Opps they did it again!
Apple did it again! It’s iTunes Store started selling thousands of songs without copy protection or DRM. The unrestricted content means some songs bought from iTunes will work directly on portable players other than iPod.
Leading the DRM-free initiative is EMI. The first batch of iTunes Plus songs includes music from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums.
However, iTunes Plus songs will be more expensive than the usual 99-cent iTune songs. The price for “freedom” is 30 cents extra for each songs. Well, the extra “cost” can also buy you songs with better sound quality. The 99-cent songs with DRM are currently encoded in 128 kbps but the new DRM-free songs will be in 256 kbps, which is pretty close to the original quality.
One thing that is missing from this new development… When are we going to be able to buy iTunes songs in Malaysia?
Meanwhile, I still like my all time favourite music store, Amie Street, to get my DRM-free and perfectly-legal-to-download free MP3s.
Who needs itunes in .my when you can get the entire release history of some popular artists at 256 kbps quality for RM10 *cough*.
Well, it is pretty amazing that big labels are finally giving up DRM… they were so against the idea of those entire release history stuff and think of 10 million ways to DRM…
but then with USD1.29/song, after purchasing 10 songs, you might as well just get one original CD……?
Well, I normally only like a few songs of each album. Very very rare that all songs of an album are great. If that album is so great, I will definitely get the CD lar.
Anyway, we are in Malaysia… our CD shops very lao yah one, look for this don have, look for that don have, the shopkeeper always say this kind of CD no people want to buy one. Tuna sing…
hahahahahaha
i remember tmnet was promoting a service that sell songs as well, but not sure whether in mp3 or wma format (with drm of course). and ho… creative also has this kind of service as well… but you need to use their media player to access….