EMI + iTunes - DRM = The Way It Should Be!

So those rumours a few months back were right - EMI and Apple had a big thing in London today where they announced that EMI would be releasing their entire catalogue through iTunes DRM free! DRM stands for Digital Rights Management - It's what keeps (or it's what is supposed to keep) us from sharing music we purchase from the iTunes media store.

This is a big step for the music industry. They say that they are losing money because people are no longer willing to fork out money for songs and albums that are available freely on line either through bit-torrent sites or through P2P applications. DRM was supposed to slow the "sharing"down but hackers soon found ways around the digital protection.

Universal Music are so strict about their music being protected that they are getting $1 from Microsoft for every Zune that is sold to compensate for losses due to music piracy on the device. [tangent] Maybe JVC should give $1 to the film industry for every VHS player sold, and Dell should give $1 to each the film industry, the music industry, and the software industry for the piracy that takes place on their machines.... Fuckit, maybe Nissan should give money to the insurance companies around the world to compensate for insurance claims from people who crashed their Micra..... [/tangent]

I'm not sure if other music publishers will follow suit, but I don't see why they shouldn't. They are already selling DRM free music everyday on CDs and copyright laws haven't changed, so why not give us back the freedom we used to have when we were able to buy an album or a single on CD for example and copy it to a cassette tape to listen to in our Walkman or the car.

Now, at least, we can buy songs from the EMI catalogue, copy them to our iPod, CDs, our friends iPods, and their CDs......! Hopefully this is just the start of things to come.