Snow in April--in Texas, Football, and DRM less music

Today's Weather (4/7): High of 46 F with chances of snow. This is April, when was the last time it snowed in Texas at this time of the year?Well, this is some pretty crazy weather for Easter weekend. I'm back home for the holiday and luckily I don't have much to do besides relax.

OU is having their "spring" football game today in Norman and I know last year that it attracted 20,000 people. That's gonna be 20,000 really cold people today good thing I decided not to go. Although, I would be really interested to see the quarterback battle again. From what I've read in The Oklahoma Daily, OU's student newspaper, Sam Bradford has the edge in the competition but freshman phenom Keith Nichol is pushing hard at the starting job. The Running Back position is stocked full of amazing runners. Allen Patrick, the experienced senior who filled in when Adrian Peterson was hurt last year did an awesome job. Then we have DeMarrco Murray, another freshman phenom who has had some long runs in spring practice looks to be the next Adrian Peterson. Okay, enough about Oklahoma football for now--for those of you who don't really care.

The other day I talked about iTunes taking the DRM out of their music catalog (Link). I would like to encourage everyone to purchase at least one track from the store. This will show Apple that the consumers really don't like DRM and soon the price of the tracks will fall. DRM music tracks may cost less but they also limit who can buy the tracks. Right now, only iPod users can put iTunes music on their MP3 players but without DRM anyone can buy music and put it anywhere they want. Un-DRM music also makes it easier to share a couple of tracks between friends instead of them being locked out. So once again, if everyone could just spend $1.30 on a DRM less music track (not to mention the quality of the music has doubled!) Apple would reduce the price and other online music stores would take the DRM out of their music. One day it will happen, lets make it sooner rather than later. If you want some more information about this situation, check out Boing Boing's article here.

-Jamie


EDIT: News was released today that Microsoft will be taking the DRM out of their Zune music store! See, its already happening! (Link)

Un-DRM music from iTunes

Today, EMI group and iTunes announced a plan to allow customers to purchase un-DRM (Digital Rights Management) music from the iTunes music store. For those of you who don't know, DRM locks in a music file to a specific media player and mp3 player. In this case, Apple's DRM locks music files purchase from the iTunes store into the iTunes media player and the iPod. At The Herald's blog (Link) you can read more about this major announcement in the technology and music industry.

I think that this is fantastic because it may start the beginning of the end of DRM (Link) which will be fantastic. No longer will you be locked into buying music from the iTunes music store and only being able to use it on an iPod! For those of us (myself included) who don't own iPods for whatever reason, this is great because the music store at iTunes is by far the most comprehensive store and we can now purchase tracks and use them on portable media players that aren't iPods.

Will we see other online music stores un-DRM their music? Hopefully very soon.

BBC Story

-Jamie