More EMI Goodness

It turns out that you'll be paying a premium to avoid DRM.

Tracks in EMI's catalogue will only be available DRM-free for $US1.29, versus the normal $US0.99.

However, for the extra dough, you'll get 256kbps AACs rather than the normal 128kbps.

He's Baa-aack

Apologies for the total lack of posts over the last few days. My brother's been in town ... for the first time since 1984. Hence, we had just a little catching up to do.

That said, flicking through the various sites, there seems to have been bugger all of interest recently, other than the Stevie J / EMI joint announcement today that EMI's catalogue will be available through the iTMS sans DRM.

Good on 'em I say! I just hope they sell a squillion songs, so the other labels will realise customers want their music to be free from this DRM crap!

You Just Have To Laugh

When the Zune was first released, it was touted as an "iPod killer". Then, someone thought to analyse its feature set ...

• none of your current "plays for sure" purchased music will play on it, because they're using a different DRM scheme;
  
• if you want to buy music that will play on it, from the Zune Marketplace, you can't do that with real money, you have to buy Microsoft Live points and use those;
  
• the points are 79 for a dollar, so you can't easily calculate the price of anything you buy;
  
• even though it has WiFi built in, you can't purchase and download songs using it;
  
• you can share songs with your friends, but once someone "squirts" you one, you only get three days to play it and at most three plays, then it's unusable; and
  
• there is no simplified way to buy such songs if you decide you like them.
  

Well, now it turns out that, as part of Microsoft's deal with Sony and Universal, they can mark some artists' songs as unshareable, so even that "feature" is hobbled.

Apparently, something on the order of 40% of artists fall into this category, but you have no way of knowing which until you've already bought the songs and try to share them.

Yep, this is definitely an "iPod killer" :-) !!