For 30 cents more, DRM-free songs from iTunes

EMI and Apple are partnering to offer higher-quality digital songs with no copy restrictions on iTunes. The songs will sell at a premium, however: $1.29 instead of 99 cents. This is a very bad sign for digital rights management (DRM). I will talk about this topic with Dwight Silverman on tomorrow's Future Tense. I'd love to include some wavLength comments in the segment. Speak up. One thing I'm going to ask Dwight about is the price increase. It's huge, percentage-wise. Is it sort of a back-door price increase?

UPDATE: In addition to the comments already added here, Jim Thompson enters the fray over at TechBlog. As usual, Jim's thoughts are smart, clear, and to the point. Snippet:

I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but how much is that really? I worry that there's a huge silent majority out there who don't care one way or the other about DRM or bit rates. According to CNET, both the 99-cent DRM tunes and the $1.29 DRM-free tunes will be for sale side by side. What happens if the average podder doesn't want to spend the extra thirty cents for the DRM-less songs? Will EMI pull the DRM-less versions off the market next year if they're not selling? It could happen.

You could take the stance and say the price is higher because the non-DRM song is more valuable, but that's a real stretch.

I guess they wanty more money because they know that there will be multiple copies of the song on user's devices and figure that ~1.5x the old price will have to do.

This is definitely great news for digital-music consumers! However, I think the price is still a little high. I hope to see prices come down eventually, but if that's what it takes to get the big labels on the DRM-free bandwagon, so be it! I also hope to see more pay-per-song high quality mp3 downloads available, since that is the only format I will ever buy.

The DRM-free eMusic service that you mentioned a couple of months ago is great except for the fact that it charges a flat monthly fee, which does end up being cheaper per song, but I don't buy that much music. If they switched to charging [less than a dollar] per song, I would sign back up in a minute! Could this be where iTunes is heading eventually?

DRM never worked anyway. Tell me one DRM solution you couldn't easily remove.

Apple is smart about their approach. They are spinning this as a consumer benefit, but they actually have found a very intelligent way to increase prices.

More details here: http://themediaage.com/?p=46

This whole idea of removing the DRM and upping the bit rate seems shady... and appears like Apple and EMI are intensionally setting this up to FAIL. This way they can go back and wave it in the faces of the opponents to DRM and say "Look! Look! We offered DRM-free music and no one wanted it!" I think the price and the bit rate should have stayed the same, and only the DRM be removed. This would be a better measure of how many people want DRM-free music.