iTunes Plus - a Week Later

It's been just about a week now and everyone has heard about Apple offering DRM-Free music from iTunes. As usual there are people who love it, and those who still have something to gripe over. First - this is going to be a great change in how media is sold, once Apple shows how well DRM-Free music is selling the other labels will be on board in no time. Along with Amazon & Microsoft selling DRM-Free music, sales will boom for the industry and then maybe we can put this whole DRM thing to bed.

Apple has integrated a pseudo service into iTunes called 'iTunes Plus', which offers higher quality non-drm music files for only $1.29 or if you already purchased the song, it's just .30 cents more. It's actually a pretty good deal. Better quality, freedom of usage - it's what we all wanted! The people have spoke, and the industry actually listened - this is unprecedented!

Surely there is something wrong here though, it can't be as good as it sounds, what's the catch?

This depends on who you talk to. If you ask me, I say we've reached the ultimate compromise. It seems even though the files can be played on any device (provided it supports AAC format), the iTunes files carries your account information including your name, email and other data about you. People seem to be up in arms over this 'privacy' issue. A number of articles being written that are either criticizing Apple and saying iTunes Plus isn't all what it should be and be careful because you can be tracked. Are users hoping they could post their music back up on Napster again? Why even bother getting upset over this? This is equivalent of going to a retail store and the cashier asking you for your address at checkout. It's so they know where their users are coming from. In this case, where their users are going to - only in the event they have to. What do you think about it?

Tags: music, drm, iTunes