Unprotected downloads at a premium price: Hear, hear?

EMI and Apple recently dropped a musical bombshell. Beginning in May, iTunes customers will be able to download recordings by Norah Jones, the Rolling Stones, and most of the other artists in EMI catalog without any copy protection. At present, iTunes (the leading online music retailer by far) sells songs only with such protection, which the record industry refers to as digital rights management (DRM); the measures restrict songs to players and computers registered to one user.

That means for the first time, iTunes consumers will be able to share downloaded songs with anyone they like, including those with any MP3 players that aren't iPods (as long as those other players support the AAC format used by iTunes, which many do). What's more, EMI and Apple claim these new EMI tracks will sound much better than what you can currently download from iTunes. Their sound quality will be "indistinguishable" from CDs, they say. EMI will soon be announcing similar deals with other online music stores.

Hallelujah, right? Well, not entirely.

At $1.29 each, these new tracks will cost 30 cents more than the other 5 million, lower-fi, copy-protected songs iTunes keeps in stock. Upgrading the 99-cent, DRM-shackled EMI songs you may have already downloaded from iTunes will cost 30 cents a pop for the upgrade. Apple said it will continue to give consumers a choice by offering songs at the old price in the "old" format, with the lower fidelity and DRM. Downloading albums in either format will cost the same $9.99 (see table below for an overview of iTunes new products and pricing).

Here are some other reasons to attenuate an otherwise joyful reaction:

DRM-free downloads are new only to mainstream sellers. Apple won't be the first store to offer DRM-free music. Other online music stores, such as e-music.com, have always offered DRM-free downloads, albeit from a smaller and generally more esoteric catalog than iTunes', as well as the option to download them at a higher quality. (Of course, to the record companies' chagrin, most people download DRM-free music from peer-to-peer (P2P) Web sites and sites that don't pay artist royalties, which naturally is illegal.) In addition, consumers routinely strip away DRM when they burn their downloads onto audio CDs. For more details on DRM and related issues, visit https://www.hearusnow.org/internet/19/.

Is the sonic improvement worth reduced capacity? The EMI-Apple arrangement would reduce the degree of "digital compression" applied to downloaded or ripped MP3 files today. Such compression is eschewed by audiophiles, since it does remove some digital data in order to reduce file size. But it's unclear how much better the new hi-fi tracks will sound than regular iTunes songs, especially you're listening on the less-than-audiophilic earbud headphones used with most MP3 players. What we do know is that the EMI tracks are processed at double the bit rate (256 kilobits per second vs. 128). As a result, they'll take up twice the room on your player -- and reduce its song capacity by half, assuming you loaded only hi-fi versions onto it.

Limited song selection. EMI supplies only 175,000 of the 5 million songs available on iTunes, or just 3 percent. And while Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised half of iTunes' songs will be available in this newer format by year's end, none of the other industry giants -- Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, or Warner Music Group -- have publicly indicated they're ready to drop copy protection. On a happier note, there have been rumors that $60-million lawsuit between The Beatles and EMI will soon be settled, and their songs may soon be available on iTunes. Let it be.

Forget about video. Given this announcement and Steve Jobs' well-publicized condemnation of DRM, you'd assume that iTunes' other hot products -- movies, TV shows, and other videos-would also be ready for parole. Not a chance. Video downloads are off the table.  Apple's argument is that videos and DVDs are a different issue than music. It maintains that MP3s are just another music format, like CDs, records and tapes, which typically don't have copy protection. Videos and DVDs, on the other hand, have always had copy protection. But we'd like to point out one big hole in Apple's argument. You can share your DVDs and videotapes with anyone, and watch them on any DVD player or VCR. But iTunes videos are always chained the iPods and computers registered to one user.

The bottom line: Intriguing as the new Apple-EMI format option is, its tradeoffs probably outweigh its benefits unless you're bothered by the present fidelity of iTunes, or by its DRM restrictions. The new format may be worthwhile if you want to use (or share) downloaded songs on both iPods and other brands of music player, since you can skip the cumbersome step of burning them to a CD and ripping them without copy protection. And if song capacity isn't an issue for you on your player or computer hard drive, you may want to choose the new format for its higher fidelity, which might be audible (especially if you'll play songs through a good sound system at home). That's especially the case if you're buying by the album from iTunes, since the $9.99 cost is the same in either format.

-- Mike Gikas