Thinking Out Loud

So here's the real question: Is this finally an admission from one of the big music houses that DRM not only encourages piracy but inhibits sales? Or, since tracks are going to cost $.30 more (at least they're high-bit-rate files), is it one of those portable strawmen designed to give EMI the ability to "demonstrate" that non-DRM music is a sales failure?

Frankly, I don't know EMI's intent. I do, however, know that it's a step in the right direction. So now the equation changes. Before, buying downloads was a matter of trading fair-use and format-freedom for "get-it-now" convenience. Now, at least for the EMI catalog, it's a matter of spending a little extra money to avoid having to rip the thing yourself.

The announcement is here: http://www.apple.co[...]007/04/02itunes.htm

Personally, I'd still rather rip my FLACs from the CDs and encode to Ogg-Vorbis for my DAP, but that's just me.