MacBreak Weekly Special: the iTunes & EMI deal

MacBreak Weekly Special Edition: Fixing A Hole

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, and John Gruber

A special edition discussing the Apple EMI announcement. Look for our regular weekly MBW on Tuesday as usual.

Direct Download MP3 file

Here’s a few links related to this very cool story:

• Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store - “DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song.”
• EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire - “EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services”
• 2 April press conference - Downloadable audio of the press conference.
• Daring Fireball: EMI to Offer DRM-Free Online Music - “So much for accusations that Jobs was full of shit with his ‘Thoughts on Music’ essay”
• EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music | CNET News.com - “When a reporter asked Jobs whether a Beatles deal with EMI was upcoming, Jobs replied, ‘I want to know that, too.’ Nicoli stressed that ‘we’re working on it.’”
• World music market - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - My take on one angle of this: “Combined, independent labels have twice EMI’s US market share…My suspicion is that indie sales spikes on iTunes may be what convinces the other majors to get into the game.”