What Are EMI and Steve Jobs Up To?

[Barefootsies]

Hey, the Beatles are finally coming to iTunes! Or maybe a major label is announcing it's dropping DRM! Or something else huge is about to happen, probably involving digital music! Or something disappointingly minor!

Well, actually, all we know is that music behemoth EMI has said it's holding a press conference tomorrow in London, and that Steve Jobs will be in attendance, along with an unspecified musical guest. EMI also says the event concerns an "exciting" digital initiative. (Funny how nobody ever says they're holding a press conference to announce anything tedious and unimportant.) Everything beyond that, at this point, is mere speculation.

Most of that speculation involves the Beatles finally being available as legit digital downloads on iTunes, but other reports say there's no Fab Four angle. If it does turn out to be a false alarm, it wouldn't be the first one. (The theory that Apple would announce the Beatles catalog during the Super Bowl turned out to be utterly false.)

I persist in the belief that as long as Beatles CDs are readily available and it's reasonably easy to rip them into digital form, it just doesn't matter that much whether they can be downloaded from iTunes or anywhere else. So I'm more intrigued by the notion--which seems far-fetched, but you never know--that the announcement involves EMI music being available on iTunes without copy protection.

You gotta think that some announcement of that sort will happen sometime--maybe involving EMI and iTunes, maybe involving other parties--but it does seem a tad early. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Anyhow, it's rare that a Steve Jobs appearance anywhere doesn't result in something newsworthy, so I'm betting that this doesn't relate to Milli Vanilli or Junior Samples.

I'm used to Jobs-related press conferences happening conveniently right here in San Francisco, within walking distance of PC World's offices; this one is multiple time zones away, and I'll have to wake up at 5am to learn what's going down. Which I think I'll do (note to self: Remember to set alarm).

EMI, by the way, swears up and down that this is not an April Fools' Day joke...but if the news is relatively mundane, the joke will certainly be on everyone who's salivating for news of epic proportions....

http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/003985.html

[DateDoc]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38636

Apple and EMI will make a joint announcement today to sell large chunks of its music catalogue free of digital rights management (DRM) software.

That will mark a reversal of the music industry's King Canute like trend to cope with technology and the internet by insisting vendors include software ostensibly aimed at protecting their intellectual property rights. Many, however, have concluded that the music industry in general is just totally ripping off people that buy stuff created by artists who often get ripped off too.

EMI is the third biggest music firm in terms of sales and has an extensive catalogue. It's a brave move but perhaps not as risky as the RIAA crows perching on the music industry's ivory tower seem to think.