Apart from the speculation on Steve Job’s health (and we wish him well), this week’s MacWorld is key to lovers of music. Everyone is waiting and watching to see if Apple dump DRM on music (films and tv would be cool too!). As the BBC reports here, deals have supposedly been struck with all the major labels (much of the indie catalogue is already DRM free on Itunes). 

Additionally, would Apple start a music streaming service via Itunes? Remember you can now access Wifi on the go via your Itouch etc, so turning it into a streaming service at home and on the move would be swell. On the hardware front, there is also speculation that either at this MacWorld or another, a tablet device will be shown. 

This could be of great interest to music producers. We have already seen various Itouch/Iphone applications that give limited music making functionality to the platform. However the power, and screen size limits the functionality. A tablet device could really be used as a live instrument and a new sort of portable sequencer if required. 

As always, MacWorld, technically a non- music event continues to be of great importance to the music industry in general. And to think that Apple computer signed a deal with Apple Records all those years ago saying they would keep out of the music industry. Now thats what I call Irony.

Tags: Apple, audio, DRM, IPHONE, Itouch, Itunes, Macworld, Music, music industry, record labels, steve jobs, technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.