[Arny Krueger]

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message

"Jenn" wrote in
message
...
Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the
iTunes Store DRM-Free Songs from EMI Available on iTunes for $1.29 in
May CUPERTINO, California Music¹s entire digital catalog
of music will be available for purchase
DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the
iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May.
DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher
quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio
quality indistinguishable from the original recording,
for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to
easily upgrade their entire library of all previously
purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free
versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue
to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million
songs, in the same versions as today128 kbps AAC
encoding with DRM price of 99 cents per song,
alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.
³We are going to give iTunes customers a choice our
songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free
versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the
security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,²
said Steve Jobs, Apple¹s CEO. ³We think our customers
are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than
half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the
end of this year.² ³EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the
digital music industry forward by giving music fans
higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable
from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions
on the music they love from their favorite artists,²
said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group. With DRM-free music from the EMI
catalog, iTunes
customers will have the ability to download tracks from
their favorite EMI artists without any usage
restrictions that limit the types of devices or number
of computers that purchased songs can be played on.
DRM-free songs purchased from the iTunes Store will be encoded in AAC
at 256 kbps, twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps, and will play on
all iPods, Mac® or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon
iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.
iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click
option to easily upgrade their entire library of all
previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality
DRM-free format for 30 cents a song. All EMI music
videos will also be available in DRM-free format with no
change in price.

Well, I guess it is a step in the right direction. But
it gets us back only to a point just short of "CD
Quality". Now how about a "super-premium" SACD or DVD-A
multi-channel" release?

Yeah, SACD and DVD-A provide such impressive-looking specifications. Just
what Harry needs to enjoy music - impressive specifications.