In something of an earth shattering move for the notoriously stone walling company, Steve Jobs has posted on Apple’s Hot News page what could almost pass for a Blog posting setting out his thoughts on the future of Digital Music and claiming that Apple would wholeheartedly support DRM free music, effectively putting the ball back in the record companies court.
“In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none.”
Way to go Steve. And the real Steve at that. Of course, some will be cynical and say this is just Apple trying to pass the buck on the whole European rights management hassle, but to be honest, I don’t think he is, because all the points he makes are valid and it appears that Apple freely admit that DRM is working for no one. As I have said on this blog many times, DRM is just plain wrong.
“Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.”
(oops – in my excitement I forgot to link to the article! – fixed now)
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