EMI and Apple's DRM-Free Experiment

Sorry, Beatles fans: EMI's big announcement in London did indeed turn out to involve DRM--or the lack thereof--rather than the Fab Four. And it was, indeed, a biggie: Most of the music owned by the company will be available on iTunes in both standard 99-cent protected form and in higher-quality, DRM-free versions for $1.29 a track.

(Apparently, EMI did confirm that the Beatles are headed for digital delivery eventually, by the way--but we've known that for awhile.)

The $1.29 downloads of most everything else EMI controls will be in AAC form, not MP3.
But they should work with iPod-compatible gadgets such as music streamers that haven't been able to deal with iTunes Music Store purchases before. And if you convert them from AAC into MP3, you'll be able to use 'em anywhere there's digital music, basically--including on non-Apple audio players.

Folks who've already bought protected versions of songs will be able to upgrade them by paying the 30-cent difference. And EMI says that it'll work with other online music purveyors, too, and that we may see DRM-free music in MP3 and WMA formats.

I'm still full of questions that I haven't seen answered in coverage of the event--and many of them involve just what EMI will say is okay to do with these unprotected tracks. Presumably, the company still doesn't want you to make unlimited copies of them and give them to all your pals, even if there's nothing technically preventing you from doing so. But if it's for your own personal use, is there anything EMI will still say you shouldn't do with this music?

Bigger question: Will the rest of the industry climb on board this bandwagon? The initial round of punditry from analysts and others says that EMI, which has a reputation for being willing to experiment--and how many music companies can you say that about?--may be alone on this for awhile. We'll see. But I'd love to see this work well enough that we'll eventually look back on it as the beginning of the end for DRM (at least DRM in its current, proprietary, irritating form).

Time for a quick poll....

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