Steve Jobs and EMI present "an exciting new digital offering" -- live!
By Thomas Ricker 
posted April 2nd 2007 7:58AM
posted April 2nd 2007 7:58AM
7:58 We just joined the conference call. Hey, was that the sound of a black, mock turtle neck?
8:04 Time for the show to start. Hello, Steve, Eric, anybody there?
8:06 Reader tip just in (thanks Chris O). Looking at page source from the webcast (which has yet to start) we see the following:
slide text 1: Value for money Choice Ease of Use
slide text 2: digital consumers stated that they agreed fully or somewhat with the statement "it is important to be able to transfer files between devices"
slide text 3: DRM Free -- Superior sound quality
slide text 4: DRM free tracks at twice the sound quality or Standard sound quality tracks with DRM. DRM free complete albums at twice the sound quality. Ability to upgrade already purchased tracks and albums. DRM free music videos
Seems pretty clear which way this is heading!
8:11 Webcast has started. Live music now playing from The Good, the Bad, and the Queen, not the remaining members of the Beatles. Couldn't they have saved this for the end?
8:16 Jeebus, they just started another song.
8:21 Press release out:
EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire.
Apple's iTunes store to be the first online music store to sell EMI's new downloads
January tests showed a 10:1 preference for higher quality tracks without DRM. New Premium tracks sold at price premium.
Premium quality will sit along side standard offerings.
8:28 First partner to support new DRM-free EMI music will be iTunes.
8:29 Steve Jobs now entering stage. Applause, tears. The next big step forward -- the move to completely DRM-free music. EMI is first, entire catalog available DRM-free -- globally -- in May.
8:30 Sounds like Steve is reading from a stack of cards -- this is not his normal polished delivery. Apple testing confirms that people will pay more for higher quality music that is interoperable across devices. 128-bit AAC encoding not good enough for audiophiles. Increases in storage enable higher audio quality tracks on devices. New versions of songs and albums are DRM-free and 256kbps AAC encoded for $1.29 per song. That extra $0.30 gives users DRM-free interoperability and superior quality. It's not a price increase but an additional iTunes product.
Previously purchased EMI songs can be upgrade for $0.30 per song.
DRM-free albums will be priced at the same price (but higher quality) as current, DRM-crippled albums.
Apple will reach out to other labels starting today to give them the same deal. Steve expects 50% of all tracks to be DRM-free by end of the year! That's 2.5 of the 5 million tracks currently on the site.
Steve opines: Some doubted our sincerity to break the iTunes bond between the store and iPod player. Hopefully, people can see that Apple is only concerned with doing the right thing for the customer.
8:35 Q&A has begun.
Q: When are the Beatles tracks going to be online?
Steve: "I want to know that too." chuckles.
Eric: "we're working on it, hopefully soon."
Regarding Nordic consumer groups, Steve says they are not offering anything new today that's not already available on DRM-free CDs.
Q: Is this a green light for piracy?
Eric: no, we take the view that we have to "trust consumers." Some will disappoint us. The idea is to give them the best music experience to grow sales and not diminish them.
EMI confident this will grow their sales. 1/4 of all sales digital by 2010. Hard to predict, but they think this will make their music more accessible to promote sales.
Q: Have talks begun with other majors?
Steve: EMI is pioneering something that will probably become very popular. Can't comment on any discussions. Again, Steve points out that CDs ship with DRM. Sony tried it... it didn't work.
Q: Are some of the majors being more difficult, if so, who?
Steve: I don't want to go into it, there are always leaders. Customers will love it, they get what they want. Music companies make more money by offering more value.
Q: Will DRM now be removed from videos such as Disney's where you (Steve) has a say?
Steve: I knew I was going to get that question today. Video is different, they never distributed 90% of their wares DRM free like music companies. So he doesn't hold the two in parallel.
Q: Now that the link between iPod and iTunes is broken, will there be a fall in sales?
Steve: No -- no link broken. You can already rip CDs and put songs on any player you want. Apple's success is based on having the best and easiest to use music store and players -- they've never felt any differently.
Q: Which other digital retailers has EMI spoken too?
Eric: We hope they all take this on. (avoids question)
Q: What's the point of keeping DRM on $0.99 tracks?
Steve: We don't want to raise prices on anybody. We'll continue what we started and offer more value for the money without taking anything away. Consumers make the choice.
Eric: Not everybody cares about interoperability or sound quality.
Q: Will EMI dictate pricing to other on-line music stores?
Eric: EMI sets the wholesale price, not the retail price. So prices may vary by other on-line music services.
8:59 That's it, a new age has begun! Well, in May anyway.
8:16 Jeebus, they just started another song.
8:21 Press release out:
EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire.
Apple's iTunes store to be the first online music store to sell EMI's new downloads
January tests showed a 10:1 preference for higher quality tracks without DRM. New Premium tracks sold at price premium.
Premium quality will sit along side standard offerings.
8:28 First partner to support new DRM-free EMI music will be iTunes.
8:29 Steve Jobs now entering stage. Applause, tears. The next big step forward -- the move to completely DRM-free music. EMI is first, entire catalog available DRM-free -- globally -- in May.
8:30 Sounds like Steve is reading from a stack of cards -- this is not his normal polished delivery. Apple testing confirms that people will pay more for higher quality music that is interoperable across devices. 128-bit AAC encoding not good enough for audiophiles. Increases in storage enable higher audio quality tracks on devices. New versions of songs and albums are DRM-free and 256kbps AAC encoded for $1.29 per song. That extra $0.30 gives users DRM-free interoperability and superior quality. It's not a price increase but an additional iTunes product.
Previously purchased EMI songs can be upgrade for $0.30 per song.
DRM-free albums will be priced at the same price (but higher quality) as current, DRM-crippled albums.
Apple will reach out to other labels starting today to give them the same deal. Steve expects 50% of all tracks to be DRM-free by end of the year! That's 2.5 of the 5 million tracks currently on the site.
Steve opines: Some doubted our sincerity to break the iTunes bond between the store and iPod player. Hopefully, people can see that Apple is only concerned with doing the right thing for the customer.
8:35 Q&A has begun.
Q: When are the Beatles tracks going to be online?
Steve: "I want to know that too." chuckles.
Eric: "we're working on it, hopefully soon."
Regarding Nordic consumer groups, Steve says they are not offering anything new today that's not already available on DRM-free CDs.
Q: Is this a green light for piracy?
Eric: no, we take the view that we have to "trust consumers." Some will disappoint us. The idea is to give them the best music experience to grow sales and not diminish them.
EMI confident this will grow their sales. 1/4 of all sales digital by 2010. Hard to predict, but they think this will make their music more accessible to promote sales.
Q: Have talks begun with other majors?
Steve: EMI is pioneering something that will probably become very popular. Can't comment on any discussions. Again, Steve points out that CDs ship with DRM. Sony tried it... it didn't work.
Q: Are some of the majors being more difficult, if so, who?
Steve: I don't want to go into it, there are always leaders. Customers will love it, they get what they want. Music companies make more money by offering more value.
Q: Will DRM now be removed from videos such as Disney's where you (Steve) has a say?
Steve: I knew I was going to get that question today. Video is different, they never distributed 90% of their wares DRM free like music companies. So he doesn't hold the two in parallel.
Q: Now that the link between iPod and iTunes is broken, will there be a fall in sales?
Steve: No -- no link broken. You can already rip CDs and put songs on any player you want. Apple's success is based on having the best and easiest to use music store and players -- they've never felt any differently.
Q: Which other digital retailers has EMI spoken too?
Eric: We hope they all take this on. (avoids question)
Q: What's the point of keeping DRM on $0.99 tracks?
Steve: We don't want to raise prices on anybody. We'll continue what we started and offer more value for the money without taking anything away. Consumers make the choice.
Eric: Not everybody cares about interoperability or sound quality.
Q: Will EMI dictate pricing to other on-line music stores?
Eric: EMI sets the wholesale price, not the retail price. So prices may vary by other on-line music services.
8:59 That's it, a new age has begun! Well, in May anyway.
How about you just use iTunes to convert it to your precious mp3?
yes Tim this has been a very fun read. So many idiots. And so many people who just want to complain. Oh, and so many cheap thieving bastards.
All in all an entertaining motley crew.
waddo
Hey geeks,
do you know if it's planned to implement some sort of a digital watermark? i do know it's possible to do so with mp3-files... didn't read anything about whether they plan to do so or even if it's possible it in the article/comments. cheers
I think a better overall solution would have been to drop DRM completely for all EMI content and keep existing bitrate songs DRM-free and .99c (128bit), and make them also 1.29c at double bitrate. This is the only solution IMO that could please all people properly, both consumers and audiophiles alike.
Why would anybody be upset by them creating an additional choice? That is stupid. No one is forcing you to buy it. I myself don't have an iPod, but realize that iTunes is the best store around (besides AllofMP3) and I am glad that they are playing around with different configurations. I want to be legal, but I want to do what I want with the music I bought. This will let me do that.
If any of you guys agree with my last immediate comment, you can send your iTunes feedback to Apple here; http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html I know I did.
If the other labels join in for the same deal, I'll start buying music on iTMS again. Again, for those who missed it - if you buy a full album you do *not* pay any more for the higher quality and DRM free tracks. You only pay more if you are buying individual tracks. If you buy an entire album it's still $9.99 and you get the 256 kbps AAC DRM free tracks. Nice. It's not as cheap as emusic, but the quality will be better, especially with regard to gapless playback - AAC works flawlessly for gapless, whereas I have problems with some of my VBR MP3 tracks from emusic.
Good, bad, or indifferent (I lean toward "good"), this (or something like it) was inevitable: At some point, sooner or later, a price difference was going to develop that reflected the relative value, and the longer it took, the greater the advantage for the first to break from the pack. The only options available were to reduce the price of existing offerings - rarely chosen because of the immediate financial blow - and offering more.
Whether the extra value is worth the extra price will be decided by the market, as always, but it's amusing to see that collectively, people never seem to learn, even (especially?) when their living is at stake: Every new development in the entertainment industry has met with apocalyptic panic levels in the incumbent distributors, leading to dire warnings, legal action, draconian legislation - and then, bold adoption by one reckless entrepreneur who leads the way to fantastically increased sales for everyone.
I'm not really a prognosticator, but I suspect that the dam has broken; expect this announcement to be followed by many more within weeks, maybe days - depending only on how quickly the impact on EMI's sales can be assessed. I don't think we'll see even ten percent of iTunes music tracks still DRM-only by year's end.
The only sane way for this business to operate is to trash all DRM - it won't work anyway, because it can't - and concentrate on detection and prosecution of actual violations. Because this appears to be a step in that direction, I think it's good.
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are [DRM] free at last!
DRM does affect sound quality, because it takes away from the available bitrate for sound.
It most certainly does NOT take away from the available bitrate for sound. Just as adding album artwork to the song doesn't take away from the available bitrate for sound... yeesh.
Ok.. so where does the data for the album art go then?
Dont tell me, it just magically appears from a data bank in your mp3 player.
yeesher..
Ok.. so where does the data for the album art go then?
Dont tell me, it just magically appears from a data bank in your mp3 player.
yeesher..
I agree, the premium for DRM-free is not a good deal. Here's the problem, I recently purchased the new Arcade Fire album (which is great btw) from http://www.emusic.com for about $.25 per track based on my $10/mo for 40 track subscription. It's also on iTMS for $.99/track. While eMusic doesn't have the broad selection like iTMS, it does have some relevant stuff especially for more obscure / alternative artists. This points out the flaw in the premium pricing for DRM-Free, because my Arcade Fire tracks are very high bit rate MP3's. At the moment, I'm happy to work the system and get my more obscure stuff from emusic and then turn to iTMS or CDs for the big-label content. So, eventually people will get wise and the labels will have to get consistent and stop hoping people will be ignorant to pay 3x as much for a song on iTunes (or Zune or whatever) if it's also on a site like eMusic - or will this simply mean the death toll for eMusic? I hope not...
Ok.. so where does the data for the album art go then?
Dont tell me, it just magically appears from a data bank in your mp3 player.
yeesher..
Once again Ignorance rains supreme.
At this point I think some people would complain that a free wheel barrel of gold is too heavy.
I hate iTunes because they use DRM. I want to do what ever I want with my music. OK no DRM, do what you please (pirate), but it will cost you a little more.
What, now you hate non-DRMed music because it costs more.
You all need to get a life or a job.
Not amazing at all
http://www.eyje.com
As far as I am concerned, this is wonderful news, it never ceases to amaze me what Steve Jobs can pull off - it used to be Bill Gates with all that influence.
I for one will be very happy to buy non-DRMed music and not put it straight on P2P.
It is an interesting move though, it will be good for iTunes as they will sell more tracks, at a higher price. But it is a real threat to the ipod as it now breaks people free of the tyranny of the iTunes eco system. You can buy your songs on iTunes but play them quite happily on some other device.
Makes me wonder whether Jobs wrote his article about removing DRM trying to look all high and mighty but not expecting a label to actually do it - he might have just done severe damage to ipod sales. If other manufacturers can compete on ease of use/industrial design and/or just be cheaper and good enough they could now make quite a dent on the iPod market.
I will now(for the first time ever) purchase tracks/albums from Apples ITunes store. Great to see they have seen the light.
I will now(for the first time ever) purchase tracks/albums from Apples ITunes store. It great to see they have seen the light.