On Feb 6th, Steve Jobs published an open letter to the world (see http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic) with his thoughts on digital music and specifically the digital rights management (DRM) technology used by Apple and others to “protect” the music from piracy.It certainly seems like Jobs has employed his “Reality Distortion Field” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field) to its full effect on this one. His ability to gain column inches on a subject (DRM) normally considered dull by the mass media is impressive in itself. But Steve is just jumping on the bandwagon – companies like 7digital, Yahoo, emusic etc have been calling for consumer choice and unprotected music for ages. It does seem disingenuous of Steve Jobs to suddenly become the greatest advocate of non-DRM music given that for the last few years, Apple has trumpeted its ironically named “FairPlay” DRM system (only “Fair” for Apple!).
For my mind this is a slightly cynical attempt to take the moral high ground as Apple is under increasing pressure from European consumer groups to open up its platform. And maybe Apple are realizing that consumers are getting fed up with the fact that downloads purchased on the iTunes music store simply don’t work on any device other than the iPod.
Saying all of that, we certainly support his conclusion – consumer choice drives free markets and for legitimate digital music and media to take the next big step consumers need to be able to buy digital media that works on any device. We’ve always supported multiple formats (including MP3) that are optimized for multiple devices including the iPod, Sony PSP, Creative Zen, Windows Media Centers etc. The idea of consumers having to transcode files so they work on different devices is insane.
For digital music to fulfill its potential, consumers should be able to play their purchased music on any device and be able to buy from any store secure in the knowledge that it will just work. Then we will have real competition.
Ben Drury CEO 7digital
Contact me: ben.drury (at) 7digital.com
Posted by 7digital 
