Serious consideration for non DRM crippled music?

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Serious consideration for non DRM crippled music?

Fri, 02/24/2006 - 14:34 — charlie.collins

Dave Goldberg, head of Yahoo! Music, says it would be a good thing if major content producers (RIAA) just got rid of all this silly DRM crap. Doubletake . . . yeah, he said that.

This guy gets my "obvious but still for some damn reason not obvious to CEOs and those sorts" award for the day.

He is coming at it from a different angle, one of its just a pain to create a decent user experience and library if you have to, or in some cases (FairPlay) cannot, license various DRM schemes.

The more normal penguinista angle is one of, its my damn music after I buy it, and my device to play it on, leave me alone and you will SELL MORE GODDAMN MUSIC (years ago we were saying that, and years ago there was all kinds of evidence to support that stance - such evidence is only more overwhelming now).

Certainly both standpoints are valid and both are good reasons to get rid of DRM. At this point though with the RIAA having been so clueless for so long, and having been rather pissy about it (suing Grandmas downloading gangsta rap and so on) I sort of hope they hang on to their DRM ways and rather than them catching on OTHER CONTENT PROVIDERS get a foothold. That is content providers that specifically DO NOT use DRM. There are sites for such music, there are bands that insist, no DRM is possible. If consumers become more aware (especially with the news today that Apple iTunes just hit a BILLION - with a Carl Sagan "B" downloads) that they are locked into a certain DRM scheme, and care, and have other choices, that would be the ideal solution to this mess.

I suspect that the actual solution might be a combination of all these things. That is some push from big players like Yahoo! Music saying its a pain to manage or get access to the various schemes AND some movement towards enlightened consumers insisting on non DRM stuff (and finding providers for such - like eMusic). I just hope that the independent content providers, the ones that even use "respect" as a reason they do NOT DRM, make some general inroads BEFORE the RIAA decides to play non DRM ball (if they ever make that obvious decision).