DRM is declared DEAD
Today in London Steve Jobs the Apple Distortion Field Generator and EMI Music (the record label that has the Beatles, Chemical Brothers and some other few) declared Digital Rights Management dead. EMI states that 84% of consumers would prefer digital music playing devices free of DRM to be able to freely copy and use their music.
You will read that in about trazillion blogs in 20 minutes here are the slides:
EMI declares DRM dead slides (pdf)
What this means is crystal clear. A big record studio admits that the whole DRM thing was wrong is wrong and will be wrong now and always. Consumer rejoice, EMI will have a short "record" sales as all those that support this decision will show their support through a purchase (well maybe not) and the other biggies will follow, then next is the movie industry and in three years everything is fully completely DRM free. Right? RIGHT!
Generally this shows how powerful consumers are once they break free of the TV and advertising brainwash the company soak them in all their life. This has extremely far reaching consequences inside and outside all of society. Generally I support this with all my heart - not that I will start buying music again, but maybe this will also spur better music in the future. The next fight copyright as it is at the moment in general? Or a complete reshape of the media industry top to bottom left to right?
With DRM out of the way it definitely frees up some thoughts.
UPDATE: Well its all out there now, the news and all. The sour grape is thats its also a move to price the songs higher - which is bullshit. The move is clever price it higher now, phase out the cheap ones with DRM and leave the new price in. 1,30 USD is pretty huge. Anyway. The best blurb from Steve out of the news conference has to be the following which I definately would like execs of other companies to read and also Apple itself to read - because sometimes they don´t follow that idea themselves:
Q: And the second part of my question is: What do you think this will have an impact on the iPod-iTunes relationship in terms of now being able to buy your music on any player and not just on iPod?
A: Well again, you've been able to play all sorts of music on iPod forever. iPods have played MP3s forever. So the only music that has been in question is music you buy off the iTunes store. Now again, you can burn a CD and read that CD back in and it takes off the DRM. So you could then play it on anything else. We compete based on having what we we think is the best music store and based on what we think is having the best music players. And if customers agree with us, we are going to do well. If they don't, well we're going to get a message back that we have to work harder.