Silverman: EMI, Apple deal looks revolutionary

Today on Future Tense (iTunes) Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle and I discuss the move by EMI to sell songs without copy protection on iTunes. It's a nice interview, but time constraints kept me from playing the longer version.

So I offer the wider-ranging conversation here.

I think you and Dwight missed a few key points when talking about AAC vs MP3. First, AAC is an open standard; although Apple owns the .mp4 file format, the codec itself is based on parts of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards. Second, AAC is already supported by some media players, including Microsoft's Zune, so there's no need to convert a DRM-free AAC download into MP3 format. Theoretically, at least (I haven't tried it) all that should be necessary is to strip off the proprietary file wrapper. So by offering DRM-free AAC files, Apple is really opening up the iTunes store to other media players without the need to convert to the lower-quality MP3 format.

I just wonder if enough people care about DRM-free to pay the 30% premium.

I would like to read a transcript of this interview. Are transcripts available?

Jenel: No, sorry, I don't have a transcript. I just don't have time to make them myself, and I'm pretty much a one-person operation.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a fascinating and insightful discussion on the relative merits of the MP3, AAC, and WMA audio formats in the portable music player and music download markets: Some Facts About AAC, and a short followup: A Wee Bit More on AAC, Ogg, and MP3.