EMI and Apple have agreed to sell DRM-free (digital rights management) music on iTunes. DRM is the coding on CDs and music files that keep you from copying them.
This agreement between Apple and EMI means that you can download a song from iTunes, and you don't have to have an iPod to play the file, and you can do whatever you want with the file: share it, burn it, play it on any kind of device you want.
The files will also be higher quality, so they'll sound better.
This is all great for the consumer.
EMI doesn't have a lot to lose here. EMI doesn't sell hardly a percentage of what, say, Sony sells. Sony's sitting back to see how this works.
Apple knows that it's supreme coolness factor (translation: awesome marketing prowess) will keep it alive and kicking.
But...the price of a download will go up from 99 cents to a buck twenty nine? Why? There is no reason to raise prices when EMI is doing exactly what it should have done in the first place: share quality music.
So...the greedy bastards just can't contain themselves, can they? You can't change a leopard's spots. They're clinging to the old business model, and it ain't working. Hint to EMI: you're not going to build loyalty by bilking people. Why don't you leverage what could appear to be far-sightedness and dare I say coolness and hipness and really entrench your customers? And do what Apple does and continue to deliver cool products to cool people?
But again, EMI is on the ropes. This move is desperation as much as anything.
Stay iTuned.
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