TheRaven64's Journal: DRM-Free iTunes

Apple launches a DRM-free version of iTunes, and the Slashdot coverage is an article bitching that it adds your name, email address, and date of purchase in the metadata.

The rest of the world seems to be having a slightly more positive reaction, judging by how badly lamped the iTunes store was when I tried checking it last night (song previews were failing to load, individual pages took thirty seconds or more, and the two albums I upgraded last night are still downloading).

Album upgrades cost 25% of the original price, which isn't too bad for doubling the quality and ditching the DRM. I'd bough 12 albums from iTMS (including one EP) before the DRM started irritating me by being incompatible with devices I wanted to use to play back music. Of those, only two were available DRM-free.

I plan on buying a few albums DRM-free in the next week or so. I hope other people will too, so that Apple can point at the proportion of DRM-free downloads and say to the other labels 'look how much money you are losing by not selling your tracks DRM-free.' Then all they need to do is get the price down to EmuSic levels (or, at least, the same price they have in the US, for those of us in the UK).

I will

[SatanicPuppy]

I'm definitely going to be picking up a few, though the iTunes interface annoys the living crap out of me. All I want is a complete list of music that is available through iTunes "Plus", so I can dig through it the way I would at a record store. I don't want to have to try to imagine what might be there and search for it.

Wikipedia had a list of musicians signed to EMI and EMI owned labels [wikipedia.org] which I found to be pretty useful.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

The UK iTunes store has an 'iTunes Plus' button at the top right of the front page, which lets you browse DRM-free music. The only thing that doesn't work nicely is the browse view at the top, which still lists all music.

Re:

[Piquan]

So does the US iTunes.