Have you ever taken on the task of providing the soundtrack for an event — say, a bachelorette party — and headed to iTunes to get all the requisite Justin Timberlake, OutKast, Kelly Clarkson, and Nelly Furtado tracks to jam that party right? And then, purely hypothetically, did you maybe think that making a copy of said mix would make an excellent gift for the dozen attendees, only to be met with a message from iTunes warning you that you just can't burn the song you purchased that many times? My friend, that's because you ran into DRM, or digital rights management — basically, rules encoded into your download that regulate how, where and how often you can use what you've purchased. Well, one record company has decided to ditch the DRM, offering higher-quality downloads sans rules on iTunes for $1.29 each (instead of the typical $.99 per song). Will other record companies follow suit? Does one record company without a lot of big singles really have the power to turn the industry around? And what does this mean for consumers?
Blog Of The Nation
Your on-air guest made a comment saying that Apple is still keeping the music in AAC format, which not many players support. This is somewhat misleading. Many players support non-copy-protected AAC files now, and it is not an Apple-specific format - it is an open format that any player manufacturer can implement. If iTunes starts selling tons of these new files, then companies will start making players en masse that support AAC, because they can. With the copy-protected AAC, this was not possible, but by removing it, it's not a problem anymore.
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