London, 2 April 2007
EMI Music today announces that it is making all of its music catalogue at a higher quality (higher bitrate) and free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions. EMI Music is giving an option to online music retailer to sell the DRM-free music in the format of their choice. EMI Music group is giving customers the option to purchase music with DRM at a lower price with lower bitrate or to purchase DRM-free music at higher bitrate.
Apple‘s iTunes Store is the first online music store to bring EMI’s offering to the consumer. The pricing and offers are good only for tracks by EMI Artists:
- Individual track encoded in 128 kbps AAC with Apple FairPlay DRM costs $0.99/€0.99/£0.79
- Individual track encoded in DRM-free 256 kbps AAC costs $0.99/€0.99/£0.79
- iTunes customers can upgrade their previoulsly purchased 128 kbps AAC with DRM to DRM-free 256 kbps AAC for only $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track
- Complete album purchased on iTunes is automatically sold as DRM-free 256 kbps AAC at no extra costs
EMI Music will still employ DRM on digital music subscriptions, due to the nature of the service itself.
In addition to the deal with Apple, EMI also states that such deal will be made available to other online music store. EMI has given online music stores the options to encode the songs in the format of their choice (AAC, MP3, WMA, or any other unprotected format).
On February 6th, 2007, Apple published Steve Jobs’ open letter on Music and Digital Rights Management (DRM). In the letter, Steve Jobs calls for the removal of DRM from online music store, noting that music has been sold without any digital restrictions for years in the forms of records, tapes, and CD. EMI Music then contacted Apple to offer DRM-free digital music download.
EMI Music Group Press Release:
http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm