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BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM
hype7 writes "BusinessWeek is running a very interesting story on Apple's foray into music, with a different bent to everyone else's. BW suggests that, instead of opening the iPod up to the world, Apple should instead license its DRM - 'Fairplay' - to anyone who wants to start up a music store. The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous; Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold); and, it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format. As the iTunes Music Store isn't running at a profit (or forecast to make a big one), having the Music Store clones eat into Apple's existing market share wouldn't be a problem; all these stores would be doing is building a bigger potential market for the iPod."
I agree with this article. Adding WMA to the iPod is ludicrous (as is Rob Glaser's plea to add other support....Real.....get real!). However, licensing the DRM to AAC that Apple uses would nothing but grow the iPod marketshare because no one could complain that the iTMS is the only place to buy music for the iPod.
However,.......based on Steve's stubborness and protectiveness of Apple, I am not going to hold my breath on this one. Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.
Here's to hoping.....
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Apple's DRM technology is FairPlay, and the files they offer for download on iTunes Music Store are AAC files wrapped in the FairPlay encoding.
True, but I think the point is that AAC is the technology that Apple has adopted, and the DRM they use with it is their DRM technology. So the point stands, that if they license their DRM layer, they stand to get at least as much out of it as they are getting out of the HP iPod rebranding deal.
However, does anyone else think it might be too late in the game for this? Why weren't they licensing their DRM tech to Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, etc?
Maybe partying will help...
I know apple probbaly wont agree, but looking at the sucess of OSS, doesnt it make sense for them to simply open iPod and release its source code, so anyone with lots of time to spare can write interseting and useless plugins.
These will ultimately result in the iPod becoming more popular
An apple a day keeps MS away
I think that Jobs has his own plan in mind, though I hope he's included "flexibility".
Option 1: Stay Alone
This basically has the iPod and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) working only together. So far, this situation has proven to be the case, and it's working pretty well: the iPod is the #1 selling MP3 player out there, it's making Apple a butt load of cash (and when you try to carry money in your butt you'll know what I mean), and iTMS is the #1 online music sales system by far - 50 million songs sold compared to Roxio's 5 million. Even comaring apples to , er, apples, just within the 6 months since Napster has been out Apple has made 5 to 1 sales.
If this continues, then eventually Jobs can force out all of the "for profit" music shops out there, and boil it down to just the "for advertising" places, like Wal-Mart, Coke, and Microsoft (which would really be looking to make Windows Media Audio the default standard).
From this, Apple makes AAC the next MP3, and their DRM becomes the "de facto standard" - even though nobody else can use it. Apple makes all the money, and they like it.
This will only come true, however, if Apple keeps a huge lead. What happens when Microsoft (MS) unveals their own online music store (didn't originally they tell folks like Napster that they wouldn't? Well, nevermind that....), sells songs for $0.50 each, takes a hit on profits, and basically acts like they did with Internet Explorer. (Ignoring any antitrust issues - not that Microsoft ever has had to in the past.)
So that goes to Option 2: License the DRM
I have the feeling that Jobs will release this if and only if iTMS and iPod sales start taking a dive. It's his "ace in the hole" to keep iPod sales alive. All it will take is him going to the other stores, making an offer, and then everybody can use the iPod with any service. Sure, it could hurt iTMS removing the one thing that makes it different from everybody else - but Apple is about the hardware.
But what happens if someone like Dell or Gateway come out with their own MP3 player that starts to make the iPod look like yesterday's bulky cell phone? That's when option 3 kicks in:
Option 3: License WMV for the iPod
This one only happens when things are dire and Apple feels they finally have to put in their chips.
The question is, how likely is either option to be? I can see Option 2 and 3 as "someday, maybe" futures. But as of right now, iTMS and the iPod rules the roost, and as long as Apple keeps that up for another 12-24 months, everybody else just in it to "make money selling music" will be so marginalized it won't matter. We're more likely to see Pepsi style promotions than anything else - though Apple had already keep an eye on possible cracks in their popularity: McDonald's may have dumped a iTMS deal in favor of a Sony Online Music one already, though of course nothing is official yet.
2 years I think the dust will be settled. Until then, I'll keep saving up to buy my wife an iPod mini. Hey, if nothing else, they're cute. And she still buys lots of CD's.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's a pain in the ass, let's the RIAA and it's member dictate what you can and can't do on a per song basis. Fairplay gives every song the same Rights. Metallica doesn't want their latest album burnable to cd, no probelm MS will stop you cold. Fairplay is Fairplay for theend users. MS doesn't know what fairplay means.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Anyone with some cash and negotiating skills can create an online music store - and many companies have. There's no techological lock-in, exclusivity or leverage that Apple has that they can exploit, and most of the music they offer is also offered by others.
Microsoft, on the other hand, *can*, "*has* and likely *will continue to* leverage their OS monopoly to exclude others for playing in the media space. We'll see what happens when they open their music store.
I guess this is why AAC was just recently chosen by the DVD consortium to be the standard for audio in the ROM portion of DVD-Audio disks. (That's been one of my major gripes with DVD-Audio -- you can't rip the songs to your computer currently, because there's no software out there designed to do this.)
Yeah, right, AAC is dead. Never mind that the latest iTunes rips into AAC by default. (You have to go into preferences to switch audio import to use MP3 instead.) Never mind that the iTunes Music Store outperforms all other legitimate digital music distribution methods, and their format of choice is AAC with FairPlay.
I guess that's why Quicktime is doing just fine? Seriously, talk about a reality distortion field -- yours seems to be worse than Steve Jobs'. Xvid and DiVX are still the purview of the 133t, although there are more DVD players on the market now that will play videos encoded in these formats. So they are gaining traction and mainstream acceptance; but most players that support these formats are cheapies from China, where video piracy is rampant, and the build quality leaves something to be desired.
Incidentally, AAC and Quicktime are linked inextricably with MPEG4, which is a current and future video standard. DiVX/Xvid leverage the MPEG4 standard.
Quicktime is not just a niche format. It's everywhere. Most sites that serve up movie trailers do so in Quicktime format. Quicktime is almost always offered as an option for sites that support multiple video formats. And AAC wasn't "created" by Apple -- it's an open standard that they adopted.
So what you're saying is that your entire post is really just an excuse to slam Jobs and Apple, and has nothing to do with anything else. Obviously. Since real facts don't bear your arguments out.
Funny, you sound like the Troll in this case. Pity I used up my moderator points a couple days ago.
They've left a tantalizing hint - if you look inside the iTunes application bundle, you'll see an icon for ogg files. It looks like they were at least considering supporting it enough to provide artwork. It's possible it supported it internally, but the feature might have been removed before shipping for some reason.
Let's see...Apple puts only what you call an ineffective lock on the music you download, yet this is the reason you haven't signed up for iTunes?
What, are you waiting for a store to come out with *effective* protection which gives you even less of what you want? "Federal take-it-up-the-@$$" protection?
Apple has to put some kind of protection on their downloads to reassure the labels. You claim that it is only a token effort. Isn't that the best you can hope for? Sounds like Apple is slying doing you a favor, as opposed to the draconian measures they could be taking.
Even if licensing out the iTMS format to other online music stores would theoretically drive more people to buy iPods, there's one factor that everyone's forgetting: user experience.
Apple doesn't want just any joe schmoe with a smelly t-shirt selling songs for the iPod because Apple wants to maintain a level of quality with the entire user experience, from the purchase of songs on iTMS to the browsing of their songs on iTunes to the uploading and management to the seamless integration between the store and iTunes.
"the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks."
More to the point, DRM is like a "club" for your car's steering wheel, or copy protection on PC software. It won't stop the people who are really determined to pirate music or software, or steal your car, but it stops the casual folks. If it can reduce much of the piracy, but not all of it, it's still worthwhile. The music industry's lawsuits have the same aim: if they can scare the masses away from piracy, they're better off even though the Slashdot crowd is simply moving to transfer mediums that are off the RIAA's radar or otherwise untouchable.
As an aside, I think Apple's DRM is fine. I can burn extra CDs for my friends and move tracks from PC to PC. It would not let me simply copy the tracks to my Kazaa share directory, which is fine, as that would be illegal anyway. The "artists have too many rights" crowd who see any sort of DRM as an affront to everything that is good and true and right in the world should check themselves.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
the whole setup basically a fig leaf so that the industry can *feel* protected while raking in the bucks.
No.
A deadbolt protects your house by making it physically difficult for the bad guys to break in. That's true.
But a "beware of dog" sign also protects your house. How? By deterring those who would otherwise walk right in and take your stuff. It doesn't do anything to stop a determined thief... but how many determined thieves are there out there, compared to the number of "thieves of opportunity?"
Fairplay protects music because it deters "thieves of opportunity." Because it's inconvenient to pirate Fairplay-protected music, paired with the fact that it's so darned easy to get it legally, Fairplay effectively protects music.
It's not a fig leaf. It's real.