Raining on the EMI/iTunes Parade

Hey, don't let me interrupt the love-fest for EMI, Apple, Steve Jobs, and the recent announcement that soon you'll be able to pay 30 percent more for digital music files than you are today. Yippee! By now you've read the news: By May, Apple will be rolling out tracks sold by EMI (one of the big four record labels) in DRM-free format. That is, they won't have the crippling encryption that prevents them from being copied to another PC or played on a device other than the iPod. (That's the good news.) For that privilege you'll only have to pay an extra 30 cents per track: $1.29 instead of good-old 99 cents per track. Other studios will probably follow in short order.

Sure, there's the additional benefit that tracks are encoded at 256kbps, but the files will still be sold in AAC format (which is poorly supported in the industry, except by Apple, of course), though very few people will be able to tell the difference in quality vs. a 128kbps AAC or MP3 file (not to mention a 192kbps MP3).

So why am I not ecstatic? I've been digesting this for a while and finally can put it on paper: It all comes down to that pesky 30 cents extra you now get to pay. Given the choice, no one is going to buy the DRM-crippled version of a song any more. Everyone will pay for the unrestricted one that won't suddenly stop working if you change computers. It's human nature to go for the "premium" version. The 99-cent track will vanish in a matter of months. Soon we'll all forget that music once cost less than a dollar. $1.29 will be the new standard.

Now is 30 cents a petty thing to complain about? Sure, but if you buy 100 songs a year, that's basically $30 more you're paying for absolutely nothing in return: That's three months of Napster service. Two or three CDs. Thirty more songs at a buck a pop. Raising prices by 30 percent in any other business would be met with an outcry.

The music studios have been trying to raise prices on digital music for years, and finally they've found a way to sucker you into going down that road. Most people will do it gladly, happily paying what amounts to a 30 percent piracy tax because they no longer have to waste a blank CD in stripping DRM from their iTunes songs. Apple's near monopoly in digital music ensures people basically have no choice in the matter.

Oh, you think this'll mean the RIAA (funded by EMI and its pals) will stop suing invalids, toddlers, and the deceased? On the contrary, this will actually fund those coffers even further. Remember that Apple has sold over 2 billion songs to date: That's an extra $600 million (most of which goes to the music label), had all those tracks been DRM-free. The "premium quality" news is designed to trick you into going along with the plan and failing to see that this is really just blood money.

If you're still not convinced, imagine what your reaction would be if Apple suddenly raised the price on the iPod by 30 percent but would now be DRM-free, while offering the same capacity. You'd be screaming all the way to a competing player, and rightly so.

Cut the price to 99 cents for the "premium tracks" and sell the DRM'd ones for 79 cents and I'll climb aboard, Steve.

For more, here's Ben's take on the issue.