MacWorld Keynote: One More Thing…

I’ve just finished checking out all the coverage from Phil Schiller’s keynote and I have to say, I’m satisfied. Let’s take a look.

It’s the ‘One more thing’ that we’ve been waiting for for a long time. iTunes is finally going DRM free! That’s right, Apple seduced the record industry into giving up their strangle hold on what people were stealing anyway!

This is a big achievement for Apple. If you didn’t know, all the record lables hated Apple’s monopoly over the music retail industry and for a long time wouldn’t give them DRM free music to put on iTunes. I know there must be some sort of catch for Apple and it will be interesting to see in the coming weeks what they agreed to in order to get DRM free music from all for major labels.

Let’s step back a moment. For those who don’t know, DRM stand for Digital Right Management. It is what the record industry forced Apple to put on most of the music in the iTunes store in order to stop people copying it and distributing it. DRM severely limits what you can and cant do with music. For example, you can’t use DRM music in applications that don’t have the sam DRM programed in, making music previously bought on iTunes unusable with Windows Movie Maker (God forbid!). DRM = Bad. DRM free = Good! Now that DRM is gone, you can use you newly purchased music for whatever you like, with anything you like!

It also means higher quality audio, as the flavor of iTunes DRM free music has a higher bit rate than DRM music, meaning you get clearer, crisper sounding songs.

I really don’t know why the record labels make this bold move but I’m not complaining. In Australia there is no viable alternative to iTunes meaning that all my music has DRM on it. In the US, it will be interesting to see what effect this has on Amazon, who have captured the wallets of nerds who know what DRM actually is and wouldn’t buy iTunes music because of it. Now that DRM is gone, I wonder if they will all return to the largest music retailer in the world.

In any case, this marks a huge leap forward for the record industry. It can now be said that the majority of music sold worldwide will now be DRM free. Our next goal, DRM free movies!

Are you OMGing over DRM free music? Leave a comment!