Apple and EMI announce a new deal on music

Posted on 03. Apr, 2007 by Philip in Apple, Big Trousers News

Turns out the deal includes a higher price download free of DRM but at twice the quality encoding (265 kbs AAC). Also Apple will offer all albums at this new quality but offer both the new and the old for single downloads.
I think that EMI are assuming that the higher quality and subsequent larger files will make filesharing a little less palatable given the extra time needed to both seed and download.
John Gruber makes the point that independent labels and artists will also be offered the new deal by Apple and that sales will improve as a result.

I think the big news is the offer to upgrade your existing library of purchased music to the new non DRM high quality files for 30c US per song. Now this will keep the Apple servers busy for sure. As some have found after a few hardware upgrades, your 5 machine license can be worn a little thin and this upgrade ensures that this problem is eliminated. I can see people doing an  upgrade of their entire library of songs. Assuming say 5oo songs from iTunes in an average library, that would be $150 and a day of downloading the upgraded songs. I assume your old library would be overwritten but I am unclear on that detail.

This is also great news for those looking at the Apple TV device. Now all purchases from iTunes should be the same quality as a CD through your stereo or home theater system.

Nice piece of timing.