Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reviewing the impact, first, of the statement by Steve Jobs that Apple would love DRM to go away, and, second, the decision of EMI Music to offer that alternative. You’d think millions and millions of music lovers have been clamoring for that freedom, plus superior-quality audio, all at […]

When Apple first debuted the iTunes Music Store — which dropped the “Music” label when movies were added — they made a very direct claim about the quality of the 128K AAC files they offered. They approached the quality of a CD, but that’s a claim that was quickly disputed by critical listeners everywhere. In […]

At the time they said it was probably a publicity stunt, but it appears that Steve Jobs had the right idea when he suggested that the music industry would be better off without putting DRM on the tracks sold by online retailers. Sure, Monday’s agreement with EMI may just be a grand experiment that could […]

You can prove just about anything with numbers, so I find it hard to take statistics too seriously. A case in point is the report the other day that sales at the iTunes store collapsed during the first nine months of 2006. Originating from Forrester Research, it was claimed that monthly revenue at iTunes had […]