DRM Free iTunes and Pricing Changes
In 2003 Apple changed the face of legal MP3 downloads by opening the iTunes Store. What set iTunes apart from other online digital music stores was it’s flat rate $0.99 USD cent per track and no monthly subscription fee pricing scheme. This was an attractive price for consumers who would want to use the store to stock their new iPods with tracks direct from Apple. It also made iTunes the top online music store from almost day one of it’s existence.
To keep the record labels happy that the music would not be pirated Apple included Digital Rights Management (DRM) on the tracks. DRM is a copy protection scheme that kept people from trading tracks in peer to peer file trading venues such as the old Napster. On the downside it kept people from putting the tracks on multiple devices. It is essentially like buying a CD that can play in only 1 CD player – you could play it on your home stereo CD player but not on your computer or car stereo.
The tech community has been complaining about DRM for years claiming that if they buy a track they should not be limited on which devices they could use it on.
Yesterday Apple announced that DRM would be removed from all tracks by April of 2009. In conjunction with this, however, is a pricing change. Tracks will now be available for $0.69 USD, $0.99 USD or $1.29 USD. The higher price would be for hot tunes, the lower for oldies and the middle for everything else. In doing this Apple retains some simplicity (though not keeping it as simple as it was) while allowing people more freedom in using their purchased tracks.
Though that sounds like a win-win for Apple it may not be so. Most people don’t even know what DRM is. Your average iPod owner could care less about it. It’s only the techies who know what it is and how it impacts their use of their music. For those people (and everyone else) other DRM free music stores have sprouted up (eMusic, Amazon MP3,
Still I think iTunes will be safe since it is directly tied to the iTunes software that comes with every new iPod giving it a distinct advantage in the marketplace. I wonder how long it will take for some other online music store to challenge that practice is a way similar to how Microsoft was challenged on bundling Internet Explorer with it’s Windows operating system.
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