The recent letter from Apple boss Steve Jobs calling for the major labels to abandon DRM on downloads and the ongoing rumours about EMI Records seeking deals with online stores to sell its catalogue in unprotected formats suggest that the days are now numbered for copy protection on downloads.
While Steve Jobs’ motivations may be rather more complex, there are two clear factors which have contributed to changing attitudes at the major labels.
Firstly, there is the growing realisation that the surest way to achieve interoperability is to avoid using DRM in the first place. Jobs’ letter only confirmed his reluctance to even contemplate opening up Apple’s Fairplay DRM to interoperate with other software and devices. Notwithstanding the opposition from the world’s market leader in DRM downloads and the political challenges between the various vested interests involved, even DRM’s most diehard supporters are beginning to question the time and effort required to solve the technical challenges of achieving full interoperability.
the industry must make digital products
more attractive to mainstream music buyers
Then there’s the growing concern at fairly flat digital sales in the world’s leading digital market, the US. The industry will have to make the digital product much more attractive to mainstream music buyers if digital is ever to make up for the decline in physical sales (which is already running at 20% for 2007 in the US, according to the latest Soundscan figures).
However, none of the above means that DRM is about to die off altogether. Other digital music models, such as Napster style subscription, simply do not make economic sense without some kind of DRM. And there has been a more unified approach to agreeing standards for mobile music through organisations like the Open Mobile Alliance (though not involving Apple again of course) to prevent casual forwarding via technologies like bluetooth. If DRM's days are numbered for downloads, it becomes more important that ISPs take responsibility for the value of what is being transmitted over their networks.