DRM-free Music on iTunes
Joyous news today: iTunes will carry label EMI's entire catalog in higher-quality, DRM-free form
some important bits: they will be priced at 1.29 instead of 0.99; old, DRMed tracks can be upgraded by paying the difference; albums will be upgraded with no price difference; Beatles music will still not be among the offerings
This is an important step forward for the music industry. Granted, to anyone who knows anything about music it has been an obvious necessity for a long time now, but that doesn't equate to actual practice. It was impossible to tell how long it would take for this to come about, and I am grateful it started as soon as it has.
I predict that the music industry is going to see a quick leap in sales as many of the holdouts who didn't want to restrict themselves with locked-up music start buying digital music. That will be strong incentive for other large labels to begin offering their music similarly freed.
Steve Jobs has now offered proof that he was serious when he wrote in his February open letter that whenever a label was ready to commit to distributing DRM-free music, Apple was ready as well. Major kudos to you, sir.
The trend has gained its foothold. Now it's only a matter of time.
Next on the agenda: decriminalizing the file-sharing of copyrighted tracks