[NEWS] Apple To Grant All Labels DRM-Free Distribution

[Mr.Guvernment]

Apple finally feeling the pressure and lawsuits the EU was slating to put against them ? Or is this a move to make MS and other companies look bad ?

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| Apple To Grant All Labels DRM-Free Distribution |
| from the you-asked-for-it dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Monday April 30, @19:06 (Music) |
| http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/30/2225246 |
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SexCaptain writes "MacRumors.com reveals a letter circulated by Apple to all producers of content for the iTunes Store, announcing that from May onward they can [0]sell their music at higher quality and free of DRM.
Hopefully this opens the doors for labels like Netwerk. This is a big step in the right direction, although it's unclear exactly what Apple means by 'higher quality,' and there is no mention of price changes.
(Apple charges $0.30 more per song for [1]DRM-free content from EMI and encodes it at 256K.) Quoting from the letter: 'Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free," Apple wrote in the communication. "Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers."

Discuss this story at:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/30/2225246

Links:
0. http://www.macrumors.com/2007/04/27/apple-notifies-partners-drm-free-music-and-music-videos-soon/
1. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/02/1258238&tid=141

 

[n0aH]

About time that the industry starts to figure out that people like DRM- free music!

 

[Moto7451]

Great news, I'll be burning far fewer CDs in the future.

 

[maddog39]

Yay! Now all they have to do is make iTunes open source. Or atleast availible on other platforms other than Mac and Windows.

 

[Omsion]

Wouldn't the record labels first need to agree, though?
All it says is that Apple is willing to do so, and is telling labels that this option is available.