February 14, 2007
Potential consequences?
So now a Yahoo chief is sounding in favor of Steve Jobs' anti-DRM essay that came out last month. I'm not entirely sure Jobs wasn't being cynical about the address, but as the popularity of the iPod seems to be significantly greater than the popularity of iTMS, he wouldn't stand to lose all that much. It's also debatable how much revenue Apple would actually lose, as rumor has it that iTMS is breaking even at best if not an actual loss-leader.
If the record labels drop DRM, something they are under increasing pressure to do, it occurs to me that we might have a very happy unintended consequence: the movie studios, realizing that consumers don't like DRM and AACS us useless anyway, might do so as well. Which would be good in and of itself. But even that might have another consequence: Microsoft might take all of the patent idiocy out of Vista, leaving us with an actual update to Windows instead of a manifest step backwards.
There's another entire article to be written about the boon that iTMS has been for smaller record labels and independent artists. I have a friend who works at a small indie label and another in a label-less self-produced/distributed band who both say the percentages the artists receive on music is orders of magnitude higher than what they receive per track/album if they signed/distributed through any of the Big 5.
What iTMS has become, in a very real way even WITH their annoying DRM, is a free-market enabling/encouraging distribution channel. With it's ever growing popularity, it's utterly conceivable that a band from start to finish could never release a hardcopy/CD version of their album while still making a tidy profit on their work/art.
Posted by: Josiah at February 14, 2007 10:59 PM