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Apple Notifies Partners: DRM-free Music and DRM-free Music Videos Soon

I hope the free upgrades will be across the board with anyone who takes up this offer. :) (Unless I have the wrong end of the stick and there are no upgrades.)
 
Brandon Sharitt said:
It looks like digital music may replace CD sales for me very soon. The low bitrate DRM'd tracks of iTunes was a real deal breaker for me
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Sounds to me you are just troubled with the knowledge of the bitrate and not the quality itself. Personally I do not care if the bitrate is 1kbps if it still sounds great. (I could fit plenty of songs on my iPod too.)

There was a site recently mentioned on Digg where one could do a "blind test" for music of different bitrates. 50 % of the visitors could not tell a difference between a high bitrate mp3 and a medium bitrate mp3 indicating a random choise on average. I bet many of those visitors would have "heard" the difference clearly if they were told beforehand though...
 
stadidas said:
As good as this is, I still hope physical music and films never go away. I like to have artwork and something I can actually hold in my hand (Vinyl for example is a joy). Also buying music on a CD means you have a backup without having to backup as it were.
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LOL, I know what you mean, sort of, although I'm buying all my music online these days (once you could get artwork that was it for physical music).

The funny thing is, this is going to be one of those things that 20 years down the line, your kids or your kids' kids are going to say: "wow, you mean you used to have these crappy discs that could hold 700MB on them and you used to go to a shop and actually buy them there? Wow! That's so f**king retro man!"
 
boer said:
Sounds to me you are just troubled with the knowledge of the bitrate and not the quality itself. Personally I do not care if the bitrate is 1kbps if it still sounds great. (I could fit plenty of songs on my iPod too.)

There was a site recently mentioned on Digg where one could do a "blind test" for music of different bitrates. 50 % of the visitors could not tell a difference between a high bitrate mp3 and a medium bitrate mp3 indicating a random choise on average. I bet many of those visitors would have "heard" the difference clearly if they were told beforehand though...
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It's also very dependent on what you are listening too the music with. I have a very good speaker system, and there is a noticeable difference between the iTunes downloads and a CD(and I'm not even close to an audiophile). Since I haven't played back their newer high bitrate stuff yet, or any new iTunes stuff for a while, so there is a chance that they've improved the encoder, which plays a huge role(ie Lame can make very good MP3s at lower bitrates). Either way, the current iTunes downloads(the 128k stuff) are not quite up to the task of loud heavy metal on good speakers, although I can't tell a difference on my iPod since all I have is the ear buds. Though I suspect that is the reason for the current encoding, it is good enough for iPods, and anybody who says they can tell the difference on the ear buds is probably either lying or somesort of super audiophile with very sensitive hearing. Even a slight bump to 192 would be nice for the home theater stuff, hopefully Apple TV and the push for the living room can make it work.
 
stadidas said:
I like to have artwork and something I can actually hold in my hand (Vinyl for example is a joy).
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You sure most of the people here will know what vinyl is? :)

We old farts will remember the days when CDs first started coming out - they were all for sale in the 'long boxes' to prevent theft. When the long boxes were going away people would worry the artwork on CDs would be too small. Of course now we buy music with no artwork at all... Even the booklets in CDs have been replaced by band web sites and blogs.
 
AlBDamned said:
The funny thing is, this is going to be one of those things that 20 years down the line, your kids or your kids' kids are going to say: "wow, you mean you used to have these crappy discs that could hold 700MB on them and you used to go to a shop and actually buy them there? Wow! That's so f**king retro man!"
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In 20 years time it'll be "Wow! You actually listened to music rather than having it piped directly through your cerebral cortex? That's soooo lame!!"

Those with ears will be so passé :D
 
johnmcboston said:
You sure most of the people here will know what vinyl is? :)

We old farts will remember the days when CDs first started coming out - they were all for sale in the 'long boxes' to prevent theft. When the long boxes were going away people would worry the artwork on CDs would be too small. Of course now we buy music with no artwork at all... Even the booklets in CDs have been replaced by band web sites and blogs.
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Even my 12 year old sister knows what vinyl is.. it's not going away that quick, mainly because so many adults still have a nice size collection that they listen to
 
4np said:
Great! :)

Hopefully this will allow Apple to get rid of the most annoying thing in iTunes: the restriction that your iPod library has to be identical to the library on your Mac/Pc. If I have 60GB of music on my iPod I don't want to have this amount of data on my Mac as well... :mad: I'd rather use the storage on my Mac (in my case a PowerBook) for other more usefull things...
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If you haven't figured out how to get music off your ipod to your mac, which I believe Apple actually lets you do with iTunes Purchased music anyways, then just burn data CDs or data DVDs as backups and erase the songs off your harddrive. Also, turn on manual library control on your iPod. Autosync is the default, but there's nothing stopping you from changing that.
 
dynamicv said:
In 20 years time it'll be "Wow! You actually listened to music rather than having it piped directly through your cerebral cortex? That's soooo lame!!"

Those with ears will be so passé :D
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I hope they have bass implants to go with that sort of stuff! Just imagine, all the chavs would show their mettle by having a big neon stick coming out the side of their head. :D
 
Brandon Sharitt said:
Though I suspect that is the reason for the current encoding, it is good enough for iPods, and anybody who says they can tell the difference on the ear buds is probably either lying or somesort of super audiophile with very sensitive hearing.
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If you get proper ones the sound difference is there ;) . I agree though, for most people 128Kb/s is fine.

dynamicv said:
In 20 years time it'll be "Wow! You actually listened to music rather than having it piped directly through your cerebral cortex? That's soooo lame!!"

Those with ears will be so passé :D
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If they ever make that I'll be the first person in line.
 
Pixar films have never to my knowledge been available DRM-free in a digital form (through legal means). This was the entire basis for Jobs' statement on DRM earlier this year, and I don't think we'll be seeing DRM-free shows/movies anytime soon.
 
I can't believe you are all willing to pay 1.30 to buy a song. Will DRM free albums still cost 9.99? Or is that price going to jump too?
 
AlBDamned said:
Why, do you not like your ears or something? ;)
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Not especially. I have tinnitus and my custom made in-ear monitors cram the wax in. Fiber Channel HD audio in would be wonderful.

xenotaku said:
I can't believe you are all willing to pay 1.30 to buy a song. Will DRM free albums still cost 9.99? Or is that price going to jump too?
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Albums are set to stay the same price, only individual song downloads cost more.
 
stadidas said:
Albums are set to stay the same price, only individual song downloads cost more.
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So an album with 15 tracks, DRM free will still cost 9.99? But in reality, based on each song, should be costing around 19? If thats true, that sounds pertty good. Still crap compared to eMusic, but in the right direction for sure.
 
xenotaku said:
So an album with 15 tracks, DRM free will still cost 9.99? But in reality, based on each song, should be costing around 19? If thats true, that sounds pertty good. Still crap compared to eMusic, but in the right direction for sure.
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Yes, that's the case. 9.99 an album. I don't know what eMusic's plan is, but if I remember right isn't it a subscription service? I'm not paying for that.
 
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