Official: EMI Goes DRM-Free

It’s true: EMI’s entire music catalog will be available DRM-free next month:

Apple® today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.

Some details:

With DRM-free music from the EMI catalog, iTunes customers will have the ability to download tracks from their favorite EMI artists without any usage restrictions that limit the types of devices or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. DRM-free songs purchased from the iTunes Store will be encoded in AAC at 256 kbps, twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps, and will play on all iPods, Mac® or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.

iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free format for 30 cents a song. All EMI music videos will also be available in DRM-free format with no change in price.

I think this demonstrates that Steve Jobs letter opposing DRM was sincere. And the sweetener of higher prices makes it more likely that we’ll see other labels jumping on the bandwagon in the coming months. Presumably, Apple passes most of that 30 cent hike on to EMI, which means they’re basically getting an extra 30 cents for nothing every time a customer opts for the DRM-free version of the song. The other labels may love DRM, but I bet they love free money more.

It will be interesting to see (and whether Apple tells us) how many customers choose unshackled versions of the music they buy. I think it’s worth the extra money, but a lot of customers may simply feel they’re happy with buying only iPods, or maybe they figure they’ll download illicit conversion software if they ever need to switch formats.

Comments Posted in: DMCA, DRM & Piracy