So, as you might have read if you’ve seen Ars Technica, Wired, Lifehacker, or a million other sites today – Apple announced that they are phasing out digital rights management on the files they sell on the iTunes music store. As part of their negotiation to retain the catalogs of some of the more uppity labels, they agreed to allow variable pricing on the service for the first time.
I think this is a good thing. I know Northeastern Music Industry majors have been predicting this for about 3 or 4 years now. I do worry about variable pricing, and wonder how those outside the industry will view this pricing change. Also, while Apple suggests that older tracks will be sold cheaper while “hits” will be more expensive, I wonder if people will do just the opposite to move units during the first week or two of sales, as we see from time to time on Amazon MP3.
My fear is that the industry will squander this. I hope those in power will recognize that selling songs at 69 cents, instead of 99 cents or a $1.29, will help secure people still legally purchase music, and at least some money will trickle back to the artists. As Hitsville so keenly notes, on filesharing sites, the DRM is still gone and the price is still zero when you download off torrents of p2p, and, like it or not (regardless of the law), people are still going to go there if they feel dissuaded from getting music legally.
I also think about labels who already “bury the single” as making the track album only on digital download sites. What if they start varying the price between songs on the same album? That raises some intersting questions about the value of music (e.g. – is song A really 30 cents a better song than song B? Can we say that about music?).
Interesting food for thought, but not part of my law school syllabus, so I’ll leave it at that for now. At times I wish I was still in Northeastern Music Industry seminars, given loads of time to think about these sorts of problems.
I think those of us who spend time talking about and writing about technology and music make more of the DRM issue than the average consumer. Most iTunes users play their music on iPods, on their computers or burn it to CD’s. They use iTunes because it is convenient and works well with their iPods.
If DRM was of significant importance to the average user, Amazon would’ve had customers FLOCK to them to buy MP3’s, especially since Amazon already offers deep discounts on album downloads.
But they didn’t because the interface and ease of use are more important than the rights protection for most people.
Doesn’t mean I’m not glad it’s gone or that it isn’t a move in the right direction though.
Comment by Rob — 8 January 2009 @ 2:59 am |
I think you’re right about that, Rob. But then again, that’s a fairly obvious statement when you boil it down (those that care about technology… care more about an element of technology). I think you’re partially right on the interface point, but also I think that iTunes has a very large advantage by being bundled with 20% of the computers on the market (and a larger market share every day), and it was the all important First to Market in the digital music world.
I used to work in sales for Apple about a year or so ago. While people didn’t talk about DRM or Anti-Circumvention laws, I did field a great deal of questions asking why people couldn’t “do” certain things with the songs they downloaded off of iTunes. “How come my other computer can’t read these?” “How come I can’t take the songs off of my iPod?” “Why won’t these files play in my other MP3 player?” and many more. Younger people seemed to understand the fundamentals of DRM (after all, my generation grew up with console-specific games, computer software with copy protection, and other rights-managed digital information), but to anyone slightly older on up this did confound people. After all, a record, cassette, or CD never cared in which player it was.
On a related note, Wired’s Listening Post did an interesting profile of Amazon MP3 customers a few days ago: http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/04/study-amazon-mp.html – In my opinion, this move by Apple certainly makes the two play on an equal filed – now both equipped to do discounts, and both free of DRM. The biggest difference is Apple’s choice to stick with the ACC file format, which does not play on most non-iPod MP3 players. I predict the convenience factor, as you mentioned, will probably bring a lot of converts over to Amazon back to iTunes. I suppose time will tell.
Thanks for coming by.
Comment by Andy — 8 January 2009 @ 8:30 am |