Tag: DRM-FREE

Apple announced earlier this month that iTunes music sales were dropping the DRM, and now almost entirely in AAC format. It was a significant announcement and made the DRM-loathing camp (myself included very happy). One of the few bones we had left to pick was that to upgrade existing DRMed purchases to the new higher-bitrate DRM-free files you basically were held to ransom: upgrade your entire ...

It's been a long time coming, but Apple has finally secured the deals to sell the entire iTunes music catalogue without DRM and the entire music library is finally available in the 256kbps AAC format that has been known as iTunes Plus until now. Starting in April, iTunes will also be introducing variable pricing for songs - 69¢, 99¢ and $1.29 depending on the prices set by the record ...

There's no denying that Apple's iTunes Store is both well designed and chock-full of music, TV shows and movies for you to buy. It's also got a rather awesome Genius feature for playlist creation [whilst cunningly up-selling you more tunes via the Genius Sidebar]. However when it comes to buying music, a large proportion of it remains crippled (and at 128kbps bit-rate) thanks to the iTunes ...

Buying music directly from the Amazon.com MP3 store is one of Android's coolest features. Although it might not be the "killer feature" that some were hoping it would be, it offers a great way to get quality, DRM free music directly to your device. The only downside is that you have to download music over WiFi (the iTunes WiFi Store works the same way). As a huge music junkie (my total collection, ...

digg_url = "http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/03/17/limewire-digital-music-store-launches/"; About half a year after announcing plans to open an online music store, LimeWire has followed through on its threat promise to go at least partially legit. The LimeWire store features about half a million tracks from a diverse set of mostly independent or minor label artists that you may or may not ...

2007 has been something of a watershed year for DRM-free digital music. Well, legal DRM-free music sales anyway. First Apple announced plans to sell music that you could listen to on any player, and then Amazon beat them to the punch by launching a music store first. While Apple continues to sell DRM-laden tracks in addition to unrestricted AAC files, Amazon sells only MP3 tracks which you can ...

It's been a little over two months since Amazon launched its MP3 Download store, and the site's still around. So how is it doing? Well, Amazon hasn't publicly announced any numbers yet, but billboard speculates Amazon's captured about 3% of the digital download market and 6% of the physical CD market. Considering that it hasn't even been three months since Amazon's digital music store opened ...

If absolute privacy is a concern critics are voicing against Apple's latest move with DRM-less tracks from EMI, they should have filed their complaints over four years ago when the iTunes Store first opened. digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/There_is_no_privacy_issue_with_iTunes_Store_DRM_free_files'; As the story goes, many users and industry pundits have announced their disappointment ...

Bring on the downloaders! Amazon may offer DRM-free music downloads sometime in the first quarter of 2007. Oh, if the tides would break and bring sweet water to the masses. How many times do us insignificant bloggers needs to spell it out for the record companies in big, bold, block letters? How many times does the RIAA need to lose legal cases miserably and be raked over the coals for their ...

Call it caving in, call it giving up, but I like to call it getting smart. Recording company executives are finally realizing that people will never stop file sharing. Yahoo is hoping that by offering the first DRM-less album (by Jesse McCartney), people will go buy the album. I dare say they will. If people know they can do with their music what they want, they are more likely to buy it than an ...