Martek on 26/4/2007 at 02:54

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So has the non-DRM EMI catalog become available yet?

And if so, does anyone know how to get iTunes to only show that EMI catalog?

I thought I'd check it out and perhaps make a few purchases; but I don't see a way to only see the non-DRM EMI stuff.

[Edit]: Apparently it isn't available until May; and we'll find out then if or how we can limit iTunes browsing to that catalog.

Martek

User123abc on 31/5/2007 at 00:40

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I hear account information is embedded in the files. Think it'll work?

David on 31/5/2007 at 06:12

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This has come up in several places. The music file is tagged with the account name and name of the account name holder. However the exact same thing is true for DRM-d tracks.

User123abc on 1/6/2007 at 01:44

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I figure it shouldn't work any better or worse than DRM did, right? Apart from the extra effort needed to actually provide some enforcement - and to keep people scared enough that they don't share through P2P - it seems this would work just like DRM in terms of the rate of cracking of encryption and subsequent sharing vs. the rate of patching of encryption.

Except now we have the relative benefit of being able to play files whenever and wherever, and Apple gets a little extra money.

I'm convinced this is an awesome move for Apple. Might even say that, in the long run, it's the best move for everyone.

Err, I guess I'm assuming that this is also encrypted data and not something that could easily be erased.

flexbuster on 1/6/2007 at 21:30

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Just to clarify some things:

1) AAC isn't "Apple's" format. It's defined as part of some MPEG standards. Apple just happens to use it.

2) AAC is actually an improvement in quality over MP3, which is older and a bit less good. Obviously, this depends on the encoder, but when comparing decent encoders for each, AAC is a fair bit better.


By the way, I'm pretty sure these non-DRM songs are something like $1.30. If that's true, an album of ten songs purchased this way costs 13 bucks. This is barely less than what you would pay in a store for the actual CD, new, and instead you're just getting individual tracks with no case, physical CD, liner notes, artwork, or anything else, and they're still encoded using lossy compression. Apparently they use 256 kbps AAC encoding, which, while damn close to CD quality, is still necessarily NOT CD quality, given the nature/definition of lossy compression.
Not to mention that most CDs you can buy in new or very good used quality off, say, Amazon Marketplace from people for LESS than 13 bucks. Hell, I haven't had to pay more than that for a CD in quite a while.




... Unless you're someone who decides to distribute it over a p2p network or bittorrent (or other illegal methods), in which case it can be traced back to you. Or, hell, if you distribute it anywhere for any reason, really.