Digital Home Thoughts: Apple and EMI Ditching DRM is Good, But it's Not Good Enough

"The finer details of EMI and Jobs's announcement today were also dubious. Despite the silver lining, which is that full albums should cost the same but will now default to DRM-free files, the two businesses still conflated DRM-free music with the discerning tastes of audiophiles. Steve mentioned that 128-bit AAC just isn't good enough for the sharp-eared, so uncrippled tracks are being bumped to 256Kbps. This gives Apple the ability to sell the music as a separate product and price point, while giving consumers the illusion of greater value. But we don't believe having free, usable, uncrippled media is a feature -- it's a right, and we demand it. Asking customers to pay 30% more for no DRM and a higher bitrate is a distraction, a parlor trick to take our attention away from the philosophical issue: EMI is still selling DRMed music."



Ryan Block over at Engadget has written a great article on the hidden shortcomings of today's Apple/EMI announcement. The higher bitrate is nice, but they're still selling a DRM'd version at a lower price, which is going to skew the results of this little experiment. On top of that, it's still in AAC format. There are very few Digital Audio Players that support AAC outside of the iPod lineup, so it's not really a win for consumers who own something other than an iPod. MP3 would have been a more appealing choice. Nonetheless, it's a start, and a small victory for consumers everywhere.