Nearly a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs boldly called for the music industry to abandon its practice of using digital rights management (DRM) software to protect its content.
“Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats,” Jobs wrote in a post on the Apple company blog. “In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”
Jobs pointed out that most music sold is DRM-free, because no effective system was ever developed for audio CDs. But he argued that the major music companies were unwilling to license their content to Apple for download without the implementation of a DRM system.
Apple developed FairPlay, a proprietary system that allows iTunes downloads to be played on Apple iPods, but not on other MP3 players.
Shuffling Toward Openness
Recent events suggest that the music industry might eventually abandon its efforts to restrict the portability of downloaded music. Napster (which ironically played a large role in the music industry’s adoption of DRM in the first place) recently announced that it will start selling protection-free MP3s in the second quarter of 2008.
And just yesterday, Sony BMG — the world’s second-largest music company — announced the launch of Platinum MusicPass, a series of cards that consumers can purchase to download DRM-free versions of full-length albums.
The retail program will start on January 15 with an initial list of 37 artists, ranging from Elvis Presley to Alicia Keys.
“Sony has joined the move to offer DRM-free content,” said Zippy Aima, an industry analyst of digital media for ABI Research, “but the reason they are offering only limited number of titles is to see…