Archive for January, 2009
Buy on iTunes, use in any mp3-player or mobile phone
Today Apple made an announcement that iTunes will be totally DRM free from April 2009. DRM stands for Digital rights management and is a “nice word” for copy protection. Already today most of the music on iTunes is available without DRM. The DRM-free music (called iTunes+) has a lot better sound-quality as well.
Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music. – Steve Jobs, February 6 2007
Last year when I read this I did not believe him. When iTunes used DRM, the songs could only be played on iPods. This made people stick to their Apple-player in favor of other brands. I choose an iPod instead of the beautiful and cheep iRiver only because of all my DRM-protected music on iTunes. Read the rest of this entry »
The CD is dead. Long live the CD
The IT research company Gartner just released a report that recommends the music industry to prioritize downloads:
Many bloggers and newspapers are proclaiming the death of the CDs. This has been done for many years now, but the CD, as a medium, is still around. Read the rest of this entry »
Republished in Sys-Con media
My post 2009 … with amazing new services in the cloud has been re-published by Sys-Con media.