Apple's new iTunes Plus offers EMI Group music recording company's whole catalog, including Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, and more other classic albums.
Digital rights management is a copyright restriction which clearly defines the device or the software that can play the current digital music. New tracks are DRM free and users can play them on any devices and any software.
DRM music costs 99 cents versus $1.29 of DRM free music. DRM music owners can upgrade their existing songs to restriction free ones by paying only 30 cents. Digital rights management tracks have 256 kpbs sound quality, which is better than copyrighted ones 128 with kpbs.
EMI is the third largest music recording company by sales. With Apple they signed agreement in April to provide consumers with DRM free music, because they both share the opinion, that consumers need freedom to choose the device and the software to play music.
Other smaller internet retailers are already selling DRM free music, but their tracks are limited to some independent recording labels, so the catalogues they offer are not that rich.
"Our customers told us two things deterred them from buying digital," said Barney Wragg, head of EMI. "They weren't 100 percent confident that the songs they'd purchase could play on their devices, and they wanted something closer to CD quality."
Apple has offered the four major recording labels Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and EMI to join DRM free music program, and EMI is the first to respond to this offer. But Apple says, this is the way digital music retailers need to go, and it hopes other recording labels to join them.
"We definitely think it's the right thing to do,'' said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes. "In this case, EMI's a leader and we think others will follow.''
Apple hopes to have the half of its 5 million digital music transferred into DRM free, but it is still selling copyrighted music with lower prices. By Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ
