
EMI, Apple To Sell DRM-Free Music for $1.29/song - veritas
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/02/emi-apple-are-announcing-sale-of-non-drm-music/
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Benja
The "test case" of DRM-free stuff that I'm most familiar with is Baen Books,
who are selling DRM-free e-book versions of (almost) all their titles and --
according to themselves and their authors who are also have books published by
other publishers -- "[earn] more income as a publisher and [pay their] authors
more in the way of royalty payments from [their e-book line] than any other
outlet for electronic books." Based on this, it seems likely to me that the
EMI/iTunes experiment is going to deliver on its promise of making more money
for EMI.

<http://preview.baens-universe.com/articles/auged> <http://preview.baens-
universe.com/articles/salvos6>

Of course, it's a different medium, and Baen has also managed to create a
community of users who like the company, not just its products. I don't see
EMI replicating that, DRM-free music or no, which limits the applicability of
the example. (The Baen people love telling the story of their users saying,
"you should charge more for this." They created a premium version where you
pay more to read an advance copy of the book before the official release date,
and they're making money from that, too.)

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erdos2
A good source on the economic harm of intellectual property law is the Against
Monopoly blog <http://www.againstmonopoly.org.> Today's lead article mentions
the EMI/Apple deal. Economist David K. Levine writes, "It will be interesting
to see how many people buy the DRM version and remove it themselves."

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schoudha
Many people in business literature mocked and called "bluff" on Steve Jobs'
<http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/.>

I think a lot of people who believe in the iTunes-iPod lock-in strategy don't
understand that the vast majority of music on iPods is not from iTunes. Any
iTunes-iPod lock-in that Apple has is through the seamless experience of
syncing one's music onto his or her iPod through iTunes.

The move towards non-DRM music will help Apple avoid anti-trust issues in
Scandinavia and make buying digital music a better experience for users. User
affinity is the #1 lock-in strategy and no one knows this better than Apple.

