iTunes DRM-free switched me to Amazon MP3!

Over Christmas Day and Boxing Day, Amazon.co.uk offered a £3 off promotional gift certificate on any purchase from its newly launched MP3 store! I brought this to the attention of my Twitter followers!

Joyfully, I purchased and downloaded Katy Perry's "One of the Boys" for free (after applying the £3 discount code)! The sampling quality is more than acceptable, for listening to music on the go, and devoid of any draconian DRM limitations!

Before making any purchases download the Amazon MP3 Downloader! I recommend you use Firefox 3 (or later) for all purchases from the Amazon MP3 store!

Fast forward to this week's nondescript Macworld Keynote, which will be the last Apple attends, where Phil Schiller announced that the iTunes store will be entirely DRM-free by the summer!

Just for fun I checked my iTunes account and discovered that, currently, I can upgrade 432 songs for the grand total of £67.01:

140 songs
26 albums
2 music videos

At the moment there are too many limitations on the path to the promised land of DRM-free music! The biggest 'deal breaker', for me, is the lack of an a la carte option! What if I only wanted to upgrade selected albums/songs? And what about the Single of the Week? Why should customers pay now?

Until Apple rethinks this strategy, my future digital music purchases will be exclusively from the Amazon MP3 store! A few months ago, the notion would've been anathema to me! What say you?

You should follow me on twitter here.

BBC iPlayer on iMac soon

BBC new media boss confirms Mac support for BBC online plans "a priority".

A sustained voting campaign by Mac users, demanding that the BBC support the platform by ensuring its online iPlayer broadcasts support the Mac may, has achieved modest success, the BBC reports.

The BBC has been developing its yet-to-launch iPlayer service, an online service offering UK license-payers catch-up TV via the web and cable TV. It's expected to launch later this year and competes with Sky Anytime (currently only available to PC users).

While the BBC has always claimed a "platform-agnostic" agenda, the service, as is, has only offered support for Windows systems – but this seems set to change.

"The BBC's proposed iPlayer service, offering catch-up TV via the web and cable TV, would be re-engineered to work with Apple Macs and would eventually roll out to digital terrestrial TV (DTT) and set-top boxes," said BBC Head of Futures Ashley Highfield at an industry event in Cannes.

He slammed Apple's "proprietary and closed framework for DRM", but stressed: "It's one of our top priorities to re-engineer our proposed BBC iPlayer service to work on Macs."

The BBC also plans to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving over 20,000 people in the UK, Highfield said.

The aim and objective is that any viewer will be able to access any BBC show ever broadcast using their TV or online service. This can only be achieved within an open and transparent content delivery paradigm.

MySpace minus FairPlay

In the wake of Google's strategic partnership with MySpace, and the appointment of Google chief executive Eric Schmidt to Apple Computer's board, comes the (not unexpected) announcement that MySpace is to compete directly with the all-conquering iTunes by offering artist downloads in MP3 format. This is without the aid of Digital Rights Management* (DRM).

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe told my former employer Reuters: “Everyone we’ve spoken to definitely wants an alternative to iTunes and the iPod. MySpace could be that alternative.”

I'm more than delighted to see a strong competitor for iTunes as this will only serve to improve Apple's offering further; especially in view of the alleged forthcoming iPod/iTunes updates. Yes, critics continue to besmear the vertical integration (hardware/software) between iPod + iTunes, but it's a near-perfect paradigm irrespective of FairPlay*.

Whilst the onus appears to be on MySpace vs iTunes. What impact (if any) will this have on beleaguered record labels? I will monitor this development with great interest.