EMI and Apple held a joint press conference today to announce that iTunes will start selling EMI tracks with better sound quality that are DRM free, although they do cost 30c more…PaidContent has the details. This announcement will be considered carefully by other labels, but also by the mobile music industry, which has always been seen as the runty cousin to iTunes.
–Price: iTunes has always been cheaper than most mobile music stores (Amp’d being one vocal exception), but had the problem of being relatively difficult to load onto mobile phones because of Apple’s FairPlay DRM system. That’s no longer the case, and most music on mobile phones is sideloaded so this move makes it easier for people to sideload songs from iTunes, so more people will do that. Even the higher cost of the DRM-free iTunes tracks is lower than most mobile music stores — although Sprint recently gave up its “mobility has value” argument and dropped the price of its tracks to 99c. There’s likely to be even more pressure now. The big question will be whether EMI gives carriers similar licensing deals so they can compete.
–iPhone: This is unlikely to have any impact on the iPhone, since the handset will already be able to play iTunes products as well as unprotected MP3s.
–File size: I spoke with Melissa Donnelly from Soundbuzz, who said that the size of the file is around double that of an MP3, or 7 Mb or more, which would hinder most over-the-air services if they were to offer similar deals. Of course there are situations where it wouldn’t matter (3.5G networks, unlimited data) but they’re the exception rather than the rule. While many music phones are filled with side-loaded music, there’s quite a few nations where PC penetration is low or most digital music is bought over mobile. Melissa noted that consumers are price sensitive (a discount on the Soundbuzz services could see volume triple) but added that “we’d like to see this licensing regime transported across mobile”.
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