One piece of MacWorld-related big news that doesn’t involve Steve Jobs’ health: The iTunes Store is apparently going to embrace the idea of dynamic pricing (no more 99-cents-per-song standard) and ditch digital-rights management in the near future. According to Peter Kafka, the pricing for songs will be tiered between 79 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29. No word on whether Amazon’s practice of engaging in loss-leading deep discounts will be copied by iTunes, although the price-slashing they’ve engaged in up to this point, and the fact that unlike Amazon they’re not trying to take marketshare away from an already-established competitor, would make me think that not many $1.99 albums are in the offing. But hey, I’m ready to be surprised!
The other part of the announcement—regarding iTunes possibly going DRM-free—involves an issue that’s hard to gauge as far as whether or not the public cares. My personal feeling on the whole digital-rights management thing is that people don’t really care, as long as what they’ve purchased works. So Apple’s “five devices per track” limit on each protected track seems generous on first blush, but once you have a track in your library for longer than, say, the lifespan of two hard drives and three iPods (or vice versa, or… well, you get my point), you’re forced into buying the damn thing all over again. We’ve heard for a while that Jobs and Apple have wanted to strip any protections from their files, only to face resistance from the labels; perhaps one of the bigwigs who wanted to play hardball with Apple finally upgraded his iPhone after the holidays, only to get frustrated when he couldn’t hear the copy of Nikka Costa’s “Like A Feather” he’d bought on a drunken late-night “Genius Just For You” spree.
Confirmed: iTunes Going DRM-Free. Unclear: Does Anyone Care? [Media Memo]
It’s all gonna be free soon anyway (as if it’s not already) - who cares.
Last time I hit the 5 device limit it was very easy to cancel them all from within iTunes. You’re allowed to do it once per year, IIRC.
So CNet’s Greg Sandoval has a decent summary article up, that acknowledges the give-and-take between DRM and song pricing.
(”…the celebration over their appearance at the country’s largest music retailer may be overshadowed by increased prices on some hit songs, which might be seen by some as an Apple surrender on pricing. Apple fans have long applauded the company for holding the line on pricing despite loud complaints from the major music labels.”)
Which is good reporting on Sandoval’s part, but I remain dumbfounded that his November “letter to Steve Jobs” didn’t acknowledge this inevitable quid pro quo. Six weeks ago he made it sound like all the intransigent Apple/Jobs had to do was be nice and let the labels “negotiate” with him. Well, they negotiated, and the consumer is gaining something and losing something (arguably, something more important to them than the gain in DRM; who do we think buys the hit songs the labels want to price higher — wealthy 47-year-olds?). Would it have been so hard for Sandoval to suggest this back then?
Sorry, I know this is inside-baseball, but that earlier piece by him still ticks me off. It was half the story, at best. Finally we have the other half.
@Hamm Beerger: Correct.
I wipe my hard drive every 4-6 months since I always pick up some malware nastiness in my travels and have never had an issue with the DRM. While it says once per year, I was able to do it twice in 2008…
Those Amazon loss leaders have gotten more of my coin that I’d care to admit. If this variable price thing doesn’t continue to bring prices down, the lack of DRM is irrelevant for me because I’m not buying music there anyway. Also, I’m more interested in bit rates going up than DRM going away.
I have an iTunes library that I have used from 6 different computers, several of which have had the OS wiped and reinstalled in the last year. I’ve never had to authorize any of the one machine I used to create the library in the first place.
DRM can be a major pain if you move between countries. I’ve had to open iTunes accounts in Canada and the UK and trying to remember passwords and logins far after the fact is frustrating.
I think this is fan-freaking-tastic, but I also have to say that Apple is moving too slow. They just got around to removing DRM (whereas Napster, Amazon MP3, Zune Marketplace and Rhapsody removed the restrictions long ago - and many of them alrady have variable pricing, too). Then again, when you’re King, you don’t have to really do anything.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty kickass that they removed the restrictions, but by now I tend to get much of my music from Lala.com - variable pricing on par with what Apple will be offering, I can listen to my entire home collection at work (or any other computer with an internet connection), sample songs in their entirety before I buy them, and buy them without DRM. And, apparently they’re coming up with an iPhone app soon.
Great to see the death bell for music DRM, though.
I never got the plaintive wails over the five-device limit. It’s really five iTunes libraries/signins; if you have a back-up of your iTunes library on an external hard drive (everybody: back up your stuff!) instead of ripping from your iPod, then you don’t have to use up another of your five when you start on a new computer, etc. DRM is a pain generally, but that never struck me as where the hassle originated.
I think it’s honestly more psychological than anything else. Knowing that you flat-out own the file and it cannot be disabled by any mistakes you make with your computer (short of erasing it) is very comforting.
I think the “five devices” thing is “five devices [i]at the same time[/i] belonging to one user account” per DRM track.
As long as you properly deauthorize then re-authorize a device in iTunes if you switch computers, you don’t “lose” a device this way. Even so, while I don’t hold much faith in Apple support, I’m guessing you could explain yourself back into more devices.. just more of a hassle.
However, correct me if I’m wrong!
@Adairdevil: well, my friend’s hard drive on his computer just died, and he had his library on an external hd; because itunes recognized the new hd as a “new device,” and he’d already been through a few ipods and an iphone, he had to go through a rigamarole to get his (only refurbished, not new) computer to play his purchased tracks. if crashes were predictable, of course, it’d be a lot easier to deauthorize computers pre-their going kablooey…
I think the main line against DRM was created when companies with proprietary DRM went under, effectively taking the use of legitimately-purchased files from their former consumers. After these stories started to circulate, consumers started looking for files without DRM.
I think iTunes is still an exception to this, because no one expects iTunes to eventually go under. You never know what might happen though…
This might be a good step to regain some faith with people that have been buying exclusively from Amazon of iTunes Plus.
I think this is a huge change for Apple. I steer clear of buying music from the iTunes store due to the DRM. If I bought it on CD I could make copies all I wanted without any restrictions (and they are of much higher quality than the MP3 download), so why should a digital download be any different.
I wonder if we will be able to redownload prior purchases without DRM? Doubtful, but I can dream.
Without the DRM, theoretically, you could by tunes from the iTunes Store and play them on a non-Apple MP3 player.
Interesting development.
To be fair to Apple, it was the labels who refused to give up the DRM after Apple decided they were willing to let it go (which still took them too long).
@revmatty: Exactly. This is what’s gotten lost in a lot of the coverage. That and the fact that Steve Jobs went from Record Industry Savior in 2003 to Record Industry Pariah in 2004-05 in record time.