Steve Jobs and DRM
Steve Job's essay on music and DRM
Game design is a great topic, and I know I've spent a fair amount of time talking about other things lately. The battle to get rid of DRM is, I think, an important one because it affects the free exchange of information and the archiving of information for future generations. Music is in the DRM spotlight these days (though movies and even Microsoft Office documents are also hot topics). The issues surrounding DRM are bigger than just music or entertainment though. I hope we can sort this stuff out before it leaks into more important aspects of virtual goods.
Anyway, Steve Jobs essay is exactly what I wanted to hear from Apple. Steve used a technique I personally love: he put the truth on the table and let people know who they should really be upset at: the music companies who still insist on DRM.
My one question to Steve would be, why does he not sell DRM-free songs on iTunes *today* from smaller labels or artists who do not wish to protect (aka cripple) their works?
Incidentally, I used Macs until I graduated from MIT 9 years ago. 9 years of Windows hasn't been too bad, but Vista has finally gone over the line for me. I don't see why Hollywood studios should be able to decide when and if to disable parts of my computer, ever. I'm about to switch back to Mac.
Great essay Steve, now just take the next step to removing the DRM on iTunes songs from sources other than the big 4 music companies.
--Sirlin
February 7th, 2007 at 4:01 am
However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.
Uh-oh.
http://www.mp3mymp3.com/
(I am not affiliated with that site btw)
February 7th, 2007 at 4:59 am
To play devil’s advocate, I worked as tech support among supposedly tech-savvy college kids and found a surprising amount of people who didn’t know DRM existed, much less was shackling their iTunes music as we speak. To remove DRM from indie labels would require the user to be confronted with a “This music isn’t DRMed!” tag when they were about to buy it, which would confuse the user and make them uncomfortably aware of the limitations on their normal iTunes use. It’s better in my cynical business mind to make everything homogenous and easy to understand and reinforce good opinions about my store than to give a small percentage of my products a benefit that only a small percentage of my customers will use.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:00 am
It probably simply isn’t worth the effort to have DRM-free indie music, which probably makes up a tiny percentage of iTunes sales. Does iTunes even have a lot of indie music? I find it is missing a lot of music from major-ish lables.
Adding some DRM-free music would mean more menu items, checkboxes, etc, that most people would never user.
—
On another topic, yesterday I played MGS:The Twin Snakes for GC. Or, I should say I watched it. One hour into the game I turned it off never to turn it on again, having played for about 8 minutes total, the rest being codec conversations, cut-scenes, etc. Talk about horrible pacing. Is there even a game buried in there somewhere?
February 7th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Yes, there is a game there, quite a good one. But if you don’t like the plot you did the right thing.
February 8th, 2007 at 4:31 am
Aside from the fact that the number of non-DRM songs on the iTunes store is a small percentage that would likely make the effort not worthwhile, there is also the issue of how DRM gets on an iTunes song in the first place. It is not on the iTunes store with DRM (i.e., tracks are stored on the servers as non-DRM AAC files). Rather, the DRM is placed on the song by iTunes when you download it. Then when you move that song to your iPod it is removed in the transfer.
This method allows the store to hold millions of songs requiring no changes should any DRM changes be made. It also means that no iPod changes are necessary either. Further, it frees the iPod up from DRM processing and the complexity it requires, a burden which other music players have because their DRM schemes aren’t implemented as brilliantly as Apple’s.
Whenever a FairPlay change is necessary, Apple only needs to make changes to iTunes, not to the store nor to the iPods themselves. This smart implementation of DRM will also make it easier for Apple to remove DRM altogether when the time comes, a goal I always believed they were shooting for as Steve Jobs railed against DRM long before yesterday.
February 8th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
This story was actually covered in the business section of the New York Times on wednesday (Feb. 7). Looks like it getting some serious press. Just thought i’d throw that out there.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Here’s The Economist’s take on Job’s essay:
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8660389
–Sirlin
February 9th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
What I really want to know is if the music industry finally realizes that abandoning DRM is a good idea, what effect will it have on Windows Time Bomb ™
February 9th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Matt: that’s still a “what if.”
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2007-02-08T133623Z_01_WEN3948_RTRIDST_0_WARNERMUSIC-RESULTS-ANTIPIRACY-URGENT.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna
Warner Music chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. said in a call with analysts that the argument to drop copy protection also known as digital rights management (DRM) is “without logic and merit. We will not abandon DRM.”
–Sirlin
February 10th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I suspect one of the biggest reasons that the “Big Four” refuse to drop DRM, yet sell largely unprotected CD’s is because they operate under the assumption that people who download music and people who go to the store and purchase it are two different kinds of people.
Record companies have dabbled in copy protection schemes on hard media several times, but when those methods were cracked, and people largely continued to purchase the cracked album, music companies decided there were consumers, and there were pirates. As the theory goes, consumers buy music in hard format, whereas pirates “aquire” music digitally over the internet.
Record companies seem to think there are copy limitations on the two different media, since a physical CD will only circulate within certain small groups of people, whereas a digital file can replicate and spread around the globe within seconds.
DRM is the companies’ attempt to throttle that rampant spread of information. Also the time and money invested in DRM is so great that simply dropping it for an open policy appears to be too much of a financial bath for these companies.
Apparently, what the record companies fail to realize is exactly what David Sirlin and Steve Jobs are saying: that DRM simply entices the tech savvy consumers who want a better product to find it illegally.
An example: When I bought my first iPod, I also bought a $15 iTunes card with it. I went home, set everything up, and checked out the iTunes store. The amount of music was fantastic, and the polish and interface was intuitive and friendly. When I previewed a song, it was a seamless, enjoyable process, and when I downloaded files, I was confident that viruses and spotty audio were the last things I needed to worry about. Everything worked smoothly, and I spent almost that entire card in a single night.
Then, the next day I started ripping my considerable CD collection, then I got some other music off the internet. All of a sudden, the songs I had bought from iTunes were cumbersome, they wouldn’t export or play on my other devices, they wouldn’t play properly in my other media players. The songs I had bought from iTunes were a thorn in my side, a one trick pony. I had bought those songs, at CD prices no less, even though the prices assciated with manufacturing such media were nonexistant. No materials, no packaging, no shipping or stocking fees, no markups for retail. I suddenly realized that I was recieveing an inferior product at a comparitively higher price.
I burned those 14 songs to a cd and re-ripped them back into iTunes, stripping them of their DRM. I now run absolutely zero songs with digital rights management, it’s not worth the trouble or expense. If DRM-free music were sold through legitimate channels, I would emphatically return to iTunes or whatever store provided the best product.
Unfortunately, that is a lesson record companies - in all their paranoia - have failed to learn.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Plenty of Indie stores sell non DRMed music. Being a techno lover, I buy alot of music from www.Beatport.com. Great interface, great selection, no DRM of any kind, heck sometimes you can even get the .wav version. There are of course, zero songs off major labels. But, since I primarily discover music through beatport, this is pretty meaningless to me. The major labels might want to know however, that I have stopped purchasing their music entirely.
February 12th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Great link Dilpil! I love electronica and thanks to the big record companies, finding new and diverse techno is very difficult to do. And this is the kind of thing I am definitely willing to pay for, even if the song prices are really quite steep.
February 14th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Yahoo, EMI, and Monster agree with Steve Jobs and all want DRM-free music.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/02/13/monster.backs.apple/
–Sirlin
February 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I think it’s amazing that Warner calls CDs a “legacy” product. They just pretty much admitted to selling you a product they consider outmoded at a premium price.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:54 am
Its sort of unreasonable to expect everyone to sell at 99 cents a song. These songs have a very limited audience, and take as much time to make as songs with a wide audience. Furthermore, if you bought the vinyl (talk about legacy products- but hey thats what indie techno labels use), you would end up paying about $2 a track.
Also consider that these tracks are 2 to 3 times as long as pop tracks.
February 19th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I probably shouldve made it more clear that I meant techno songs. Pop songs at 99 cents make perfect sense.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:01 am
emusic is a great itunes alternative which a huge catalog & no DRM.
they don’t have much support from the major labels, of course, but for a lot of people that’s not even an issue.