I’ve also considered notions like, if your music is virtually given away free, how should an artist make money off them? How about premium 5.1 Surround recordings? Those will be too big for portables and pointless, since they’re just headsets, but… it’s a notion, and don’t be shocked if more folks try it. After all, that’s what SACD and DVD-Audio discs are.

There’s a cheap humor in No-DRM being marketted to the audiophile set.

Best wishes and good show

That said, a good chunk of the music I play isn’t available from eMusic. Karmacoda’s new CD isn’t there yet. Raul Ramirez’ second disc isn’t there yet. But they’re both on iTunes. Plus, more than 90% of the Dave’s Lounge audience gets this show through iTunes, so much of my audience naturally gravitates to that program.

I’ve gotten plenty of emails from people who don’t like eMusic’s subscription model and would prefer to pay per song, too, and for better or worse (mostly better, IMHO) iTunes is very open to selling indie music.

Of course, a few bands have told me that they actually earn more money from eMusic than from iTunes — which is interesting, since eMusic tracks sell for much less on average — but it’s nice to have the option to go either way.

And I freely admit that I choose many of the stores I promote because of their affiliate programs. eMusic, iTunes, CD Baby and Amazon actually pay me when someone clicks through my site and buys something. It’s not very much — certainly not as much as what the artists themselves make — but it pays for the LibSyn bill and other podcast-related expenses. Right now, I’m just happy to get people in the habit of buying the music they hear on this show, because that’s how we build a new music business.

Whether indie artists can choose to charge less on iTunes or not, once DRM-free interoperation becomes the standard, you have a situation where BOTH the restricted access to widespread CD distribution AND the digital file movement barriers are gone, and this is a whole different world. Anything that happens elsewhere on the web can happen very easily, and indie artists will be able to affect the marketplace more than they ever could. This is why the RIAA has resisted this for so long — they wanted a way to teleport their control mechanisms into the digital world. The problem has never been their settings of high prices its been how difficult it was both to present and acquire interoperable alternatives.

Why not publish a few tracks of your music as free podcast? Then you can get it into iTunes through the backdoor, and lure people to your website where they can buy your album cheap. (Or you can sell your album as ‘album-only’ on iTunes — which is now DRM-free and high quality without a premium — and invite people to your site to get cheap individual tracks — this would be an effective form of protest against the $1.29 without abandoning iTunes altogether.)

The point is — their bulwark against invaders is full of holes now, and any creative person can find a way in. This is just another hole — it’s a good thing. But Apple is not going to do the work for every little artist nor are they going to specifically champion the indies against the majors (besides leaving you these openings that it’s your prerogative to take) — because if they did, then they would soon make the wrong enemies and lose their ability to effective even more change that will open up even more holes for you to waltz through.

When a person or organisation is bridging a gap between two extremes, it is always easy to criticise them from either side — but these people are essential to a reconciliation and a better industry!

If he wanted to, Steve Jobs could sell DRM-free songs for 99 cents each, but he won’t, because doing it this way appeases the big labels and is better for Apple’s bottom line. Tying DRM-free to higher-quality audio also gives Apple an extra marketing tool to convert all those audiophiles to iTunes, meaning more iPod sales. The more I look at it, the more I can respect its shrewdness as a business move.

And no, I didn’t know about the downconversion trick, but I suspect I’m like 90% of iTunes users in that regard, so this still increases the demand for higher-capacity iPods, thus keeping Apple’s bread and butter going.

I still wonder how this will affect the indie artists and labels, though. Will they be able to sell DRM-free music through iTunes like EMI, and if so, will they be forced to sell it for $1.29 per song? Judging from past history, I’m guessing yes on both counts, and if that’s the case, we’ll all end up paying more for music in the long run.

Now if the major labels want to start selling their catalogs to eMusic, that would be a sea change, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen anytime soon.

Where you *really* get it wrong is on the iPod capacity thing. I’ve read this so many times in the last 24 hours. Do any of you “capacity down by 1/2″ people actually USE iTunes? Conversion to 128K is only a click away, and I know plenty of iPod users who already do this. In fact you are far better off with the 256K file, because now you have a multipurpose file: hi-fi or convert to portable. With a 128K file there is only one purpose, and there is no such thing as upconversion (or at least, it won’t sound any better if you try).

And that’s the one point that destroys your “premium” argument. Any audiophile will tell you that 256K is WORTH 30% more than 128K. Hell, it’s worth twice as much. Therefore it is totally inaccurate to call it a ‘DRM premium’.

Everyone was complaining that DRM locked iTune shoppers into the iPod ecosystem. Now, Apple is providing a way out. Ransom your files for $0.30 each. You want to dump your iPod and upgrade to Zune. Just pay Apple $0.30 for each file you want to set free.