Following-up on Alex's posts, to me the most glaring hole in the MacWorld announcements was the lack of any update about DRM-free music.Apple was a precursor of DRM-free music online with last year's EMI deal, but EMI, Warner, Universal, and Sony BMG, that is all the major labels, have since announced DRM-free mp3 downloads on Amazon.com while Apple got nothing new to show. A TechCrunch post mentions that "Amazon now has 3.25 million DRM-free tracks in their library, compared to just 2 million at iTunes."
iTunes must have another 4 million DRM-protected tracks, but I can't imagine any informed person buying any of those now, and that has to mean that people will start shifting towards using Amazon. Of course Apple has the benefit of its installed base, iTunes on every Mac, and consumer inertia (after all they just sold their 4 billionth song).
Maybe Apple has been simply too busy securing the deals with the movie industry for online video rentals - clearly a potentially quite disruptive move. Still I can't imagine Apple not caring about the situation with music downloads, so this means that Apple is having real trouble with the major labels. Is this the beginning of the end for the supremacy of the iTunes music store?
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