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Music Labels Screwed, DRM Is Dead

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the damn-the-man dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jenner, former manager of bands like Pink Floyd, T.Rex and the Clash, states in an interview with the Register that music label executives have lost faith in DRM and dollar-per-track online music selling isn't working too well as a model. He predicts that in two to three years time, many countries will have moved to a blanket licensing regime." The article goes on at some length, talking about the value of digital music, patterns in the music industry, and some business at the end about 'the tyranny of the playlist' that I'm not hep enough to follow. I'm not sure this rant has any connection whatsoever with reality, but it is something to think about.

1 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Paying for music is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Jenner is wrong about DRM being dead... because DRM is not about controlling the distribution of music and video.

    You can only control data by controlling the applications that run. DRM is about the centralized development of software, and about forcing people to only run that software to access certain pieces of data. That's DRM is a nutshell.

    Once you understand that, you understand why DRM is not dead, and will not die just because a bunch of record/movie companies finally get a clue. The technology companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Apple and Sun all *want DRM very badly* because it puts them in control. Remember: the DIGITAL in DRM doesn't just refer to music and video -- it's anything. Images, emails, word processing documents, spreadsheets... software itself is just digital data as far as an operating system is concerned (remember that when you think of Microsoft and DRM).

    DRM is way past being about music and video. It's an unholy alliance between the pigopolists in the record and movie industry and the technology companies greedy to make themselves controllers of the digital world.

    P.S. Absolutely *everything* that Intel has done in the last ten years has been driven by the desire to implement a pan-DRM regime -- and especially to bring a controlled locked-down environment to the PC world.