The Jobs Effect

People have been hating on DRM ever since its inception. Consumer groups have railed, boycotts have been held, but still you hear from industry heavyweights like Ted Cohen:

“The DRM makes the business model possible,” he said. “Without DRM, you can’t have the business models and give people choices.”

But ever since The Great Steve Jobs ranted on DRM, tunes, shall we say, have been changing. EMI has announced a major change in policy by selling their songs through iTunes with no DRM restrictions. Now it looks like Microsoft is pushing at the labels as well:

“Consumers have indicated [having DRM free music] is important to them so Zune has been working with a variety of partners to head in this direction. This is a time of transition for the music industry and Microsoft is committed to striking a balance between delivering the best consumer experience while still protecting the rights of the content owners.”

God, what’s next? A legal music store that sells what consumers want and how they want it?? Shocker!!

I feel obliged to give some equal space to the opposition so here’s what Christopher “Buy DRM” Levy has to say on the subject:

Christopher Levy of the closely held Austin, Texas-based BuyDRM was one of those who was not so eager to contemplate the possibilities in the wake of EMI’s announcement. His company provides DRM technology to artists and record labels and he views the EMI announcement as a desperate move by a desperate music company trying to get around iTunes’ dominance in online sales.

“This is not the bellwether for the rest of the industry,” said Mr. Levy. “As long as there is media, there is going to be digital rights management. We can’t assume the music industry as a whole will abandon this. All things of value have some protection, and that’s not going to change.”

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