Andre Yoskowitz
30 May 2007 13:12
After announcing last month that they would be launching EMI's full catalogue DRM-free on their iTunes platform, Apple finally announced that they had made good on their promise and iTunes Plus was launched this morning.
The tracks are in AAC form, DRM-free and encoded at 256kpbs, but will cost $1.29, a 30 cent premium over all DRM infested tracks.
User can choose to upgrade their old DRM versions of the track to the new DRM-free version for 30 cents as well so they do not need to purchase the song all over again.
There will still be the option however, to purcahse EMI's tracks with DRM and encoded at 128kbps for the original 99 cents. Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that he hopes to have 50 percent of Apple's catalogue DRM-free by the end of 2007. This follows statements made by Jobs that DRM did nothing to prevent piracy.
"This is a tremendous milestone for digital music," said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group. "Consumers are going to love listening to higher quality iTunes Plus tracks from their favorite EMI artists with no usage restrictions."
However, if you are planning to download the new DRM-free music and share over P2P networks, forget about it. All files you download are embedded with your name and email address, which will definetely come back to haunt you if you were to get caught illegally uploading the new songs.
"No doubt lots of folks will be looking carefully to see how this goes over with the market," JupiterResearch senior analyst Michael Gartenberg said.
We will be watching as well.
Source:
BetaNews