EMI and Apple: brilliant

From May, EMI artists will have a new kind of iTunes offering: double bitrate, DRM-free tracks for an extra 30 cents per track. Excellent, and about bloody time too.

The really smart thing for iTunes users to do now would be to boycott *all* DRMed music on iTunes and fill yer boots with EMI’s DRM-free offerings and nothing but EMI’s DRM-free offerings. Money talks.


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0 responses to “EMI and Apple: brilliant”

  1. …but when sales of the more expensive, non-DRM option fail to match the cheaper, restricted one, Apple will delight in telling us that customers actually *want* DRM.

  2. Gary

    I dunno. I think Jobs means it when he says DRM is bad. But if the EMI experiment doesn’t work there’ll certainly be a lot of major labels saying “we told you so”.

  3. Gary

    It looks like UK pricing will be 99p/track, but albums will remain the same price as at present. Which is just as well, or they’d be more expensive than the physical CD.

  4. Anonymous

    Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Double rate, alright, yeah!

    Er, I don’t keep up much with who’s on what label; any examples of EMI artists that people would like to share?

  5. Er, that was me. Don’t know why I got logged out. Maybe due to your upgrade?

  6. Anyway, at least now it says I’m logged in, and doesn’t display all the unnecessary fields. Big improvement.

  7. Even more brilliant: one-click upgrade of all your previously purchased EMI music! Genius.

  8. Well, answering my own question from the EMI website: I already have music from the following EMI artists: Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Dandy Warhols, Duran Duran, Beth Orton, Pink Floyd, Spandau Ballet, Chemical Brothers. And I may now buy some stuff from Norah Jones and Gorillaz.

  9. Gary

    Yeah, the logout’s because of the upgrade – I’ve moved the blog to a different server because I had too many things going on in the same webspace, and it was getting really confusing :)

  10. Back to the DRM. I was just wondering how much of this is EMI hoping to bolster revenue after the billions they expected to receive from Zune sales failed to materialise?

    Hmmm. Poor Zune sales. All round goo-egg-ness by removing DRM. How could our captains of industry ever have predicted that? they don’t have crystal balls (arf!). Or, web browsers by the look of it.

  11. Gary

    Wasn’t it Universal that was counting on Zune cash?

    Anyway, yeah, EMI is in a “sod it, we’ve got nothing to lose” position right now.

  12. Univesal/EMI – it’s all the one great big evil lizardy cash conspiracy.

  13. Gary

    heh.