Not too long ago it seemed like the most unlikely thing, but this week iTunes finally made tracks available without DRM (aka iTunes Plus tracks. Ironic that by removing something from them they’re now better). It’s only for artists on labels under EMI but hey, it’s a start. It seems like a remarkably sensible move a record company, which is precisely why it’s so surprising. Hard to believe that it’s taken so long to grasp the obvious: that DRM only annoys honest consumers who find themselves hampered by the limitations that weren’t present in previous kinds of media and does nothing to slow the efforts of people that want to get it for free. I’ve long thought that selling music without DRM and at reasonable prices and convenience could only increase sales, not hurt them. It looks like that theory is finally going to be put to the test. I’m just a single data point, but I know it’ll increase sales to me at the least. I haven’t bought anything from iTunes except for a couple audiobooks, all due to the DRM. I’m not willing to get locked into one player (especially given how picky I am in that regard) and a limited number of devices. So to show my support in the hopes that this will start to become the norm and not the exception, I bought my first album from iTunes (a little bit of classic Bowie). I don’t think it’ll replace eMusic for a while, not unless the selection of DRM free tracks increases dramatically since they certainly don’t compete on price. Plus, it really bugs me that you can’t get it to save the tracks to anywhere other than the default iTunes folder and can’t control how the files are named. But it’s the principle that matters and hopefully this trend continues. I definitely like having more choice in where I get my music from.
That Last.fm found a buyer isn’t really surprising at all. I’d been expecting that for some time, and if anything it’s overdue. They’ve been continually adding new features, like Events, that are always executed exceptionally well and they’ve built a huge community. Tens of thousands of people constantly and voluntarily submitting information about their musical preferences. What company wouldn’t be interested in that kind of marketing data? So the acquisition was a given, but CBS? At least with a Google or a Yahoo you know pretty much what to expect. Flickr and del.icio.us have both done reasonably well after joining up with Yahoo, or at least haven’t taken any turns for the worse. With CBS though, it’s a big unknown and one tends to assume the worst. What would a broadcast television company (read: dinosaur) do with a cutting edge social music web service? The Last.fm team seems pretty confident that it’ll work out well and that they’ll be able to continue as they were but with more resources, but then again they have 280 million reasons to be positive. It does seem likely though that they’ll be able to add even more music for streaming now, though they already had a fairly impressive amount given that they didn’t have much clout for licensing when they were going it alone. So here’s hoping it goes well. I’ve gotten pretty attached to Last.fm over the past couple years and I hope they don’t change their openness towards developers and their efforts to enable music geeks to frolic in streams of sweet, sweet data.