DRM-less Music

Today in the London (UK), Apple and EMI has just announced that they will offer DRM-less music. Sound quality of the tracks will be doubled at 256 kbps AAC. This DRM-less tracks will be offered at a higher price rather than the normal tracks, about $0.30 more (US$1.29).

Music videos will also be DRM-less and the price will remain the same unlike the music.

Album will also be DRM-less and with no premium charge as well.

OK, that's a lot of jargon and weird languages. Let's start from the beginning. DRM is short for Digital Rights Management and basically it's a copyright control. It allows the major companies to control the distribution of its product (music, movies, etc) cause as you know, it's harder to control digital stuff as suppose to CDs or DVDs. Let's have a look at Apple iTunes as an example. The music that you download from iTunes can only be played in iTunes. You could also transfer it to your iPod and burn it to a CD as a backup for several times. But this is not the same with all provider, other might have different rules.

That's why you need to always check what is the terms of your download purchase whether it can be played everywhere, by anything, and so on.

So one advantage with having no DRM means that you can buy music from iTunes and play it with your iRiver, Creative Zen or any other player instead of just using your iPod.

This is a big move by EMI and one that will definitely 'rocked' the music industry. There is no plan by other major record label to follow EMI footsteps. Even though the main focus of the announcement is about DRM, people seems to be more excited with the fact that the music from EMI will be better in quality, something that has been an issue in the past.

The DRM-less music will be available from May. For more information, refer to Apple's press release here.