p2pnet.net news:- iTunes will be selling its DRM-free content at an even sillier price.

While I’m all for saving the Earth’s precious resources (by which I mean the plastic, metal and Wikipedia-knows-what-else that goes into a CD) and going digital with music distribution, there has to be an economic incentive for the buyer.

Since the going rate for a new CD here in the UK is now between £5 and £10, the iTunes store is already sailing close to the wind at 79p a track for its unFairplay-encrusted downloads rentals.

Now it makes sense to sell premium product at a premium price: the new actuallyFair AAC files it’s selling thanks to its deal with EMI (and, presumably, the indie labels who’ve been asking for this for ages will soon be included) are being offered at twice the usual bitrate, which is soundwise practically indistinguishable from the uncompressed files you get from a CD.

So I don’t want to spit in the pudding – after all, isn’t this what reasonable folk have been asking for since the iTMS first opened its doors? – but Jobs and his cohorts have now effectively doubled the cost of an album if you download it rather than rip it from CD.

I may now dip my toe in the iTunes waters, but there’ll need to be a price adjustment before it becomes my first port of call – except of course for those drone LPs with only three tracks on them …

Chris Ovenden – The Peer
[Ovenden is a self-confessed technology freak who says he always ends up writing about culture, or who is perhaps a culture nut continually drawn towards the hi-tech, he plays guitar, makes websites and teaches. Editorships of various on- and offline publications lurk in his past, "and possibly his future".]

Slashdot it!

Also See:
DRM-free content – Apple, EMI, DRM deal, April 2, 2007
The Telegraph -Scientists change one blood group into another, April 2, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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