Consumer
I should probably have written about this earlier, back when it was actually announced by Apple, but since it’s only due to start happening in May, it seems just as relevant now.
Sometime this month EMI will start offering their entire catalogue DRM-free on the iTunes Store, the first major label to do so. This of course comes not long after Steve Jobs open letter to the industry, where he spelled out exactly why this was the best thing for them all to do. We should be glad somebody at EMI was listening.
DRM exists because the music labels want it to, because they don’t trust you, the consumer. The difference between iTunes and the Windows DRM systems (which we’ll compare because they are the two biggest) is like two competing music formats, like blu-ray versus HD-DVD, each only playing on a certain type of player. This situation is obviously bad for consumers, which is why various consumer groups have been trying to get Apple to do something about it (as the most successful seller of digital music). But these groups are just attacking the wrong people, calling for Apple to open up their DRM so other people can use it, or for them to license the Microsoft DRM, does nothing to help the consumer. It still locks them into a particular system, they’re just locked into one that more people use. Whether you chain up a thousand people or a million people, nothing gets you away from the fact that they’re still chained up.
So let’s see those consumer groups go after the labels for stipulating the need for DRM in the first place. Not only is it harming to consumers, but it’s also a broken system anyway, there’s not a single one of these DRM systems that can’t be cracked. It’s making it harder for the casual user to actually do what they want to do with the music that they paid for, while not stopping the professional criminal that wants to pirate as much music as they can.
I predict that EMI’s sales will increase dramatically in the short-term, as all those that know about DRM go and snap up all the music they want. We’ve not quite reached the peak of general-user DRM knowledge yet, but once your average user knows exactly what it is the record companies are doing to them, I’d expect to see a serious consumer backlash to begin.
