This morning, Apple and EMI announced the availabilty of DRM-free music in the iTunes Music Store. DRM-free songs will feature a higher audio quality (256kbps), and will cost USD/EUR 1.29 per song. They also announced that they are working on getting The Beatles’ music in the iTMS.
But my question is: Why should European customers pay way more for a single song than Americans?
Been a long time since the Dollar and the Euro have been on a 1:1 parity.
http://www.google.no/search?q=1+euro+in+usd
That’s just unfair.
Even if you subtract the VAT, which is included in the European prices (15% – iTunes S.a.r.l. is located in Luxembourg), it’s still unfair:
http://www.google.com/search?q=1.29%2F1.15+euro+in+usd
But it’s even more unfair in Britain:
http://www.google.com/search?q=0.99%2F1.15+british+pounds+in+us…
>>But my question is: Why should European customers pay way more for a single song than Americans?
Its actually quite simple: We can afford more.
Its the same reason a coke is cheaper in the US than in Europe, and why its cheaper in asia than in the US.
It’s probably more to do with tax. Apple has got to pay up to 25% tax on everything they sell in the EU. So while Apple my charge more in Europe they don’t see more money.
So as to the question why we Europeans have to pay more, the answer is largely because we insist on voting in socialists.
Yeah, because it’s so much better not to have social assistance when you’re sick and have to pay 50, 000 dollars for a procedure, lol
This is hardly the forum to debate the virtues and flaws of socialism. However if you champion universal health care and full unemployment benefits you cannot also bitch about high taxes.
We bitch about our health care and unemployment benefits as well. Bitching seems to be an inherent ‘British’ quality.
Well another reason is that the U.S is bigger and buy’s more, buy more get bulk cheaper. Europe dont buy in bulk but each country does, the U.S buy as one. thats my explanation.
I could be here all day and night posting about why prices are cheaper in the US than in the UK, but at the end of the day I can’t see what relevance it has to this, or any other article, on osnews.
The solution is quite simply – if you are not prepaired to pay iTunes UK prices, don’t buy from iTunes. 😉
According to Wikipedia, Europe will have 494 million inhabitants this year, which is a bit more than the 301 million estimated for the US.
Still, you might be right that people in the US buy more at iTunes.
You should notice that this is OSNews.com, not Tellusyourphobias.com
BTW, i find this price difference shameful, but it happens to us (europeans) in so many ways: consoles, launch dates, hardware prices…
I wouldn’t complain about the socialists too much, my friend. They’re precisely the reason why you guys have like a month, or two, worth of paid vacation over there and free health care/education to boot.
Tell you what, come on over to this country (US), get sick a few times, deal with an average 10 days paid vacation per year, plus student loans for 10 years (at least) and let’s see if you think the 25% hike on itunes is worth it.
To be fair, the article only mentions US$, not €.
Still,
indeed!
But my question is: Why should European customers pay way more for a single song than Americans?
Been a long time since the Dollar and the Euro have been on a 1:1 parity.
You think that’s bad, try living in the UK. Apple just love ripping us off. A $1.29 “premium” track will cost 99p here — or $1.94.
To give you another example, the basic model Macbook costs $999.99 in the States, which works out at £509. In this country, I would have to part with £750 ($1471) to get my hands on one.
(And before anybody starts shouting about VAT, the VAT-free price on the Apple website is £637.45 — that’s $1250 or 25% more than the US list price.)
Shameful.
Edited 2007-04-02 16:17
“You think that’s bad, try living in the UK. Apple just love ripping us off. A $1.29 “premium” track will cost 99p here — or $1.94.
To give you another example, the basic model Macbook costs $999.99 in the States, which works out at £509. In this country, I would have to part with £750 to get my hands on one. “
Not sure how accurate this is but according to Google the minimum wage per hour in the US is around $5 whereas for the UK is around £5.
Not surprising, the UK has a minimum wage, and it’s set at £5.35
That’s not because we’re greedy, just that the cost of living is soo much more. We need the salary to meet our expenses, not because we’ll pay anything because we’ve the money!
£5.35/hr, seriously? For the non-US reader, let’s put that in perspective:
£5.35 == $10.50 US
That’s better pay than you will get in the US for any of these things:
– Basic PC tech
– First-line phone tech support
– Any restaurant job (ex. managers)
– Any job in a store (shop)
Plus, you don’t have to pay for health care. You may be able to find PC jobs for $10/hr or more, but those are less frequent.
Seriously, for anyone above 21!
For 18-21 it’s £4.45 (8.80$)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5396110.stm
We have to pay a handling fee on prescriptions, but other than that, health is free, as long as you don’t mind the wait
£5.35/hr, seriously? For the non-US reader, let’s put that in perspective:
£5.35 == $10.50 US
That’s better pay than you will get in the US for any of these things:
– Basic PC tech
– First-line phone tech support
– Any restaurant job (ex. managers)
– Any job in a store (shop)
Plus, you don’t have to pay for health care. You may be able to find PC jobs for $10/hr or more, but those are less frequent.
– Perhaps if you work for Best Buy.
– Depends on whether you work for a Fortune 500 company or a regional company.
– I suppose you’ve never worked for any exclusive restaurants where the average bill for 2 people is in excess of $100. If you do and you aren’t being paid around $15 – $20 including tips then you’ve never worked for an exclusive establishment, or you’re too stupid to request raises.
– Sell Men’s Suits at Nordstrom. If you’re good expect your salary to exceed $70k.
Yes, clearly everyone works as those places …
These things are called “average” for a reason.
This has nothing to do with Apple or even the computer industry “ripping people off”. The cost of living is generally higher in Europe across the board when compared with the US, and particularly in the UK. As a result, the same services and items command higher prices. Basic economics.
No one wants to understand basic economics. They only want cheap as free, and more money, regardless of the cost, or even if their actions cause the money they do have to devalue.
For instance: Minimum wage, and free universal health care.
1. Do they honestly think that with minimum wage, small shops can hire people and grow?
2. Do they think that the government has unlimited funds to throw around, without raising taxes on businesses?
3. Do they think that Apple does not have to pay oodles of money to very good lawyers to keep the bureaucratic nuts away from them, and not offset those costs by having the cost of products overseas more expensive. Do they think that Apple has no taxes to pay other than applying a VAT when overseas?
Dealing internationally cost money. Lots of it. I know. I work for a company that deals internationally. And our the prices of our products overseas reflect that cost.
But no one ever wants to hear that. THey just stick their head in the sand and whine about how not fair stuff is.
Sorry for the off-topic posting, but I don’t want to let this comment stand unchallenged.
Looking through my local town paper there are a fair few jobs offered in local shops and other small businesses, both basic office admin (sorting mail, typing, filing, etc.), and sales counter jobs. All of them have starting pay that’s above the £5.35 (soon to be £5.52) minimum wage.
The office I work in certainly pays more than that. Even the lowest paid workers, such as new call centre staff and admin assistants are on £7.50+.
If the minimum wage was actually a problem for businesses; I’d expect to see more of them sticking to it for low-end positions, rather than offering higher salaries.
The minimum wage is there to prevent exploitation. The fact is, even for the frugal, less than £5-6 per hour just isn’t a living wage. Much less and people would be as well off on unemployment benefits.
Is there any evidence that the minimum wage has actually hurt the British economy, or stopped the growth of small businesses?
Maybe Europe is exempt from the effects of minimum wage, but it does have effects.
There is a reason for the high cost of living after all.
And I have been eyewitness to its effects. When I lived in NYC, it was a bit harder to see, but now that I am in a small town, the negative effects are very obvious. When the minimum wage was raised in Mass, my girlfriend had her hours cut. A few people where she worked were fired. She made less money with a higher payrate per hour.
When minimum wage was raised in Florida, my college did not disappear. It raised the tuition! Many students from other states could not afford the increase, and had to skip a semester. My girlfriend had to take out a loan. I had my hours cut to 2 days a week (Worked for a small computer shop). There are countless other stories I can tell, but I will let you google those.
Maybe you may want to read some about minimum wage to see how it affects people. Even Wikipedia mentions it associated with a higher cost of living, in the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
http://www.amatecon.com/etext/mwe/mwe.html
The illogical assertion that an item should cost the same in all countries shows a lack of understanding.
The cost of doing business is not the same in all countries. Why?
* Laws differ
* Cost of living differs
* Cost of bandwidth, supply, etc. differs
* Legal liability differs
* Market supply and demand differs
* etc.
The point is that something that costs a company $0.99 in the US, may cost them less or more in another country depending on that country in question. Also, since we have this little thing called the “free market” prices are somewhat driven by what consumers are willing to pay. In this case, I think it is a matter of the cost of doing business in “European” or “European-like” countries plus the price the market is willing to pay that is making the difference.
I agree with most of what you say with regards to the cost of doing business. However I have a slight issues with this.
Also, since we have this little thing called the “free market” prices are somewhat driven by what consumers are willing to pay.
More and more, I get the feeling (in the UK at least) it is no longer the case that companies and corporations are there to serve the people (as, I believe was originally the case), but the people are mearly there to make the corporations coffers over flow.
Any thing that can be done, that will reduce cost (and increase proffit, not always reduce cost to the consumer) will be done, and only when a significant number of the customers desrt, might they think twice.
This just does not seem right to me.
You say that it is a free market, is it? If I buy a ipod, who else, other than Apple can I go to, to buy music online and play on my ipod?
Bah, I sit here, and think about what one may say to that sentence, and the bouncing back of forth of counter arguments, and ultimately it boils down to the fact that things just dont feel right, in the UK at least.
The whole point of a business is to make money for the shareholders or the owners. Some may do what they love and never make money, but that isn’t the primary purpose of businesses.
Just as you could have chose Microsoft’s URGE, Rhapsody, Yahoo, Wal-Mart, Apple, etc. Your free market choice is driving the prices.
I won’t disagree completely. Yet, at the same time, I feel it’s only justified since I know from personal experience that business requirements in “European-like countries” are much higher than the US. It costs a lot more to do business in the UK, Germany, Australia, and so on than it does in the US in certain aspects.
The question is why Apple obliges customers to buy from ‘their local’ iTunes store. UK customers, for instance, are obliged to buy from the UK and not the French store, and so buy in Sterling and not Euros.
The consequence is that they are charged more for a Tune than other members of the EC.
Now, prohibition of cross-border sales is an anti competitive barrier to trade in the EC. Similar to making Ohioans buy in Ohio and Texans buy in Texas, at different prices. Consequently Apple is now the object of a rather unpleasant action by the Commission which promises to take the shine off.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/tec…
The moral is: this style of doing business, coercive and inconveniencing your customers and taking them for everything you can get, using technology to restrict choice and markets, is doomed. Its threshing around a bit as it dies, but its dying. We must hope Leopard, will be another mortal wound…
But its an amazingly tough beast.
I’ll just say what we’re all thinking: It’s about time.
256kbps excites me almost as much as the DRM freeness! 256 is just barely acceptable, but I’ll take it for now
“Barely acceptable”… please, stop acting like you can tel the difference.
Between 128 and 256, I can easily. Listen carefully and you can tell the difference between lossless and 256.
The differences show mostly while using good quality headphones (with or without an amp) and a sound card that doesn’t suck (ala onboard).
Agreed. I hate MP3s. The technology is so old and, by today’s standards, inefficient. I’d happily see major players like Apple adopt a new format such as FLAC.
Apple’s files are encoded in AAC, FYI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#AAC.27s_improvem…
Agreed. I hate MP3s. The technology is so old and, by today’s standards, inefficient. I’d happily see major players like Apple adopt a new format such as FLAC.
Agreed. MP3 is fine for players in cars and other mobile players (i.e. while at the gym) where you have lots of background noise. For home listening I want to buy songs in FLAC. I won’t spend money on 256kbs MP3s, I will on FLAC.
Edit: Nevermind. Just reiterating that Apple’s files are AAC, not MP3.
Edited 2007-04-02 19:28
I have this argument on music forums all of the time and the crux of the matter is some people (myself included) can tell the difference, so why punish us for having a finer tuned ear or higher quality headphones / speakers.
Edited 2007-04-02 16:32
“””
“Barely acceptable”… please, stop acting like you can tel the difference.
“””
Audiophiles have always been like this. They can tell the difference between copper and aluminum speaker wires, RCA phonoplugs which are gold plated and not, different barometric pressures during the concert recording and subsequent playback*, and, of course, 256kbit vs 384kbit mp3s… as long as they are aware of the difference in advance.
The major difference that I see with the current generation is that they can be somewhat less willing to spend any money.
My advice to all of them is the same as it has always been: “Get a life”. 😉
* e.g. If the recording was made under conditions of < 760mm Hg, it is best to listen on a day when the barometric is relatively low, or seal off a listening area where the pressure can be adjusted. The converse is true for recordings made under conditions of higher atmospheric pressure.
Edited 2007-04-02 16:36
Using your logic, people who buy into HD technology should also “get a life”.
If the technology is there – why not use it?
Or would you prefer we still run around caves with wooden clubs?
Edited 2007-04-02 16:39
“””
Using your logic, people who buy into HD technology should also “get a life”.
“””
Not at all. The difference being that standard TV video resolution really *is* crappy, and has been for a long time. Isn’t it something like 330Hx525V for broadcast and cable tv?
One *can* (easily) tell the difference between HD and non.
I’ll believe that these people can hear the difference between a 256kbit mp3 and a lossless recording when they can do it in a double blind test.
To date, such tests have demonstrated that they can’t.
Edited 2007-04-02 17:12
[quote]
[reply]
When most TVs in your avarage home are under 21″, even if they were HD ready, most users would see little improvement.
The same can be said for MP3 vs lossless. On your average home system with your average listener, then the difference would be lost. On a good system with crystal clear monitors and an experienced muso, the differences jump out.
[quote]
[reply]
Actually blind tests have been done and people have spotted the difference.
[edited to tidy post]
Edited 2007-04-02 18:00
I have an experiment for you to perform.
What size is your computer monitor? Is it 21″ or less?
Set it to the closest resolution that you can find to 330×525 and let me know if you can tell the difference.
I would be very interested in going over the methodology and results of these studies you refer to that found that “people have spotted the difference” between 256kbit mp3 and lossless.
I assume, by that, that you mean with greater frequency than would be expected, statistically.
The point I was making (albiet very badly – sorry for that) is that for the move to HD people are upgrading their equipment massively to show off the new resolutions. With the MP3 vs lossless debate people don’t upgrade their speakers / headphones, play back devices (etc) then moan that the differences isn’t noticable. Well it wont be if your speakers are junk. 😉
also, don’t forget that while most listeners can’t consciously hear the damage in high bit-rate MP3s, they usually do still hear it at some level. i’m sure most would prefer the sounds of a complicated orchestra in a lossless format (or even live!) if given a blind test over a sufficiently spec-ed PA system. the reason for this is that harmonics is often picked up on the sub-conscious level. It’s like most amatures wouldn’t always know why they didn’t like a note being played on a guitar yet trained ears could tell you that the reason people don’t like said note was because it was out of key.
Another example is how people say they prefer vinyl to CD – arguably CDs limitations are outside of the average listeners frequency range, however vinyl plays a ‘warmer’ sound than the CDs and has more scope for harmonics than CDs do. yet ask someone to specifically point out one aspect of the same track on the two mediums in a blind test, then explain why they sound different and the listener would not be able to explain why it sounds better (without many years of advanced music studies). It just does.
Also, on a slight tangent – one of the reasons the differences are less noticable between MP3 and lossless is because playback devices have gotten clever at hiding the flaws in the technology. While this is ok for most casual listeners, people like myself want to hear a literal recording of the artist. If, for example, you listen to artists who have an exceeding level of production tallent – you like to hear the genious behind the production techniques unaltered. Plus then there’s my classical music example again – as much as playback devices try to ‘fix’ some of the damaged data, the harmonics of the instruments are still lost.
anyway – this has been a very lengthy post, but i hope it’s gone some way to explaining why many people like myself do consider MP3 inferiour.
[edited to make my point a little more clear]
Edited 2007-04-02 19:54
Well, my audiophile days are long past. I think they went out with Quadraphonic Sound. (Both SQ and Discrete. Yes, I had a decoder.)*
But I happen to think mp3 sucks, as well… for low bit rates, where it really matters.
Ogg blows variable bit rate mp3’s away at anything below 128kbit and I can actually tell a difference at 128kbit, I believe. Though I’ve not done a formal test.
At 64kbit stereo it’s the difference between “Ye Gods! Turn that off!” and “Hey, that sounds pretty good!”
At above 128k, I have to wonder if people who make a distinction are more interested in the music or the technology.
Either way, I would prefer they be honest about it.
Personally, I find Smetana’s “The Moldau” to be beautiful even when played on my 1942 Magnavox Console unit. Perhaps, especially so.
I’ll admit to preferring transistors to vacuum tubes in my computers, though! 😉
* I should confess that I do still use a “Phantom Speaker” in the master bedroom. i.e. I have two 8-ohm speakers connected in series across the left+ and right+ terminals of the amp set at the back of the room. It’s a sort of poor man’s Quadraphonic decoder that does a good job of highlighting the ambience of the concert hall by subtracting the left signal from the right signal and playing the result.
Edited 2007-04-02 20:34
Isn’t it funny how those big differences in sound quality, that are so obvious when they can see what’s being used, disappear so completely in a double blind test?
Even more funny are the excuses and rationalisations that audiophiles create to explain the difference in results. Especially when defending snake-oil products, like magic pyramid crystals you put on your speakers, or insanely expensive power cables.
I rip my CDs to lossless formats (and avoid lossy downloads) purely because it gives me the option to transcode to other audio formats, without further loss of quality. For example, high quality Ogg Vorbis for playing on my laptop, or relatively low bitrate MP3 for my portable player.
I’ve yet to be able to tell the difference between 256kbps audio and lossless. I’ve listened carefully with reasonable equipment, such as Sennheiser HD600s connected to an Emu1212 sound card.
If there is an audible difference then it’s too insignificant to be detected by those people who’ve carried out blind tests. Calling it ‘barely acceptable’ is just ridiculous when nobody seems able to demonstrate that they can hear a difference.
Isn’t it funny how those big differences in sound quality, that are so obvious when they can see what’s being used, disappear so completely in a double blind test?
Even more funny are the excuses and rationalisations that audiophiles create to explain the difference in results. Especially when defending snake-oil products, like magic pyramid crystals you put on your speakers, or insanely expensive power cables.
I rip my CDs to lossless formats (and avoid lossy downloads) purely because it gives me the option to transcode to other audio formats, without further loss of quality. For example, high quality Ogg Vorbis for playing on my laptop, or relatively low bitrate MP3 for my portable player.
I’ve yet to be able to tell the difference between 256kbps audio and lossless. I’ve listened carefully with reasonable equipment, such as Sennheiser HD600s connected to an Emu1212 sound card.
If there is an audible difference then it’s too insignificant to be detected by those people who’ve carried out blind tests. Calling it ‘barely acceptable’ is just ridiculous when nobody seems able to demonstrate that they can hear a difference.
The general public is tone deaf and do not have perfect pitch so of course they will have a much more difficult time perceiving the dynamic range available with lossless.
The general public is tone deaf and do not have perfect pitch so of course they will have a much more difficult time perceiving the dynamic range available with lossless.
Exactly. Its all about RANGE. Mp3s get their compression by discarding things in the upper and lower frequencies.
This is perfectly acceptable for an mp3 player while exercising, or a ringtone on your cellphone, and a lot of other uses. It is not acceptable however when using it with a sound system that is very capable of producing those frequencies that the mp3 discarded.
In another post on here I said that I recently bought an expensive (well, $2k is expensive for me) audio system and it is like night and day between 256 and FLAC.
That’s part of it, but there’s a lot more than that to the psychoacoustic model used for MP3 compression.
Being able to reproduce frequencies seems a little pointless if the human ear can’t actually hear them.
I’d find this kind of claim easier to believe if people could back it up with blind testing, and if many audiophiles didn’t claim similar ‘night and day’ differences when testing snake-oil products like expensive power cables…
Must resist… urge…. to make… obvious… Spinal Tap reference
L O L !!! I was thinking about the same…
I just spent my tax return on speakers for my home theater.
With $1,300 worth of speakers and a $700 amp you sure as hell can tell the difference between 128 and 256.
The difference for me is in the bass and overall clarity.
128kbps sounds very muddy, 256 is better.
I can definitely tell the difference between 256 and FLAC. Now I’m going to re-rip everything into FLAC which I should have done in the first place.
Let’s do a blind test on that and see if you can.
I can tell you right now you won’t.
Second, I can’t believe anyone would spend $2000 on speakers/amp.
Will be really funny when someone comes and steals it all.
Some people like to spend $2k on a TV which I personally think is a waste of money. However if they get the use out of the TV and enjoy the higher standard of quality such a price tag offers, then why shouldn’t they spend $2k on a luxury item they enjoy.
Personally, I like to listen to a lot of music.
Now I can finally download music from P2P networks, DRM stopped me before!!!
:Rolleyes:
> Now I can finally download music from P2P networks, DRM stopped me before!!!
Well, for me it’s
“Now I can finally download music from P2P iTunes, DRM stopped me before!!!”
As a consumer, I have no interest in buying something that dictates what I can play it on. I’d rather be a criminal thank you.
Hopefully they will eventually offer uncompressed tracks as well.
Uncompressed would eat up too much bandwidth. Best you can hope for is lossless.
Uncompressed audio is available for download from specilist download stores (such as DJ orientated sites like TrackItDown.net)
Maybe I’m just growing old and cynical, but I do wonder how much of this move is down to Apple’s belief that DRM restricts users from /legal/ use on non-compliant hardware (especially given that Apple have spent time and money building their own DRM algorithms), and how much this move has to do with public image in the face of backlash against Vistas pro-DRM stance?
Either way, in my opinion it’s a positive move. I’m just yet to be convinced about the motives behind it.
I think it is self serving but however self-serving it is still a good move for the consumers. So if someone gives a billion dollars for their personaly ego to help cancer patience the end result is the sufferers still benefit.
“Maybe I’m just growing old and cynical, but I do wonder how much of this move is down to Apple’s belief that DRM restricts users from /legal/ use on non-compliant hardware (especially given that Apple have spent time and money building their own DRM algorithms), and how much this move has to do with public image in the face of backlash against Vistas pro-DRM stance?”
I doubt it has anything to do with Vista’s DRM, since OSX Leopard is expected to implement that same DRM required to play protected BR and HD-DVD discs. Also, Jobs, as the largest single shareholder in Disney, hasn’t made any effort (at least publicly) at getting Disney to release its movies on unprotected DVD, HD-DVD, and/or BR discs, or provide them in unprotected format online.
BTW, I have my doubts as to how well this is going to work. I think most buyers of iTMS music don’t care about the DRM, because it rarely gets in the way of what they want to do. And the 259kbs is irrelevant, as iPods don’t provide the fidelity that such a bitrate would make any difference (and most can’t tell the difference anyway). I don’t think many consumers will pay $1.29 for a single song.
Edit: (Yes, I’m editing this as I post. :p) On second thought, since the songs are DRM free, a group of friends could split the $1.29 among themselves, and create a copy amongst themselves (I assume this is “legal”? Or is there some EULA that forbids copying; that would be in tune with Apple’s software – no copy protection (e.g. activation, etc), but there’s still a EULA that prevents copying from being legal – I’m rambling now. :p)
theoretically they could, but that would be breaching copywrite law
Edited 2007-04-02 18:29
I’m quite cynical about this, too, but I am also sort of happy about it. It’s baby steps to defeating DRM. When I look at this, plus the backlash and lack of lawsuit successes the RIAA has been having lately, I think the music industry is in for some major changes.
Personally, I wouldn’t purchase anything from the iTunes music store unless it was DRM-free for regular price–when I purchase music, I want to buy music, not DRM to babysit me. It should not cost extra to purchase something the way it should have been to start with.
DRM does very little to actually stop piracy; it’s just a headache, even if merely a theoretical headache to most. To me, it’s just the sentiment of being treated like a criminal that keeps me away, but I suppose I am weird and one-in-a-million for that.
Edited 2007-04-03 06:33
Full albums will apparently be 256kbps, DRM-free and at the same price as before (but you will have to pay 0.30 per song to re-download if you had already purchased the 128kbps, DRM version before)
DRM gets dropped by Apple and EMI, after Microsoft spent ages trying to convince users DRM was a good idea, and was for “their protection”…..
Will this crap now be removed from Vista ? Thought not.
It’s like the ultimate bitch-slap.
Seriously, this is awesome on so many levels.
A couple of thoughts:
EMI used 256 kbps quality and no DRM as a way to get the 30% price increase on digital music that they’ve wanted for years. It’s only a matter of bandwidth, so unless Apple is netting a good chunk of that 30%, it’s a no-brainer for EMI.
This seems like an admittance that the labels know DRM does very little to restrict piracy; people who want to pirate the songs don’t buy much (if any) music online anyway.
Dear Apple/EMI,
Congratulations on succesfully coming up with a way to charge us more for what should come as standard, and that we already enjoy at no extra cost on traditional CD media.
We, your customers, already enjoy >1000 Kbps crystal audio quality without any DRM on the CDs we purchase.
I now see that starting May, the Apple iTunes store will offer DRM free songs at 256Kbps (over the normal 128 Kbps) for an increased price of $1.30 / £0.99 over the DRM priced $0.99 / £0.79.
If it were not already inane that music purchased online comes with restrictions on how you may use it, but a regular CD does not, it would therefore seem even stranger that a DRM free track should actually cost more than it’s restricted brethren; especially considering that DRM is actually the cause of most of your technical support costs due to consumers being unable to use their legally purchased songs on an equal manner to CD Audio purchased content.
Therfore; should not DRM-Free music come as standard as does with Audio CD – and should therefore be cheaper because of the reduced support costs associated with DRM Free music, in addition to the lack of physical distribution required such as packaging and printing, as well as the additional competition that should occur on a free and open market where online music stores can compete on equal merits without vender lock in caused by one-device-only proprietary DRM?
You may proclaim that the additional expendature gives you “Double the Quality!” but it is only double the quality of the already low bitrate files on iTunes in comparison to super high quality lossless CD Audio. As it is, a 128 Kbps AAC file is already within the quality region of a 256 Kbps MP3 file due to better enocding technology provided with AAC, so therefore a 256 Kbps AAC is not going to offer much audible difference that merits the extra cost, when only a handful of people will have audio equipment capable of making the difference in bitrates noticable, and still then a physical CD will far exceed 256 Kbps AAC file.
It is only with astonishment that I can belive that you have figured out a way to only increase the cost of music, in a market where it is already greatly overpriced already because of your strong arm tactics in controlling the output of the industry and preventing healthy competition on the online marketplace with digital restrictions.
I expect lossless FLAC/AAC, DRM-Free digital files at a reasonable price as I get with CD Audio. Why then is this not the case on the now significantly important online marketplace?
I disagree with the implication (not necessarily yours) that Apple’s music sale success stems from some kind of iPod lock-in. iTMS is potentially useful to anyone with Windows or OS X and a CD burner. But maybe that’s not what you meant at all. If you’re saying they’re void of competitors simply due to the rift between different online stores (that it’s a choice between FairPlay, WMDRM, or Zune), then I agree completely with your premise, just not with your conclusion that Apple somehow doesn’t need to compete.
Point of information. CD audio is not lossless by any means. It has a fairly narrow range and large digital steps between frequencies.
Illustrated here:
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211_fall2002.web.dir/thomas_chapman/VIN…
It’s just our baseline as what we’re used to buying. Losing even more quality relative to 1980s technology does seem pretty dumb, but it’s also exactly what happened between vinyl and digital. Give a population a choice between high-priced quality and low-priced convenience…
Also, when you say CDs are >1000kbps, keep in mind that’s uncompressed constant bitrate. That’s like assuming a .bmp file offers more detail than a .jpg just because it’s relatively enormous.
Anyway, as a lover and collector of physical media, it’s great news to me that bandwidth can’t keep up with content quality as physical media can. It’s just too bad you can’t even buy the newest physical media without the DRM menace. This is good news. This is progress. If it’s not up to your standards yet, don’t buy it yet, but they’re obviously doing something right, even moreso than market conditions demand.
This comment got burried into oblivion by Digg; go figure. :/
We, your customers, already enjoy >1000 Kbps crystal audio quality without any DRM on the CDs we purchase.
And if I just want (or need) one or two songs off a CD? How do I buy just those songs and not the whole rest of CD at my local brick and mortar store? Because, as soon and you can tell me how to solve that one, I’ll happily ditch iTunes.
By Kroc (2.48) on 2007-04-02 09:05:35 PST
My guess is this. With no DRM they are –expecting– one friend to buy the song and then share it with their friends, since nothing is stopping them.
How many do they think will do this? It could be in the math based on the different prices. My guess is that if you figure out how many people have to buy a song at 99cents (USD) and $1.30, then that is about the difference they expect in sales to break even.
I have ZERO information as to whether this is true or not. This is a total guess.
Put another way. Maybe they think have it at 256 instead of 128 is worth an additional 30 cents. Or maybe a combination of both.
I’m just appreciative of this. I know it’s kinda bad to pay $.30 more, but it’s better than nothing (DRM). Now if Apple would only write plugins (or allow developers) to write plugins for iTunes that allow everyone with a portable device to use iTunes.
I’ve already been on the phone with Sony CONNECT & Napster this morning trying to figure out what their plans are, but nothing as of yet…
Thankfully I chose Sony devices, so my PSP and Flash Network Walkman support AAC natively, unlike most devices with MTP… And SonicStage converts AAC to ATRAC3, so I’m covered.
Thanks EMI !!! 😉
http://www.badfruit.com/
[Don’t mention it !-)]
Because EMI wouldn’t have done a thing if it wasn’t for his letter.
I maybe wrong (would be the first time), but I believe EMI was looking into removing DRM before Jobs’ letter.
Edit:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070209-8803.html
According to this EMI has been experimenting with DRM free music since at least 2006. Jobs’ open letter is dated 02/06/2007. Job’s letter may have been the catalyst needed to provoke EMI into action, but it wasn’t the start of EMI’s foray into DRM free music.
Edited 2007-04-02 19:27
Fair deal!
It’s probably worth mentioning that DRM free albums at 256 kbit in the iTunes Store cost the same as DRM’ed 128 kbit albums.
All that tells me is that they don’t /need/ to charge extra per song for 256Kbps, but they do; because they can.
Bottled water company receives praise for introducing new urine-free product line. Film at 11.
Please remember the pricing on itunes is largely dictated by the music companies and not apple. steve has said before that he would charge less for tracks. I think this is excellent news.
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; [en-us]; Series60/3.0 NokiaE61/2.0618.06.05) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413
Does this imply that one can buy her DRM-free track on iTunes and play it with any AAC-compatible device?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Products_that_su…
The article doesn’t imply it, it states it: “will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.”
Get the hell out of the UK or the EU if you can’t accept the exchange rate doesn’t favor you currently.
If you want cheaper prices then move or hope the exchange rate tanks.
Completely uncompressed audio? That seems completely pointless and more than a little crazy.
I can’t see why either the site or the downloaders would want to waste their bandwidth, not when lossless compression offers exactly the same files at roughly half the size.
It’s about supply and demand. A lot of muso’s are still in the dark about FLAC, yet WAV is well known among musicians, DJs and producers. Which creates a demand for WAV – so from that point, it’s more profitable to offer uncompressed files (albeit at a higher price) than to educate people about other codecs and how to use them.
Personally i’m not bothered about dealing with uncompressed files – HDD space costs nothing these days and internet speeds are fast enough to download the files in, not more than, a few minutes.
I guess that depends on the quantity of music you’re talking about, and the internet connection that’s available in your area.
I use FLAC, yet I’ve filled three 500Gb hard drives with my music collection, with a stack of older 200/250Gb drives for backup. I wouldn’t say that virtually doubling the amount of storage required would ‘cost nothing’. If nothing else it adds inconvenience by requiring multiple drives.
Where I live 2Mb connections are still very common, in a lot of areas faster speeds simply aren’t available for an affordable price. Downloading full uncompressed CDs would take quite a while even over an 8-16Mb connection. Also, a lot of ISPs have ‘acceptable usage limits’, where they’ll restrict your connection if you use too much bandwidth (often as little as 20Gb per month). You’d hit a limit like that much more quickly when downloading uncompressed audio.
Amazing that people in the music business would be so ignorant about file formats that they’d stick to WAV.
You’ve overlooked my point that the sites offering uncompressed files for download were /specialist/ stores (ie different from the average online music shop).
I wouldn’t expect the average user to download WAV files, but then I wouldn’t expect the average user to be DJing in front of 2000 people on a 40k sound system either 😉
Granted they maybe ignorant, but then at least with uncompressed files you know /exactly/ what you are getting and you know it’s 100% compatable with all of your set up (for example, most sequencers don’t support FLAC)
Edited 2007-04-03 16:28
I’d have thought that a club full of 2000 people would be just about the last place where virtually nonexistent differences in sound quality would be perceptible…
Actually they don’t know exactly what they’re getting if they don’t know the the source used for the WAV files. I know of commercial audio CDs that were mastered from low bitrate compressed files, and I’ve known people transcode files to higher bitrates thinking that it’ll somehow improve the quality. With a lossless format like FLAC you’re getting exactly the same content as the source WAV that was compressed, so it isn’t really any different.
Of course they can decompress the FLAC files back into WAV if they need to play them on a device that doesn’t support the format. Just putting up the WAVs seems as silly as hosting large applications that aren’t compressed.
I suppose I’m making a big deal about nothing, after all the consumers of these files obviously aren’t bothered, but the pointlessness and wastefulness of it just bugs me.
I have horrible hearing. My right ear is basically useless (I pick up mostly only high frequencies, as far as I can tell) and my left is ok, but not great. So, why do I rip my Audio CD’s to ALC instead of MP3 or other lossy format? Undoubtedly, I’ll never notice a difference anyways, so why not save space? Because…
To me it’s all about potential. If I encode to .MP3 I know stuff is missing, whether or not I would ever hear it. How do I know if I would have heard it, if it’s not there to begin with?
But with ALC, I know that what I’m not hearing, is only because *I’M* not hearing it, not because it’s been chopped out.
And, to me, that makes all the difference. And it’s worth having a LOT less songs on my 4Gb iPod Nano, to know that I’m hearing everything I *can* hear, not everything that a particular level of .MP3 compression ALLOWS me to hear.
Let the “range” be my own hearing, not the level of audio compression I use.