Welcome to the Saturday edition of PaulTech. To any big iTunes Store users out there, Apple revealed in a press conference on Monday the 2nd that Apple would be offering Premium, higher-quality, DRM-free tracks through the iTunes store; upping the bitrate from 128-bit to 256-bit, along with the lack of Digital Rights Management. The news release, if you would like to read it, is hosted here. While I’m not the biggest iTunes store user, there are a number of issues stemming from this announcement…
On the list is our old buddy DRM, and a beginner’s guide to bitrates, as well as some interesting commentary by myself on the timing of this whole issue:
Lack of DRM
Apple and EMI have been wrestling with the whole DRM issue for a little while here, but it seems that they’ve given us (back) the ability to interoperate between multiple computers and devices in what looks to be a victory for the DRM-Free crowd.
Upgraded Bitrates
Typically, when anything is upgraded, improvements occur. So is the same with increasing the bitrate from 128-bit to 256-bit. Unfortunately, because of the way encoding works, doubling the bitrate does NOT double the quality. In my music library, I have both a 1152-bit song and a 128-bit song, and they sound almost exactally the same. This is because the encoding process used to extract the music eliminates extraneous frequencies (ones that a human can’t hear, or that blend with each other, making them indistinguishable) from the track. As a result of cleaning up the music track, the size on the 128 bit-rated song is much lower than the 1152 bit-rated song (3.5 MB compared to 27.2 MB)! An example of this would be those people you always hear about that stack up Gigabytes of music. Without the reduction in bitrate and size, those people could have up to 10x the disk usage for, effectively, the same music. While there are definitely noticable quality improvements, the conditions you would need to notice the difference are few unless you’re an audiophile. It’s also true that noise-cancelling headphones and higher-end hardware, and certain pieces of music will be affected more by bitrate increases, such as orchestral works compared to classical rock or pop.
Slate has a good article about the mechanics of improved bit-rates; it’s a good read, although it doesn’t address the timing aspect of Apple’s announcement, which I’ll be looking at here in a moment.
DRM in conjunction with bitrate increase?
I can’t be the only one to notice that, while only 30 cents a song for an upgrade to the new DRM-free songs, this scheme REALLY adds up to a massive, sudden influx of cash for Apple. It’s no secret that Apple recently held a contest for the purchaser of the 1 billionth song. If 25% of those 1,000,000,000 songs were upgraded: $75 Million in no-time flat. While I can’t say for sure, that looks like a sweet way to raise a quick buck. However, Apple made $1.99 Billion dollars net last year, so it can’t be a money issue…
Well, the only thing I can think of comes back to DRM. The RIAA can’t be happy with this development (which is a good thing); maybe Apple’s trying to retake some market share or PR by hopping off (if only marginally) the DRM bandwagon.
Three things: 1) if you’ve been looking to scrap that DRM-flavored music in your library, I’d jump on the chance to free up my music, if only for a nominal fee. 2) However, what I cant do is recommend upgrading your whole library if you’re a typical Apple consumer. The increase in bit-rate will only be noticable by audiophiles, and the rest of us probably around 10-20% of the time, and, let’s face it, we don’t notice the DRM issues we have since we have an authorized iPod. I have an old 1st Gen iPod Mini, and it’s always worked fine with my music, so upgrading is out of the question right now. 3) Apple has not mentioned if they’re considering ending this line of supply anytime soon, so if you don’t have an iPod but are wary of upgrading for whatever reason, feel free to observe a bit more.
Whichever way the wind blows, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out…
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[…] offering higher-bitrated, DRM-free music tracks (for a slightly larger fee than normal files). At the time, it was hailed and maligned as either a step in the right direction or a ploy to get more money, as […]
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Welcome to the Saturday edition of PaulTech. To any big iTunes Store users out there, Apple revealed in a press conference on Monday the 2nd that Apple would be offering Premium, higher-quality, DRM-free tracks through the iTunes store; upping the bitrate from 128-bit to 256-bit, along with the lack of Digital Rights Management. The news release, if you would like to read it, is hosted here. While I’m not the biggest iTunes store user, there are a number of issues stemming from this announcement…
[…] offering higher-bitrated, DRM-free music tracks (for a slightly larger fee than normal files). At the time, it was hailed and maligned as either a step in the right direction or a ploy to get more money, as […]