Yesterday at Macworld, Apple announced that it may have killed the golden goose. Or pulled the ol’ bait-and-switch on the goose. And became a hero to everyone who likes to eat goose.
Enough with the goose reference, and apparently, enough with DRM for Apple. Seems the iEverything people struck a deal with the labels to set the music free…for a small price. 10 million songs from the iTunes store will be available with no DRM.
Apple marketing guy Philip Schiller announced that iTunes song prices will come in three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. The labels get to choose the prices.
Additionally, Apple announced a “Set My Music Free” tax / fee. For $.30, Apple will replace the DRM tracks you’ve previously purchased with the restrictions for tracks without any. The upside to the charge is that a) you don’t have to pay it, and b) you’ll get a higher bit-rate track in return. Hopefully everyone has done the math and will make this model work.
Personally, as I’ve said before, I’ve never had any problems with music with DRM preventing me from doing anything that falls within “fair use.” Only when you start to do the things you aren’t supposed to do you run into trouble.
Bottom line – the solution to the DRM crisis isn’t to abandon DRM. It is to put a sensible DRM solution in place that works well enough for everyone to stay in business.