Today at a combined event with Apple in London, EMI announced that it will be providing its entire catalogue of music DRM free through download services like iTunes. Finally one of the Big Four music labels saw the light when it comes to DRM.
In my opion DRM causes an increase in piracy: the extact opposite of what it’s meant to do. I hear a couple of songs that I like by some artist, and I don’t like any of their other music, I’m not going to go buy the whole CD. That’s where services like the iTunes store come in. They allow you buy individual songs at a cheap price. But these songs aren’t without problems. What if you have an mp3 player made by Creative? If you do, you can’t play these songs. At this point, I would have to depend other sources for my music.
EMI has finally realized this and dropped DRM from their entire catalogue that is sold online, begining with the iTunes store starting in May. These songs (and music videos), encoded in 256kbps AAC format, will cost $1.29 per song, and you can upgrade any previously purchased EMI songs for only $0.30.
Hopefully, the other music labels will follow suit. They’ll realize that EMI is right on this one, and DRM doesn’t solve piracy.