EMI Group strikes a deal with Apple to sell its music catalog without anti-piracy protection.



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Music group EMI has announced a U-turn that would make it easier for many to download and listen to digital music. Now for the first time it's going to sell tracks without digital rights management or DRM. It's a technology that allows media companies to set terms for which consumers access / their intellectual property whether it's movies or music or not. Now Apple's iTunes will be the first online store to sell the new downloads from EMI which supports artists from Nor Jones to Radiohead and here is the rub, when you buy the new tracks, the EMI trusts iTunes now, you won't have to own an iPod to listen to them. Now the deal does not include the music of the Beatles who continue to hold out against the digital download cultures, excuse me , their tracks in the new format will sell on iTunes for around a dollar thirty, compared to 99 cents for songs with DRM. Now for more on web this all means for consumers, I'm joined live by Carl Gressum in London, he is a senior analyst with the technology consultants Owen. Welcome to the program. When we talk about DRM and digital rights management. It's hard that to crack in, in all senses of the word. But for all consumers, what impact does this EMI announcement have on us?

Ok, so, one of the key impacts here is that consumers will have an easier choice to play music on any device they want to. Now Apple can rest fairly comfortably in that sense because they have such a good grip on the portable audio player market. So what we have to bear in mind here is that Apple is in the business of providing you with the best usually experience for fan of digital media. So they want you to use more digital media, be it photos, be it music, be it videos. And they want to provide the environment and the devices for you actually to interact with this kind of technologies. So, this has been seen as...

Ye, Apple has been, Apple and Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, they have been calling for this for a long time. Now, Steve Jobs famously sent up that missive telling record companies to just give up using digital rights management to lock up their files just to make it easier for the consumers as you said. Finally we have a major record company that's doing this EMI. But is there any risk to EMI to do this? You know, because DRM was made really to protect intellectual property, was made to prevent mass copying. Does there, is there any risk there for EMI for doing this?

Well, of course this can be seen as a brave act for EMI. However, what is important to bear in mind here is that if you want to combat file shares on P to P networks who may or may not have bought this CD or rights to the music they will always be able to circumvent most DRM protection systems. So, by offering DRM free consents there are more incentives for buying music from EMI without DRM and in fact that this is actually the first time you can legally buy music online from EMI with no DRM.

Ho, do you think other record labels will copy what EMI is doing now? or they are just gonna stand by the way?

Ho, I'm fairly certain they are monitoring this very closely, and I would not be surprised if they will be tracking to see if any of the songs that are appearing on peer-to-peer networks and I'm confident they will be monitoring what kind of impact this will have on EMI sales both in terms of what they can sell in the retail stores but also on what they are able to sell online.

And there are a lot of companies will be watching this, the record labels, our movies companies, Micorsoft as well. Unfortunately, We have to wrap up our conversation here. But, Carl Gressum , thank you very much indeed.