Jobs calls for DRM-free music
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Feb 6, 2007 at 4:27pm
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called on the four major record companies to start selling songs online without copy protection software known as digital rights management (DRM), according to a message at the Apple web site. He said there appeared to be no benefit to the record companies to continue to sell more than 90 percent of their music without DRM on compact discs while selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system.
“If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players,” Jobs said in a statement. “This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.”
The CEO foresees three different alternatives for the future. The first alternative, he says, is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music.
The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. However, Jobs thinks that’s a bad idea—and explains why in his message. He says the third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely.
“Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats,” Jobs writes. “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. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.”
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Jim P Says:
While there might be some merit to SJ’s thought, I’m not at all sure it could work in the real world.
CD’s, and previously records, had no embedded DRM, but had a practical one. If you didn’t purchase, or have access to that record or CD, you couldn’t listen to the song and later in the evolution, make a tape copy and today a copy of the CD and still more recently, to a mp3 player. There was a physical barrier of sorts that was the DRM.
Imagine an artist or band who writes a songs. If they want to do a compilation (CD or Record) of their music today, they do a CD. Folks purchase the CD or if they’re on a site like iTMS, WallyMort, etc., single cuts can be purchased.
I suppose it could be argued that little profit gets back to the artists in many cases, but *Some* does. The artist or artists make something.
Imagine that DRM free world with the same songs. Once the song gets out in even ONE store, it’s out forever. And copied at will forever. All one needs do is wait a bit and you’ll find it, presumably.
A reasonable question might be then, how does an artist make anything for their efforts of writing, creating and performing, or have others perform their creations in a manner equal to the revenue, though maybe small but still there, that they would get in todays DRM World?
Perhaps that means that songs/albums that are FREE of DRM would then command a higher price so that with those sold, something, perhaps even a smaller amount that is now made, might filter back to the artist. Still, the artist will make little if anything on the sale of their music and it might force artists to charge even more for live shows than is presently the case.
In any event it might be nice to move to a DRM free model, but first I think a new model that will bring some revenue back to the artists will have to be arrived at. Otherwise, what’s going to be the motivation for an artist to write and create? A hungry artist won’t be one who creates, save for perhaps the few, since they will be all too busy worrying about how to eat, stay warm and keep a roof over their head. We haven’t seen any brilliant creations from the homeless in this regard.
The dropping of a DRM might only serve to show the iPod as the best player. Further,dropping of a DRM probably won’t make the creative landscape a richer place, but perhaps a poorer one for the artist.
Posted on February 06, 2007
ziggybop Says:
“Once the song gets out in even ONE store, it’s out forever. And copied at will forever. All one needs do is wait a bit and you’ll find it, presumably.”
Really, how is it different whether a song is released DRM-free at an online store or a CD is ripped and uploaded to the torrents?
Posted on February 06, 2007
Wubba Says:
Thanks, Steve for saying what we’re all thinking. Somehow, artists managed to create music for centuries before there was any concept of DRM or copyright. I would imagine that in a hypothetical, DRM-free world, no earth-shattering cataclysm would suddenly silence every musician. It might, however, mean the beheading of a heaping pile of sleazy middlemen.
Posted on February 06, 2007
JimP Says:
ziggybop, I don’t know what to say since I think I explained how the CD is different. The CD has a “physical DRM” which is to say, someone has to go buy it, then they have to copy it to something, then they have to share it and once that act puts it out, it’s out. We know more than ONE person will purchase the CD. I’m sure some will purchase the DRM free version too, but it will be and Mp3 and not a full file, but compressed as opposed to the CD. Point it the revenue will be diminished even lower than it is today.
Wubba, while artists often create for it’s own sake, without making revenue from the things we do, it’s hard to make a living. Songwriting is a craft, not one that is a hobby, at least the good ones and I can say I’ve known some folks who were masters of that craft and they’d be hard-pressed if they didn’t have the revenue from the royalties of their song writing. I have a friend who had a national hit back in the 70’s and he still gets royalty checks that in a DRM free world, woudln’t be there.
Posted on February 07, 2007
MacManic Says:
http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/apples_drm_is_illegal_in_norway/
Interesting how no one else here defended Norway…
What does “J. Scott Anderson” think about this…
“This sounds more like sour grapes and heavy lobbying by people who are mad that they cannot get people to like their stuff as much as people like the iPods with iTMS. Heck one might even wonder if they are not trying to support piracy if you wanted to stretch a bit and look for a conspiracy.”
Anyway it’s fantastic news, if it happens.
m
Posted on February 07, 2007
Wubba Says:
“I have a friend who had a national hit back in the 70’s and he still gets royalty checks that in a DRM free world, woudln’t be there.”
Yes - but all this means is that the marketplace for music would be ‘different,’ not dead. You have to admit that all too often in music, IP laws merely serve to prop up the mediocre. This is doubtless part of the reaon why pop music is such a freaking cesspool. Why are the major labels sales really down? Could it be because the music generally sucks? Oh, but they’d never admit to that - it HAS to be music piracy. Right…
A world without DRM or copyright might unduly penalize one-hit-wonders like your friend, and that’s unfortunate, but as an artist, how can he seriously be content with sitting on his laurels for so long? Without artificial support, I suspect the men would quickly separate from the boys. It would undubtedly be a totally different game, and maybe a harder one, with fewer players, but would anyone really mourn the demise of the Spice Grils or n-Sync?
I’d much rather have a music industry that was driven by ‘ars gratia artis’ than by a crass profit motive. Musical Darwinism - the way it was done for centuries.
Posted on February 07, 2007
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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Jarod Says:
Steve Jobs is DA MAN!
If this goes through, it will prove once and all that people CHOSE the iPod as the No.1 world mp3 player and not because Apple locked them in. This will be the final nail in the coffin to all that other garbage being sold on the market today!
Posted on February 06, 2007