MacNewsBlog

Big things are brewing in the world of music.

EMI, the label that the Beatles are on, said it would hold a news conference Monday at its London headquarters with its chief executive, Eric Nicoli and Apple (AAPL) boss Steve Jobs There was also mention of a "special live performance."

Many are speculating that because the announcement is a joint one from EMI and Apple that it HAS to be the Beatles catalog coming to iTunes. We disagree with this speculation although we do believe the Beatles catalog will eventually come to iTunes, we're not going to hold our breath that this special announcement is about that.

Inside sources close to both parties say the announcement will instead deal with DRM, and how EMI plans to sell "significant amounts" of its catalog without anti-piracy software. This is pretty big news if it turns out to be true.

A live Webcast of the event will be available at http://www.emigroup.com beginning at 1 p.m. local time in London (1200 GMT). We'll be watching and waiting...

U.K. music company EMI said today it plans to make all its digital music repertoire available without any antipiracy software. Apple's (AAPL) iTunes Store will be the first to offer the new downloads.

EMI says this "will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms." They also stated the music will also have higher fidelity than existing downloads.

"We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music."

Hopefully more record labels follow this and release their music with no DRM as well. Stay tuned for more info as we get it.

Not only is EMI releasing their entire catalog DRM free, but also their video downloads as well.

Steve Jobs annouced that in May the DRM free tracks will be available. He also went on to describe how music downloads were good business.

He spoke about Interoperablity and Audio Quality and then got into the good stuff:

New album versions will be DRM free and sold along side of old version at 256K AAC $1.29 per song, .30 cents more than original version. People will pay to get the DRM free version. This will be world-wide. Upgrade to higher fidelity version at .30 cents per song. Can also buy the DRM free album at the current price. Half of tracks on iTunes currently will be available DRM free by the end of this year.

During the Q & A session Jobs stated:

No information on the Beatles and when it will be available on iTunes. Jobs said "i'd like to know too!"

Jobs believes that most will choose the DRM free version of music.

We need to trust consumers, piracy will happen but we need to give consumers the best possible music experience and also educate them.

Jobs couldn't say whether or not he was in talks with other major music labels to remove DRM. He says that this isn't anything radically new as 99% of all music shipped is without DRM. Jobs would not name who was or wasn't willing to go DRM free, but stressed that he believed that everyone will win because customers will go for DRM free tracks.

When asked about releasing video DRM free, Jobs said that video has always had DRM so it's no the same thing as music.

Consumers are the center of EMI's strategy and they want to be at the forefront of digital music downloads.

When asked about the "link being broken" now that DRM is being removed from music in the iTunes store and whether he was afraid the iPod would lose sales: Jobs said they just want to make the best music store and best music player and hopefully customers will think they are and purchase them.

EMI hopes all digital retailers will embrace the DRM free tracks.

Steve said they heard EMI was going to buy out Apple. This is not true.

Asked what's the point DRM on the lower priced tracks: Jobs stated they want to give customers a choice and that the premium tracks give them that choice. Not everyone will care about interoperability or sound quality and may opt for the lower priced DRM'd tracks.

"Life is a balance between total freedom and simplicity"

EMI only sets the wholesale price, they do not dictate retail price.

How many songs will a 80 gig iPod hold with 256K ACC. Jobs: "It's proportional!"

How do you justify 20% increase in price? Jobs: we're not upping the price, we're offering a new product. A second product that you can choose to buy or not.

Q & A is now over. Thanks for reading!

In a statement released today, Apple Inc. (AAPL) said that it will delay the release of Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5 which is the next upgrade that diehards have been longing for, until October:

Apple Statement

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

More to come!

Well not really FREE but for sale lower than the Apple Store for sure!

Are sales of Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) new Apple TV device selling slowly? We've got no clue really. But reports are coming in that the device made its way into Chicago's Costco outlets at $10 lower than the Apple Store at $289. The device is also rumored to be coming to Target and BestBuy as well.

Locally, I've seen Apple TV boxes sitting on the shelves at CompUSA. Perhaps the grainy quality of the movies is an obstacle... the other being that a lot of people haven't converted to newer TV's? We're not sure but we don't have one yet because of the later reason. Our Sony WEGA is about 6 years old and still kicking so it may be a bit longer before we bite the bullet and get a flat screen.