This morning, the EMI Group announced that they would begin offering their music library for sale online without DRM. Not only that, but the DRM-free files would be encoded at a higher bitrate than their “protected” counterparts. Of course, this comes with a cost. Rather than the now-standard $0.99 per song, these files (which certainly do offer more to the consumer) would be priced at $1.29 per song.
As I was reading this, I began to think about what the real value of a digital music purchase is and whether the current pricing model makes sense, so I looked up the numbers. What follows are my results. Read the rest of this entry »
