"Music wants to be free"
If you haven't heard, Steve Jobs recently posted an essay speaking of the problems with DRM, and how he would prefer that Apple sold all their music DRM-free. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, a type of encoding online music stores use to limit piracy. The problem with DRM is that every single online music vendor uses different code for their DRM, which causes a compatibility nightmare. Let's say you want to get an exclusive record from Rhapsody music store, but Rhapsody downloads don't work with your iPod. This will probably lead a decent amount of people to just pirate the track, or album. It's obvious that this system doesn't really help anyone. Record companies prefer the idea of having DRM, in hopes that it will limit piracy, but it doesn't. In the end the consumers and the companies don't gain anything. Consumers are limited with the music they can buy online, and companies are limited with their customers.
Steve Jobs sums it up well.
"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. 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."
There is the argument that Apple would loose a big market share, because people would have less incentive to buy iPods, but here I turn The Economist.
"Apple can afford to embrace open competition in music players and online stores. Consumers would gravitate to the best player and the best store, and at the moment that still means Apple’s. Mr Jobs is evidently unfazed by rivals to the iPod. Since only 3% of the music in a typical iTunes library is protected, most of it can already be used on other players today, he notes. (And even the protected tracks can be burned onto a CD and then re-ripped.) So Apple’s dominance evidently depends far more on branding and ease of use than DRM-related 'lock in'."
To sum up, it's about time all music was DRM-Free.
[Steve Jobs]
[Economist]
Steve Jobs sums it up well.
"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. 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."
There is the argument that Apple would loose a big market share, because people would have less incentive to buy iPods, but here I turn The Economist.
"Apple can afford to embrace open competition in music players and online stores. Consumers would gravitate to the best player and the best store, and at the moment that still means Apple’s. Mr Jobs is evidently unfazed by rivals to the iPod. Since only 3% of the music in a typical iTunes library is protected, most of it can already be used on other players today, he notes. (And even the protected tracks can be burned onto a CD and then re-ripped.) So Apple’s dominance evidently depends far more on branding and ease of use than DRM-related 'lock in'."
To sum up, it's about time all music was DRM-Free.
[Steve Jobs]
[Economist]
posted by 6-3-2 at 10:52 PM
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