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The Economist, DVD Jon On Apple's DRM Stand
We have two followups this morning to Tuesday's story on Steve Jobs's call to do away with DRM for music. The first is an editorial in The Economist sent in by reader redelm, who notes that as "arguably the world's leading business newspaper/magazine" that publication is in a position to influence legal and political decision-makers who may never have heard of DRM. The Economist says: "Mr Jobs's argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right." Next, Whiney Mac Fanboy sends pointers to two blog entries by "DVD Jon" Johansen. In the first Johansen questions Jobs's misuse of statistics in attempting to prove that consumers aren't tied to iPods through ITMS: "Many iPod owners have never bought anything from the iTunes Store. Some have bought hundreds of songs. Some have bought thousands. At the 2004 Macworld Expo, Steve revealed that one customer had bought $29,500 worth of music." Johansen's second post questions Jobs's "DRM-free in a heartbeat" claim: "There are... many Indie artists who would love to sell DRM-free music on iTunes, but Apple will not allow them... It should not take Apple's iTunes team more than 2-3 days to implement a solution for not wrapping content with FairPlay when the content owner does not mandate DRM. This could be done in a completely transparent way and would not be confusing to the users."
Update: 02/08 16:28 GMT by KD : Added missing links.
Update: 02/08 16:28 GMT by KD : Added missing links.
It's very possible that Apple's contract bans them from selling non-DRMed music alongside DRMed music. This explains why groups like Nettwerk haven't been given the option to sell their music DRM-free. Apple's got the best deal of all the music stores, they must have given up something to get it, and "all music must be DRMed" sounds very cartel-ish and would fit getting the good prices.
"It should not take Apple's iTunes team more than 2-3 days to implement a solution for not wrapping content with FairPlay when the content owner does not mandate DRM. This could be done in a completely transparent way and would not be confusing to the users."
Yeah, right. Tell that to the vast majority of non-tech savvy iTunes users, who don't understand why they can't make an MP3 CD of their purchased music. I have a friend who likes to make "Mix" CD's for other friends, and they keep getting frustrated when iTunes tells them some of their tracks can't be converted to MP3. I've tried explaining DRM to them, but for the typical layperson, it goes right over their heads.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Getting distribution on iTunes is not as hard as was suggested.
/ viewAlbum?playListId=202470955
If you produce a CD and follow the instructions to have your disc sold on CDBaby.com, they will submit your music to iTunes. In the case of music I've submitted, there was a delay of about six weeks; then we got word that we were live on iTunes.
This is not the full ticket to Hollywood. It's not a huge hurdle either. It's one of many small cumulative things that you do to get your music out there.
Notably there was no contractual lock-in with CDBaby or with iTunes. They own nothing, we retain our copyrights and our ability to distribute in any other channel we like. The whole thing has been artist-friendly.
Our R&B artist on iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa
Our other music (ambient & progressive rock) http://www.workshopmusic.com/streams.html
Jobs also came out strongly in favor of:
* Ponies for everyone - who doesn't love ponies?
* Rainbows everyday - wouldn't the world be just that much better?
* Love - it doesn't have to be just for dirty hippies
You gotta hand it to Jobs and his bold stance of anti-DRM and pro ponies, love, and rainbows. Let's all go out and buy incremental upgrades to our iPods!
On everage, every human has one testicle and one breast. You have to learn when the average is meaningless (hint: start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation)
When devising our digital store (www.roughtrade.com), we didn't for one moment consider having DRM catalogue included. Contrary to it being a marketing issue of differentiation against would-be digital competitors, us opting to sell only DRM-free MP3's has been moral stance informed by three decades of selling music. We consider it morally wrong to impose one set of ownership rights (on the same album) to those customers preferring to buy one format and not another - instead, we treat all our customers the same, whatever format they decide to purchase. To do otherwise would be disrespectful to our customers accrued over thirty years. As it currently stands, major labels have ignored our long-standing retail support and that of our customers (arguably the roots of their prosperity) in favour of imposing DRM and thereby propagating an uncompetitive digital retail market, whereby retailers such as ourselves are unfairly discriminated against to the continued advantage of an effective monopoly. For Rough Trade, music is not a content driver, music is a passion shared with like-minded people over a counter or website. The more music retailers that uphold this value, the more prosperous our industry would surely become. The sooner DRM is scrapped by major labels, the sooner we can present our long-established customer base a consistent offer, whether they visit our London stores, buy online at our mail-order website, or download MP3 from our digital store website. The end result being we can compete on a level playing field, allowing music lovers to choose their digital retailer based on 'music lover' factors such as the retailers ability to recommend exciting new music, and not uncompetitive, discriminating terms of format availability.
just this morning, i read this (Hollywood Takes Its Concerns About Piracy and Taxes to Washington):
i have a feeling that the prime mover and shaker in the wars for/ against drm will be fought mainly along this battlefront. so either hardware manufacturers, by ignoring content creators, will drag content creators kicking and screaming into reality, or content creators will probably, as a mode of attack, simply buy hardware manufacturers, and silence them via business channels
some, like sony, are both hardware and content creators. internal battles on the issue within sony might be revelatory for what our future holds
i'm actually pretty upbeat about the future in this regard though. people like jobs show that hardware manufacturers are just as willing to dream about bullying around content creators as visa versa. it was the content creators dithering and denial on the subject of downloadability that allowed jobs to create iTunes and lead us into the future, so to say. from an obvious business perspective in terms of natural fit, content creators should have been the ones offering a download storefront on the internet, but they didn't out of their fear and panic about what the internet meant to their existence. along came a hardware manufacturer, with nothing to lose on the content front, and therefore no fear, and filled the natural void of consumer want/ need that wasn't being filled as it should have naturally been filled by the content creators. and for dithering as they did, now content creators are in a deeper hole because they have to deal with a formidable opponent, jobs, with nothing to lose and no reason not to defy content creators. he is now in charge of the largest growing revenue stream for the content creators, not one of their own stooges. good for the consumer
and besides, even if all of american hardware and content creators were consolidated business-wise against the interests of us, the consumers, there is always hardware manufacturers in china, or russia, or india, or europe, who would be all too happy to steal the lions share of the marketplace from consumers sick of the ridiculous 1984-style limitations on their hardware that would obviously result from collusion between hardware and content creators
in other words, i don't think content creators have enough business muscle AND international clout to completely limit the range of drm-free options we as consumers will be able to access hardware-wise. and therefore, content creators and their dreams of completely controlling how we access our own culture is doomed
an odious intrusion, simply because they want to preserve their antiquated pre-internet business model. no, i have a better option: why don't you just fade away and die, movie/ music conglomerates? you need us. we don't need you. welcome to the future: the internet has rendered old style media distribution models, where you could easily put up your tolls, archaic. in the future, artists will reach consumers directly
in short, you're history
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're incredibly naive if your really believe that. I've had to explain to my girlfriend on three separate occasions that her music will only work on iTunes or an iPod, and that I can't play it on my Linux computer. I had to convince her sister that if she bought a Creative mp3 player, her music from iTunes wouldn't work on it. Apple makes it easy for people to play their music and transfer it to their iPod. Unless somebody has bought a music player other than an iPod and tried to transfer music, tried to burn an mp3 cd, or tried to use Linux, most likely they're only loosely aware that there are some things they can't do with their iTunes music. Apple's DRM is not nearly as restrictive as it could be. If nothing else just burn a regular CD and rip it back. You may care about quality, but the difference isn't enough for most users to care.
Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. The artist often gets a very minimal cut of sales on iTunes, and only complies because otherwise they could lose other contracts. I'd hardly call it greedy to try and keep your job. The listener has a choice between driving to the store and buying a CD, downloading something illegally (the greediest option), or downloading it from iTunes. Then they have as many choices as they have with a CD, because they can in fact burn the music to a CD. There are two groups that could be construed as particularly greedy. The publisher, who chose DRM in an attempt to prevent piracy, would go under if everyone shared digital music freely. Then there's Apple, the distributor, who seems to have the most to gain by locking people to a platform. But Apple is saying that decision lies with the distributors.
As far as why Apple doesn't sell some tracks without DRM, I don't think its so much a matter of confusion as not wanting to advertise DRM. As I've stated, there are iTunes users out there who don't realize there are restrictions on their music. If the music store didn't distinguish between DRM free tracks and tracks with DRM, users would never know for sure what they're getting until they'd bought it. But if they put anything to indicate that some tracks have DRM and some tracks don't, it would call attention to DRM, and users would begin to realize their music had restrictions on them. Whether you'll admit it or not, right now most iTMS customers are blissfully ignorant towards DRM, and the only way Apple is going to make sure every user knows about DRM is going to be in the context that the iTMS is now DRM Free.
Why is this creating such a commotion, or better yet, why are people arguing against Jobs? I'm no apologist, but his stance made 100% perfect sense to me.
DRM:
Look, if you are required by some companies to use DRM, what are you going to do? 1., use it or 2., don't and don't sell their music. I think DRM is a sham, but it's pretty clear what the companies want that own the music they license out to iTunes.
iPod:
Again, I agree with Jobs here. The iPod plays MP3 and AAC, which can both be considered 'standards'. The only thing missing, of course, is Ogg. But this is pretty good. I don't see anyone bitching much about the Zune which has THE WORST DRM imaginable on a player. Not only is your DRM-free songs wrapped in DRM, but when you share (or squirt - jesus..) these with the social - this is ANY track mind you - it's wrapped in DRM and the receiver can only listen to it 3 times and/or it expires automagically in something like three days. I can't begin to say how unbelievably lame this is for the consumer, but makes perfect sense to the record companies. Where's the uproar against the worlds largest software company regarding that?
iTS:
Yes, it does not sell all indie labels (some tho) and yes, Apple probably could roll in something to allow non-DRM stuff to work perfectly with DRM stuff. But again, without having priviledged access to the project/source, who's to say how that could be done. I'm sure it could be though. I still think Apple does a pretty good job with the iTS. I mean how many other music stores out there fight with the record cartel to keep prices low? If it was Bill G or Ballmer or whoever else, you know they wouldn't give a shit about $.99 price and kowtow to the labels every wish. This is a FACT.
Licensing FairPlay:
I'm with Jobs on this one. M$ tried it with the 'Plays For Sure' and look where they are now, copying iTS/iPod. For a company providing a product, NOT a socially beneficial service, it makes sense to keep it small and in control. Doesn't mean I support FairPlay, but from a practical product standpoint, Jobs is right and the real goal is to get RID of FairPlay, not expand it to more vendors.
In the end, again, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Of course the Microsoft club is gonna slam everything Jobs does - cuz they're not #1 in that area, so they'll naturally hate everything else. But the Econ calling the article 'self serving'? I dunno, I guess, but how is taking the labels to task so self serving? When did Ballmer last call for the labels to drop DRM? Or any other big computer/electronics exec? I think Gates went as far as mentioning at one point that DRM "won't work" but, that falls very short compared to Jobs speech.
I also don't look at the iPod as some big monopolistic, lock in mechanism. I can play all the formats I use on it except, again, Ogg. And for indie artists, there's always eMusic or CDs. The Econ article, and many others, cite lock-in as a argument the EU is using, but seriously, why would someone jump ship to a player from M$ or Sony? Plus, what does Jobs really have to lose if the EU rules iTS/iPod illegal? Fine, worst case, don't sell to them. And then what DRM will the EU run to? M$? Sony? Or will they spend years and years coming up with some 'standard' that then fades away when the labels finally cave in to unprotected tracks, but only because consumers demanded it from them? The EU may sue or whatever, but Apple dropping FairPlay is not going to happen and again, music players are not computers, so the 'lock-in' will fade.
I think, if anything, more people should be backing Jobs. What other high profile hardware maker is saying the same? M$? Sony? Creative? Sandisk? His stance on having the EU look at EMI and Universal is dead on. I've been in the music industry and they ARE the culprit in this case. 100%. If anyone opened up an online music store tomorrow and wanted major label music, it w