iTunes Plus
Today Apple announced "iTunes Plus". For 30 cents more you can buy 256kbps music without DRM. That's absolutely fucking fantastic.
A little over a year ago I announced that I would never buy music from iTunes because the DRM restricted my fair use rights: I couldn't export clips, remix samples, or share between devices. I did say that I'd consider paying double that price for non-DRM'ed music, and instead I only have to pay 30% more.
I'm still aware that buying CDs - non-DRM'ed, mostly-lossless music on its own durable backup medium - is an alternative. Buying a non-DRM'ed album costs $8-$10 compared to $11-$20 for the album in stores. I might not pay $9.99 for "Sound of Silver" when it's $10.97 on Amazon and I certainly wouldn't pay $12 for "Check Your Head" when it's $7.97 at Amazon and even less in the used bin at Amoeba. And many of the albums I'd like to actually buy aren't DRM-free yet. But at least Apple is providing downward pressure to other sellers of DRM-free music (currently $2.93 per song) and very least I now have no excuse to not check iTunes before hitting the torrent sites.
One final warning: iTunes Plus puts your name in the file, presumably to determine the origin of files being illegally traded. I have no problem at all with this, because being able to give your personally licensed copy of someone else's copyrighted album to everyone else in the world is not even close to being fair use.
(I expect that matrushkaka and daakroth will continue to boycott the iTunes Music Store for unrelated reasons.)
A little over a year ago I announced that I would never buy music from iTunes because the DRM restricted my fair use rights: I couldn't export clips, remix samples, or share between devices. I did say that I'd consider paying double that price for non-DRM'ed music, and instead I only have to pay 30% more.
I'm still aware that buying CDs - non-DRM'ed, mostly-lossless music on its own durable backup medium - is an alternative. Buying a non-DRM'ed album costs $8-$10 compared to $11-$20 for the album in stores. I might not pay $9.99 for "Sound of Silver" when it's $10.97 on Amazon and I certainly wouldn't pay $12 for "Check Your Head" when it's $7.97 at Amazon and even less in the used bin at Amoeba. And many of the albums I'd like to actually buy aren't DRM-free yet. But at least Apple is providing downward pressure to other sellers of DRM-free music (currently $2.93 per song) and very least I now have no excuse to not check iTunes before hitting the torrent sites.
One final warning: iTunes Plus puts your name in the file, presumably to determine the origin of files being illegally traded. I have no problem at all with this, because being able to give your personally licensed copy of someone else's copyrighted album to everyone else in the world is not even close to being fair use.
(I expect that matrushkaka and daakroth will continue to boycott the iTunes Music Store for unrelated reasons.)