Apple Drops Anticopying Measures in iTunes

[DainBramaged]

In moves that will help shape the online future of the music business, Apple said Tuesday that it would remove anticopying restrictions on all of the songs in its popular iTunes store and allow record companies to set a range of prices for them.

Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 cents.

The music companies are hoping that their eagerly awaited compromise with Apple will give a lift to digital downloads. They will be able to make more money on their best-selling songs and increase the appeal of older ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/companies/07apple.html?_r=1&hp

[islandmkl]

1. love him or hate him...steve jobs has been showing and telling the labels...

how to actually MARKET their product...

i mean, how would he know...except he is selling millions (maybe billions) of their songs through his structure...and getting them money that they can't seem to figure out how to capture otherwise...

there are plenty of places to find music, but the delivery system has always been hindered by the labels..to their own demise...

[DainBramaged]

2. 2.4 BILLION songs sold through ITunes last year

The article also says that Apple will "remove" the DRM from your library for an additional 30 cents a song.

Cute.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. The management at record labels are...

...by and large very technophobic. Which is not to say that they're luddites or idiots - they just don't really seem to understand the technology. This should be pretty evident following the RIAA's capitulation on its efforts to sue individual copyright violators.

For reasons I don't fully understand, it seems like the management at the motion picture companies understand what's going on a lot better. I'm not entirely sure why record labels are so behind the times compared to their silver screen counterparts.

[islandmkl]

4. to be overly simplified:

the labels and many (still) artists want to sell a $15.95 CD, when most consumers PREFER to buy the songs they want...

Steve Jobs, and others, have tried to show the industry and the artists that selling 1 million of that ONE song works better, easier, and A LOT MORE OFTEN, than selling 100,000 cds (or however many)...

especially old catalog material...

[DainBramaged]

5. He is a thinker that should have been tapped to use his brain to solve

the problems we face rather than creating toys. HE WILL LIVE FOREVER. A modern Einstein of consumer electronics.

[TheHeathen]

6. You can buy DRM free MP3'S

from Amazon at a lower price.

http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b/ref=sa_menu_dmusic2?ie=UTF8&node=163856011&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1X8P5ADNSDTZ1BAKHV13