stuart test blog

It took a major announcement by Apple and EMI for me to break my blogging silence. Yesterday in London, EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli and Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that EMI will be allowing DRM-free downloads of their entire music catalogue through Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Not only that, but the DRM-free tracks will be encoded at 256kbps AAC format which is twice as high as the current downloads. And if that wasn’t enough, the cost of a full album of DRM-free tracks will be the same price as they are now – $9.99 (USD). (Individual tracks will be more expensive though at an additional 30c USD)

I have one burning question though – when we will see these tracks available at the NZ iTunes Store? The current price of an album on the NZ iTunes store is $17.99 which is too much, in my opinion, when you can shop around and buy the album at CD quality (and DRM-free) for an extra five or six dollars. But if Apple keep the $17.99 pricing for 256kbps, DRM-free album downloads then I’ll be downloading as soon as they become available.

By the way… the blogging silence was brought about by a hectic month of changing jobs, moving house, and preparing for the new addition to the family – but more on that soon, I promise.

UPDATE: I remembered that I posted a while back about how annoyed I was at the DRM that was on a Coldplay CD that I had purchased – that CD was published by EMI. Interesting how the times have changed…