Apple kills off DRM for whole iTunes music catalog

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/06/live-phil-schillers-macworld-2009-keynote/

by tptacek • 18 years ago

122 88 18 years ago

crunchgear.com

tptacek11• 18 years ago

Did not see that one coming.

unalone6• 18 years ago

Nor I. What a pleasant surprise.

sdfx2• 18 years ago

They had a part of their library drm-free for a while now. I find it more surprising that they changed their position on their pricing scheme. Didn't they even cancel their deal with NBC because they were not willing to allow flexible pricing on their videos last year?

tptacek11• 18 years ago

The DRM-free portion of the iTunes library cost extra money, and most tracks didn't have that option.

My uneducated guess is that the 1.69 pricing tier is a trade for stripping DRM off the backcatalogue.

cstejerean• 18 years ago

I think entire catalog DRM free + iTunes Store over 3G (instead of just WiFi) were pretty good reasons to finally allow variable pricing.

jkkramer• 18 years ago

Apple and Jobs have actually been in favor of this for a while, but were prevented from doing it by the music industry. See http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Quote: "The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. ... This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store."

Alex3917• 18 years ago

Well I just voted with my dollars and upgraded my whole library. It finished surprisingly fast considering their servers must be getting hammered right now.

tptacek11• 18 years ago

How does the upgrade work?

jhawk28• 18 years ago

Go to the music store. There is an iTunes Plus link under quick links.

noisebleed• 18 years ago

Based on how FairPlay works, and how quickly the conversion happens, I think itunes probably just gets permission from Apple's servers to permanently decrypt the files: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#How_it_works

bradgessler6• 18 years ago

Do none of you find it annoying that you have to pay to remove DRM from music that you already paid for? I think this is ludicrous.

unalone6• 18 years ago

When you bought the music, you bought it under the DRM agreement. By paying for it, you said you thought it was worth it. And your payment paid for Apple's servers as this happened.

Yeah, it stinks that you have to upgrade. But they aren't forcing it. I'm keeping my DRMed tracks the same until I have a reason to remove the DRM. It's not costing me anything. And I know this is a one-time deal, that I'll never have to pay extra for future tunes.

Annoying? Yes. Ludicrous? No.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

Some of this is probably for accounting purposes as well. It's the same as when the wireless-G drivers on some device were released after the fact - apple charged existing owners $10 to upgrade so as to not fall afoul of laws regarding earned and deferred incomes.

lallysingh• 18 years ago

iTunes+ also doubles the bitrate on that music.

wmeredith• 18 years ago

Just burn the tracks to a CD-RW and then re-import them. This has always been the free way to upgrade your iTunes music.

pxlpshr• 18 years ago

such grand news!!

Tonight at the super table, think about being the hackers on the opposite side of this, trying to make a company around viable DRM technology. Gotta pour a little drink out for them... :)

tptacek11• 18 years ago

A really good friend of mine works on Blu-Ray BD+. I don't get the feeling he needs any of my sympathy.

Jasber• 18 years ago

To upgrade your library go to the iTunes Store. On the right side you'll see iTunes Plus (x). Go there and you can upgrade.

I'm not terribly excited about paying again for the same music, but I hate DRM enough to make this 1-time upgrade.

It looks like we might be in the middle of a pricing war between Amazon and iTunes:

iTunes: $.99 + DRM

Amazon: $.89 + No DRM

iTunes: $.69 + No DRM

Anyone care to guess how low online music will go?

tptacek11• 18 years ago

$0.30 a song. A significant amount of money for me (and it doesn't detect most of my tracks; I've run one too many ruby scripts on my iTunes Library file). Not worth it.

tdavis3• 18 years ago

Honestly, if you don't think a piece of music is worth 30¢, you don't really deserve to listen to it.

rufo• 18 years ago

It doesn't use the tags, it looks up your account history. The MacBook Pro I'm sitting in front of doesn't have any of the music it's offering to upgrade to iTunes Plus.

puffythefish• 18 years ago

Is there a way to just "upgrade" certain songs instead of your entire library?

pavelludiq• 18 years ago

-10 evil point for apple!

bradgessler6• 18 years ago

+10 evil for apple asking me to pay more money to "upgrade" my DRM tracks to iTunes+

Net: 0

GHFigs4• 18 years ago

How it that evil? You're getting something other than what you originally paid for.

llimllib• 18 years ago

I don't see .69 songs yet? When does that take effect, I wonder.

sdfx2• 18 years ago

End of Q1

Retric3• 18 years ago

The most important option IMO:

    * MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution Glossy Widescreen Display
    * MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution Antiglare Widescreen Display [Add $50.00]

chriskelley• 18 years ago

Nice, can't stand the glossy screens on the new machines. Wish they had this option for the 15".

mrtron2• 18 years ago

I still don't understand people's problems with glossy.

I have glossy and it is just fine inside, outside, at home, at the coffee shop, etc. I have had to once or twice tilt my screen to avoid some glare.

Do you really have a lot of glare all the time? Do you wear a spelunking hat at work? :)

ibsulon• 18 years ago

I have lights behind me at home that can't always be turned off. (IE, if someone's in the kitchen.) It's annoying.

Retric3• 18 years ago

Glare is one problem, but I find seeing my reflection in the screen extremely distracting. Something about that human face keeps pulling me out of the "zone" while I try to code.

PS: I don't know of a better word than "zone" so I hereby name that state Zem, it's like Meditation with the added creativity of Rem sleep. Feel free to start using it in everyday speech.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

If I needed a shaving mirror, I'd buy a shaving mirror. They're cheaper.

Andys• 18 years ago

Glossy screens are a killer if you like working in areas with lots of natural light or sunlight.

Try wearing a white tshirt, sitting in partial sunlight, and using a glossy LCD>

Having said that, I find that smaller screens are fine with glossy - like my Acer Aspire One netbook. The bigger the screen, the more of a problem it is.

awt• 18 years ago

Perhaps it affects people who prefer a light on dark color scheme as opposed to dark on light. Glossy doesn't bother me at all, but there is a lot of white on my screen.

alexfarran• 18 years ago

Cool. Does that mean we can have a linux client now?

jwinter• 18 years ago

Amazon mp3 supports Linux. It added full album downloads via Linux a few months ago.

Tichy4• 18 years ago

They are not in Europe yet, though, or are they?

chops• 18 years ago

This is very exciting. I've always bought MP3s from Amazon exclusively because I knew for sure that all Amazon's files are DRM free. With this move by iTunes, it's likely that I'll be picking up some albums on iTunes now if I can't get them in MP3 format from Amazon. Before, I would just live without the music, or buy the CD and rip it.

DLWormwood• 18 years ago

> With this move by iTunes, it's likely that I'll be picking up some albums on iTunes now if I can't get them in MP3 format from Amazon.

And you won't be able to get them at iTunes either, they use a latter variant of the MPEG codec. (AAC, perhaps you heard of it.)

The good news is that AAC is gaining momentum as a player format. Both the Wii and PSP play it with some SanDisk players supporting. Heck, even the Zune supports it now...

wastedbrains3• 18 years ago

Awesome so any good music recommendations, I have never bought from iTunes and I can now, so what should I get?

wastedbrains3• 18 years ago

Hmmm really voting with your wallet to not buy DRM music and then supporting the release of not DRM music is a bad thing?

arthurk• 18 years ago

Hacker News is not about music recommendations. Read http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

andreyf2• 18 years ago

Check out: http://thefeelgood.com/

streblo• 18 years ago

Is the DRM gone for movies and tv shows too?

jonknee• 18 years ago

No. Some music videos are though ($.60 upgrade fee according to the conversion page.)

quizbiz• 18 years ago

What a phenomenal gesture towards the interest of consumers.

Tichy4• 18 years ago

Does DRM-free mean that they don't even encode the name of the buyer into the files?

Apple kills off DRM for whole iTunes music catalog

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