EMI, the music company which owns the rights to all the Beatles songs, and Apple Corp, the computer company which runs iTunes, made an announcement a few minutes ago. No, not the one you’re thinking. The other one.

EMI will be the first major label to offer DRM-free music on iTunes. It’s a kind of good news/bad news thing too - EMI songs will either be DRM free at a higher bit rate (256 kbps) but a higher cost ($1.29); or you can choose to get them at the usual Apple Store specs (128 kpbs, $.99). Presumably, this will be a form of market research. Buy the rights free version, everybody! If you have already bought EMI material, you can “upgrade” it by paying the difference.

It also represents a major shift in Jobsian thinking. He has held the line at price increases for years now, at the consternation of the record companies. But he’s hell-bent on making iTunes music DRM free, perhaps because it would extricate him from a few lawsuits in Europe, perhaps because he believes that consumers would rather buy unrestricted CDs, or perhaps because he believes they will rather buy unrestricted CDs in the future. He’s visionary like that.

Jobs says that half the iTunes catalog will be DRM-free by the end of the year. No word on when he starts squeezing the movie and TV people.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Copyright, Digital Wonderland, General, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.