Apple announced it would remove anti-copying restrictions on all of the songs in its iTunes store and allow record companies to set a range of prices for them instead of the current 99-cent fixed price. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
SAN FRANCISCO - THE news may be music to the ears of the music industry and users.
Apple has announced it would remove anti-copying restrictions on all of the songs in its popular iTunes store and allow record companies to set a range of prices for them.
From this week, three major music labels - Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music and Warner Music - will start selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software (DRM), which controls the copying and use of digital files. A fourth, EMI, is already doing so.
In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads at 99 US cents (S$1.45).
Instead, most of the songs in the store will drop to 69 US cents from April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for US$1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 US cents.
The music companies are hoping that this compromise with Apple will give a lift to digital downloads. They will be able to make more money on bestsellers and increase the appeal of older songs.
With copying restrictions removed, people can freely shift songs bought on iTunes among all their computers, phones and other digital devices.
Fans of digital music complain that DRM imposes unfair restrictions on what they can do with the tracks they have bought. For example, the protected files from iTunes do not work on portable players made by companies other than Apple.
'I think the writing was on the wall, both for Apple and the labels, that consumers were not going to put up with DRM anymore,' said analyst Tim Bajarin of market research firm Creative Strategies.
Music industry watchers widely applauded the move and said it could help digital music sales, which have shown signs of slowing down just five years after Apple first introduced iTunes. In particular, the lower price for some songs could get consumers 'to buy deeper into the catalogue, and expand their relationship with digital music', said Mr Russ Crupnick, an analyst with the NPD Group.
The deteriorating economy may have been a factor in these changes. Music CD sales fell 20 per cent last year from 2007. While 2.4 billion songs were purchased on iTunes in that period, that was not enough to make up for losses in traditional retail.
