Classical Music Fans, Rejoice: DG Goes DRM-Free

I've been something of a classical music geek since college, so I was thrilled to learn that Deutsche Grammophon—one of the biggest classical labels—just launched its own digital music store, and it's DRM-free all the way.

Gizmodo had the tip this morning about DG's new music store, which went live earlier this week. The web store itself is pretty standard stuff; you can search by composer and artist, and previews for each track are available. Pricing seems steep at first blush: a minimum of $1.29 per track, with some tracks going for as much as $4.99 each, but remember that classical music tracks are typically quite a bit longer than pop songs (the $4.99 track I found was more than 22 minutes long). Full albums are $11.99 and up.

That said, here's the good stuff. First off, all tracks are DRM-free MP3s, meaning you can use them on any MP3-playing device. Also, files are encoded at a full 320kbps, compared to the slightly-less-than-CD-quality 128kbps you'll get on a standard MP3 music file. Last but not least, DG is going the extra mile with the metadata on its MP3s. One of my biggest complaints about buying digital classical music is that the tags used for searching and sorting are often hopelessly jumbled, with artists listed in the "composer" field, composers in the "artist" field, opus and movement numbers in the wrong place, and so on. In an interview on Create Digital Music, a DG exec said the label was careful to tag its music files correctly—and consistently.

Deutsche Grammophon isn't the first classical label to go DRM-free—EMI's classical catalog has been available DRM-free on iTunes for months now—but it represents another big label getting the message: namely, that we deserve to listen to our music on any and all of our devices. Also, the high bit rate is a big plus; I downloaded Brahms's piano concertos as performed by Emil Gilels, and the man's chords sounded warm and detailed, with no signs (at least to my ears) of the digital harshness you'll hear from a 128kbps MP3 file.

Related:
Deutsche Grammophon Shows How Digital Music Stores Should Really Work [Gizmodo]