Thunder? Stolen. Back in May, Steve Jobs said that by the end of the year, half of the tracks available on the iTunes Store would be DRM-free. With just four days left in 2007, it seems as though that’s one promise that won’t be fulfilled.
But soft! What’s this? Warner Music, the domain of once vocal DRM-proponent Edgar “Bronfy” Bronfman, Jr., has agreed to make its tracks available DRM-free…on that upstart, Amazon MP3. Ouch. Burn. Amazon, of course, already has tracks from EMI and Universal, making Sony BMG the last holdout of the Big Four.
On the upside, DRM-free tracks on Amazon mean only good thing for consumers: you can choose to buy music from them no matter what MP3 player you own. But it is somewhat disappointing to see Apple, the company that pushed so hard for DRM-free music in the first place, get left behind, just because the record labels are afraid of what they perceive as Apple’s growing power. Lame.
I'm a bit surprised that all these companies would be willing to give up the free money that iTunes upgrades represent.
I will never buy a song from Amazon because I hate their customer service so much. I think the employees treat customer service as a game in which the goal is to annoy the customer as much as possible.
But, if Apple offered an iTunes Plus upgrade I would probably get it.
Still, AmazonMP3 is only avaiable in the US... Lame...