Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.
However, the most intetersting part to me was this:
A key provision of our agreements with the music companies [to keep FairPlay’s imposed limitations so liberal —Ed.] is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.
Oh, you can just imagine how hard and fast they played to get the music industry to that point.
Also interesting is his peculiar use of “DRM” as a countable noun (“using a DRM”, “DRMs haven’t worked”).
I remember when Microsoft was aggressively trying to grow their office software market in the '80s. One of the big advantages they had over many of the competitors is that none of their software had any DRM-like features. No license checks, never a dongle (remember those) needed. Quick and easy to (re)install and backup. Easy to try, easy to use. Sure, people pirated their stuff, but every pirated copy was a user who was getting locked into the MS software and leaving WordPerfect behind forever.
I hope the same thing will happen to DRM today. The first to provide a good service without DRM will attract so many more customers than the alternatives. I don't know how the RIAA is going to be convinced, but maybe they are increasingly becoming irrelevant anyway.
I heard just yesterday that we can expect the Beatles catalog to be available soon on iTMS since the Apple trademark settlement. Maybe if a few big artists, who have enough control over their catalogs, were to make separate deals with the content conduits and the RIAA would have to fold.
Re:What’s driving this…
Aristotle on 2007-02-07T13:26:39
The RIAA will fold eventually anyway. The labels are basically cartells, extorting both the consumers and the artists by controlling the distribution channel. No wonder they’re paranoid about their grip on it. But the internet has long made the whole charade obsolete; to quote Bram Cohen:
The content people have no clue. I mean, no clue. The cost of bandwidth is going down to nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they’re so cheap, that pretty soon you’ll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content distribution industry is going to evaporate.
Artists will simply start making business with their audience directly, or at least with much fewer degrees of separation than what they get now. There will be new middlemen eventually, but their role and businessmodel will be very different from the labels. The RIAA is obsolete, it’s just that it’s taking people a while to notice.
As for iTMS being a failure, I dispute that. It is a profitable business and it is by far the biggest online retailer of music. If you want to see what failure looks like, just look at the other online music shops. The only other venue that could be described as successful was AllOfMP3. Telling? Your call.
Re:What’s driving this…
jordan on 2007-02-07T22:27:43
OK, calling iTMS a failure might be a little strong. However, I don't think it's getting the growth that they thought it would.But, that's not Apple's fault. I think they are charging too much for DRMd music. I wouldn't consider buying anything from iTMS myself. I have an iPod, I listen the heck out of it, I've got most of my CD collection and tons of good podcasts on it. I won't buy music that I might have to repurchase later, nope, wouldn't consider it even a second. If I like something, I'll get the CD.
Re:What’s driving this…
Aristotle on 2007-02-08T00:27:22
Oh, I agree completely. I might in fact buy stuff from the iTMS, even with FairPlay DRM, but it would have to be in a lossless format, because my first order of business would then be to burn it in order to get rid of the container, and then re-rip it for listening. And I won’t accept the degradation of re-ripping what was already in a lossy format (lossy formats are OK with me, but only as the terminal stop).
Re:What's driving this...
mpeters on 2007-02-07T14:19:04
The first to provide a good service without DRM will attract so many more customers than the alternatives.There is already a service that does this - emusic.com. I'm suspecting that the only reason they are able to is because it's all independent artists not associated with the RIAA. From what I understand they are doing very well, but nothing like iTMS since it's not the most popular music.
Re:I call BS in Stevo
Aristotle on 2007-02-07T14:51:40
