Dave's Top Eight

1. Jerry Reed...Revisited by Darrell Toney (reviewed 6/07) (5 Stars)
2. Sounds Like Sunday by Janet Paschal (reviewed 5/07) (5 Stars)
3. True To The Call by Kingdom Heirs (reviewed 3/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
4. Revival by Gold City (reviewed 10/06) (4 1/2 Stars)
5. Get Away Jordan by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound (reviewed 2/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
6. Breakin' Chains by Three Bridges (reviewed 5/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
7. Big Sky by The Isaacs (reviewed 4/07)
8. Skywriting by Mercy's Well (reviewed 7/07)

Click title to purchase at CBD.com...click artist name to read Dave's Review. A CD will automatically fall out of the Top Eight after twelve months if no CD surpasses it before then.

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April 2, 2007

DRM Dam Finally Bursts

iTunes To Sell EMI Catalog DRM Free

On March 26, 2007 I wrote:

Digital Rights Management (DRM) serves only to make life more difficult for LEGAL users. As soon as the music industry wises up and stops making life more difficult for people who are willing to pay for their products, the better off they will be.

Boy, the music world listens when I speak, don't they? Others have been working on making his happen for years, but when I weigh in, things change in a matter of mere days.

I'm just kidding, of course.

Click HERE for the story.

iTunes and Christian music giant EMI (CLARIFICATION: EMI is a music giant, period...not just a Christian music giant) have just reached an agreement to sell the entire EMI catalog DRM FREE. This is incredible news for the music buying consumer. I expect the other large music companies will follow EMI's example.

This may not mean a great deal for Southern Gospel artists at the moment. I'm not sure how many, if any, are part of the EMI family. I know EMI distributes some SG related titles, most notably Gaither products, but I don't know if the deal with iTunes carries over to distributed titles or not.

The music industry is finally getting it. Here's why this is going to work so well:
It's going to be cheaper now (relative to how much you value your time, of course) to buy music legitimately than to steal it.

"How?" you might say. When you weigh obtaining a file of dubious quality illegally (that also may be difficult to locate) against spending $1.29 to download the same song from iTunes with quality assurance, most consumers are going to prefer to just pay up. The price is cheap enough and the convenience is so great that the time saved is worth it.

By the way, an added bonus to the DRM free tracks is that the bit-rate for the 30% higher priced tracks will be increased to 256kbs. This will add value to the $1.29 price point over the standard 99 cent rate for DRM crippled, lower bit-rate tracks. Another bonus...people who buy complete albums via iTunes will get the better quality unprotected tracks with no additional cost.

According to the article:
Full albums in DRM-free form can be bought at the same price as standard iTunes albums.

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posted by David Bruce Murray @ 10:26:00 AM


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