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Apple Unveils DRM-Free Music on iTunes Store |
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Written by News Editor
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Monday, 02 April 2007 |
 Apple announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will
be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management)
from the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free
tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC
encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the
original recording, for just $1.29 per song.
In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.
With DRM-free music from the EMI catalog, iTunes customers will have the ability to download tracks from their favorite EMI artists without any usage restrictions that limit the types of devices or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. DRM-free songs purchased from the iTunes Store will be encoded in AAC at 256 kbps, twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps, and will play on all iPods, Mac® or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.
iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free format for 30 cents a song. All EMI music videos will also be available in DRM-free format with no change in price.
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