• Explore the magic and the mystery!



  • The Expo Report #2: A DRM-Free iTunes Music Library — Should Microsoft Thank Apple?

    January 7th, 2009

    So it finally happened. After an unknown period of back and forth wrangling, Apple evidently caved to the music industry’s demands to institute a multiple tier pricing structure on iTunes. In exchange, the three remaining major recording companies gave Apple the gift they’ve wanted for so long, and that’s the ability to offer their music in a format free of DRM restrictions. A similar deal had been struck with EMI in 2007.

    At least you won’t have the pay $1.29 for hit product until April, so place your orders now before it’s too late.

    And, no, I don’t believe that Steve Jobs’ illness hurt his legendary powers of persuasion. He’s a realist and this was quite possibly the best deal he could forge.

    What this means is that you can do anything you want with the new tracks you buy from iTunes (at least the 80% that have have already been converted to iTunes Plus format), so long as it’s legal. You can play it on any computer, be it a Mac, Windows or Unix/Linux device, so long as the player application supports the industry-standard AAC format. What’s more, you can copy your music library to any digital media player that also speaks AAC.

    Even the failed Microsoft Zune!

    So did Apple throw their biggest rival a bone, one that’ll salvage Microsoft’s efforts to make the Zune successful? No, I don’t think so.

    Before we go further, Microsoft didn’t help itself with that lame programming blunder that rendered 30GB Zunes, the first models shipped, inoperable on New Year’s Eve. It made worldwide headlines, which had to be doubly embarrassing. Yes, I suppose Microsoft’s technical solution, to run it down, recharge it, and not use it again until January 1, 2009 or later, worked for most users.

    More than likely, it would happen all over again in four years if the device’s firmware isn’t updated to fix this absurd bug. On the other hand, how many people will even be using those things by 2012? Besides, only the first-generation product is affected. Subsequent Zunes are apparently immune.

    Unfortunately, this little exercise only goes to further demonstrate utter Microsoft’s incompetence. They surely demonstrated the fallacy of simply throwing cash at a problem, after spending billions of dollars to develop Windows Vista, only to end up with a bloated, buggy product that many businesses continue to shun. Sure, Microsoft doth protest that the worst bugs were fixed with their SP1 update, and SP2 will do even better. But that is likely too little and too late. Besides, Windows 7 is just around the corner, right? Perhaps it will fix Vista’s wrongs, but can anyone depend on Microsoft for anything that will really work without a lot of pain and agony.

    This isn’t to say that Apple’s handling of its newly DRM-free music is pain free. It’s not, by a long shot.

    Sure, you can upgrade your existing library. Sure, the 30 cents per track upgrade price isn’t bad, nor is the rate of 60 cents per music video, or 30% of the cost of an entire album. But what if your upgrade list contains several thousand tracks? In this day and age, coming up with all that money at one time isn’t so easy, so what does Apple do? Well, they turn around and make it an all or nothing proposition.

    That’s what I said! You can’t just upgrade the albums or tracks you like. It’s take it or leave it. That means that if you bought a few albums that turned out to be duds, you’re stuck! Got a few free tracks along the way? They’re not even on the list.

    Talk about a lame upgrade policy! Is this Apple’s fault, or some sort of deal that the music industry forced them to accept in exchange for allowing this sort of transaction in the first place? I don’t pretend to have any answers, but this policy surely fails the logic test big time.

    It’s not as if the servers can’t be configured to handle ongoing upgrades. That should be a fairly trivial thing to work out by their programmers. Besides, it makes a whole lot more sense to permit you to pick and choose, because people who might avoid this upgrade because of the sheer expense might be able to afford lesser upgrades and, in the end, actually deliver more sales to Apple — and those greedy music executives.

    Now I’m not a huge iTunes customer. I’ve only purchased a small number of albums and single tracks over the years, because I am still old fashioned enough to prefer the actual CD and enough of a purist to require the best possible audio quality. So the impact to me is comparably modest, and I will probably order up the upgrades as soon as all my tracks are present and accounted for.

    I also hope that Apple’s policies are clearly not etched in stone. When they do something wrong, they sometimes even admit the fact, and make the appropriate changes. Assuming the ignoramuses in  music industry haven’t tied their hands, I do hope that they’ll soon relent and do the right thing this time too.



    Share
    | Print This Post Print This Post

    11 Responses to “The Expo Report #2: A DRM-Free iTunes Music Library — Should Microsoft Thank Apple?”

    1. Jim says:

      Gene, I’m not quite sure what you mean. I went to iTunes and under the all-in-one upgrade button was a list of all my upgradeable tracks with a “plus” icon on the far right of each. Clicking the “plus” icon upgraded the individual track. While not as convenient as a checkbox scheme, it wasn’t all-or-nothing. Or, just maybe, we are living in an alternate reality here in California. That would explain a lot, like the likeness to the Left4Dead environment.;-)

    2. Jim wrote:

      Gene, I’m not quite sure what you mean. I went to iTunes and under the all-in-one upgrade button was a list of all my upgradeable tracks with a “plus” icon on the far right of each. Clicking the “plus” icon upgraded the individual track. While not as convenient as a checkbox scheme, it wasn’t all-or-nothing. Or, just maybe, we are living in an alternate reality here in California. That would explain a lot, like the likeness to the Left4Dead environment.;-)

      Curious. The FAQ makes it clear that you cannot do that. That songs, albums, videos, etc. cannot be upgraded individually, that it’s all or nothing.

      If they’ve changed that, folks, I’m delighted. Can anyone else confirm?

      Peace,.
      Gene

    3. Kirk says:

      Doesn’t work like that for me at all.

    4. @ Kirk: Well, that, as they say, is that. At least until Apple has a wake-up call and does the right thing.

      Peace,
      Gene

    5. tom b says:

      “Unfortunately, this little exercise [Zune] only goes to further demonstrate utter Microsoft’s incompetence.”

      Amazingly, they are just as bad on hardware as they are on software! The Zune. “Surface”. The idea of trying to position over-heating XBox’s as movie downloading devices when they sound like a vacuum cleaner. If you didn’t know they were in Redmond, you’d think they were a tech company in some (no offense) stereotypical Eastern Block country, Albania, maybe. What ever happened to MSFT’s idea to make fashionable, smart wristwatches? I haven’t followed that because I don’t wear one.

    6. MichaelT says:

      As far as the Zunes, Microsoft probably thought nobody would still be using them when a leap year came around.
      😀

    7. raybo says:

      Perhaps tracks bought as part of a complete album must all be converted if you want only one to be upgraded.

    8. raybo wrote:

      Perhaps tracks bought as part of a complete album must all be converted if you want only one to be upgraded.

      That’s not so bad. But if you have to buy ALL the albums previously purchased at once, that’s way, way too much to ask.

      Peace,.
      Gene

    9. Kirk says:

      No, the songs shown as singles (and, in some cases, purchased as such) aren’t giving me an upgrade option any more than albums are.

    10. D9 says:

      Well, to hear the “other side”, go to Paul Thurott’s self-righteous preaching about anyone whoever bought an iTunes song is an idiot…you’ll know that there are pockets of people who think…no, they hope this whole thing will backfire on Apple.

      I have only one question for Paul, The Head-In-The-Sand [email protected], and the rest of those Ballmer Youth: At this very moment, on this very day…what is the DRM policy of Microsoft’s Zune Market?

      Sweep your own front porch, Paul before you start complaining about others, idiot!

    11. rwahrens says:

      On the other hand, on my Mac, it makes a statement that I should come back often, because it will update the list as tracks are updated.

      So perhaps if songs are updated in iTunes Plus AFTER I do an upgrade, they will appear on that list? That might cut the pain for some.

    Leave Your Comment