UNINNOVATE / Engineering At Its Finest

While sites such as eMusic.com have been successfully selling DRM-free music online for years, these sites have been limited to selling tracks from independent record labels. The major labels have all been unwilling to offer content without DRM.

Today, Apple and EMI announced the first deal between a major record label and an online music store to sell DRM-free music. This represents a sea change in the online music business and will have highly disruptive effects on other online music stores and the other major labels who insist on DRM.

Here are the details:

• The unprotected files offered on Apple’s iTunes Store will be in AAC format and encoded at twice the bit-rate (256kbps) of current iTunes Store offerings.
• The higher-quality tracks will be slightly more expensive ($1.29 each) when purchased by themselves. The lower-quality DRM-protected files will still be available for $0.99.
• Full albums will be automatically provided in the higher-quality, DRM-free format with no price increase.
• DRM-protected files purchased previously can be upgraded to non-DRMed tracks for an additional $.30 per track.