iTunes Introduces Tiered Pricing and Drops DRM
Recently iTunes announced a price change and the internet is abuzz with the implications of the shift. Mother Jones put it best, saying “music you don’t really want for 69 cents, music you kind of want for 99 cents, and brand new tunes you just gotta have will cost $1.29.” iTunes is also unveiling iTunes Plus, which, for an extra thirty cents will allow you to upgrade your music to a DRM free format.
I’m pretty excited for the convenience of the iTunes Store to finally meet up with the convenience of DRM free music. The XKCD comic by Randall Munroe pretty much says it all, when it comes to the problems of DRM. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, DRM stands for digital rights management and is an anti-piracy method that is embedded into all iTunes downloads with an .m4p extension. The problem with DRM is that it becomes difficult to salvage a collection if something goes wrong with your computer, or if the music store goes under as seen in this BoingBoing post about Wal*Mart closing its DRM music store, effectively destroying users’ music collections. After much criticism now songs downloaded through iTunes Plus will carry a DRM-free extension.
If the recent articles are any indication, most people seem pretty excited about the demise of iTunes DRM (though it’s a gradual progression into an entirely free library, rather than a single step). The thought of baking up some of my harder to come by songs is reassuring, because though I have only a few iTunes downloads on my computer I really would not want to lose them. The free format though is not actually free. To upgrade extensions costs $0.30, and it seems almost insulting to have to essentially buy something I theoretically already own since I’ve already purchased it once. Particularly since the songs would then fall under the highest tier of iTunes pricing, even if they would technically fall into either of the lower tiers. And if you have a lot of DRM songs, those $0.30 add up quickly.
I’m equal parts optimistic and skeptical about the tiered pricing. As Techdirt noted, in an attempt to make money the record industry, which has been worrying about piracy since the dual cassette deck, may place too many songs in the highest tier resulting in a backlash. iTunes will have to rely on the convenience of the iTunes store to buoy them while DRM free songs remain $0.99 cents at Amazon and artists like Radiohead and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails have offered their work for listeners to pay what they think it’s worth (which, interestingly, averages out to about what the records sell for, though with direct sales the artists make all the money, rather than a small percentage).
Despite some skepticism and continued room for improvement, if nothing else though, it’s good to see DRM fall by the wayside.
Photo credit: XKCD
Elizabeth, that comic is awesome.
NPR had a good story on “Market Place” the other day about this. I thought it was interesting that they talked about the music industry’s move to the digital age is clearly out of necessity – people aren’t buying CD’s anymore. But it’s not a profitable business model for them. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.
Elizabeth: Interesting topic. I’ve never been very cutting edge when it comes to music, so I’ll likely benefit from the 69 cent downloads. Although, I caught this segment on NPR about the Top Ten Great Unknowns of 2008 and I’m hip for the moment… if the 99 cent rate is any indication.
The Chicago Tribune calls the new tiered pricing capitalism in action:
Serena, I especially love the XKCD comic because he makes all of his work freely available to reproduce under the creative commons license and has become one of a few self-sufficient web-comic artists, with over 70 million hits per month.
I think there’s a lot of curiosity as to how this will play out, because there seems to be a slow and steady paradigm shift. One of the most interesting areas I’ve seen this play out is actually in the sale of new cars; where CD players once phased out tape decks, mp3 hookups are now replacing CD players. Interestingly though, vinyl sales have apparently increased 90%, though that also seems to be associated with the rise of a hipster sub-culture.
The music industry does seem to have a lot of issues to deal with, and while I’m incredibly pleased to see DRM fall by the way-side, I think there are still numerous kinks to be worked out.