What Digital Rights Management (DRM) Free Music Means to Listeners

When the biggest digital music company in the world holds a press conference with EMI, it's going to be a big story.

One of Apple, Inc.'s biggest critiques has always been its reliance on digital rights management, or DRM. On April 2nd, however, the computer giant announced that its flagship iTunes music store will begin to offer DRM free music to its customers. Here's a look at what that will mean for the average music listener.

Piracy crackdowns. Yes, there's going to be some piracy involved when the format of a song isn't doing anything to prevent it--for that reason, we might see the RIAA try to crack down harder on music thieves everywhere, perhaps reaching into torrent networks and other file trading systems. As we've seen in the past, the RIAA isn't exactly reasonable when it comes to dealing with pirates, so if you're downloading music illegally, now might be a good time to lay low.

iTunes for Europe. The EU has been notoriously hateful towards Apple, Inc. because of iTunes' DRM, and with that eliminated, we're likely to see more legal support for iTunes. Now, if they could only do something to equalize iTunes' pricing around Europe (the British store charges over $1.50 per track).

Pricing changes. For the increased set of digital rights that come with a music file that has no DRM, we'' have to pay a premium. Major music companies have been lobbying Apple and other online stores for years to change away from a strict price-per-track of 99 cents; they want to charge more for more popular songs. Apple will sell DRM free music for a price of $1.30 (approximately) per-track--perhaps a sign that the computer giant is giving a little to RIAA demands in order to get the freedom for DRM-free songs. If the trend continues, we may start to see individual songs priced according to popularity, which is definitely not a good thing for music listeners.