, compared to 99 cents for the restricted versions.

In a nice nod toward users, Apple will also allow its customers to upgrade any existing EMI song purchases to the new unrestricted format for 30 cents per song.
Related: Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store

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