ID:35267
 
Keywords: apple, crime, music
If there were, I might be in trouble for stealing an idea! Gughunter's post today brought up a news item that I've also been following this week: the opening of Amazon.com's MP3 store, offering high quality, non-DRM MP3 downloads at prices meeting or often beating those of Apple's iTunes Store. I started to write a comment in response to his post, when it quickly ballooned to blog post proportions (say that 5 times fast). Here is that post.


Working With The Enemy


I read about Amazon's new store the day it came out and decided to give it a whirl, in support of legal, non-DRM downloads. I bought an MP3 album using their download client, and it couldn't have gone more smoothly. The Amazon client even added the songs to my iTunes library for me. Nicely done.


Wouldn't It Be Cool?


One thing that I really hope Amazon does with this store, which Apple can't, is combine MP3 downloads with CD orders. I buy the vast majority of my music on CD, because I'm old fashioned and it's always nice to have that extra bit of sound quality (even though I firmly believe that I, and 99.999% of the population, can't truly tell the difference). What if I could order a CD from Amazon, and instantly get the MP3 tracks to enjoy while I wait for the CD to come in the mail? It's the best of both worlds: instant gratification PLUS more physical stuff to fill up my storage closets! I fear that the record companies would be irrational want to charge double for this, but I've already suggested it to Amazon. If you like the idea, do the same!


The Great MP3 Price Wars


Regardless of a potentially ultra-cool feature like that, the opening of this store is fantastic news for consumers of digital music. It lends strength to the idea that DRM is bad for the industry, and it forces the dominant reseller (Apple) to do something about pricing. Granted, Apple's stance has been that prices should remain constant across the board, preventing the record labels from charging obscenely higher prices for the most popular songs and albums. It's a noble goal, but it also prevents discount pricing such as that seen on Amazon. And to be fair, if you look at Amazon's prices, you'll see that there's actually a wide range: most songs are at 89 or 99 cents, which they want hyped, but many others are actually $1.49 and up. In the end, it may be a toss-up to say which pricing model is better for consumers. Perhaps the only real change forced here will be for Apple to drop the 30-cent premium it currently charges for non-DRM tracks (iTunes Plus offers certain tracks at higher sound quality and with no DRM for $1.29).


Control Freaks


But make no mistake: the record companies want Amazon to succeed, so that Apple's influence over the market can be reduced. When none of the retailers has a significant share of the market, the record companies will be able to dictate terms much more to their liking. That may or may not be good for consumers.


Freedom


Regardless of pricing, the big win here is clearly the lack of DRM. I've actually bought about a half dozen albums (out of over 500 I own, the rest on CD) from the iTunes store, and I don't have a problem with the DRM they came with. It works seamlessly with everything I own, and even includes a simple "short cut" allowing complete removal of said DRM, at the expense of file size. Very unobtrusive.

But no DRM is always better for the consumer than even the most unobtrusive DRM. Some of the record companies are beginning to realize that DRM does not stop the real piracy, but only gets in the way of honest consumers who wish to exercise their fair use rights. Two of the four major record labels, along with thousands of smaller ones, have already taken the step of doing away with DRM. Hopefully soon the others will have no choice but to follow suit.


The Final Frontier


One could then hope that this attitude spills over into the movie industry, but I fear that they have a much tighter stranglehold on the idea of DRM and its misperceived necessity. It's really a shame. The technology exists today to build a system that's part iTunes, part DVR, allowing me to load my purchased DVD movies into a computer, catalog them, and make them available to instantly view on my home theater system at the touch of a remote control. Who wouldn't want this? Apparently the movie studios, for one.

I have a small DVD collection, but I never watch what's there because I've been spoiled with iTunes and my DVR. You can call it lazy, but I call it convenience. With everything at your fingertips, it's so much easier to start watching or listening to something on a whim than if you have to spend a couple minutes hunting for the right disc, pulling it out of the package, and putting it into the player. By that time, the impulse may have passed, and you're left sitting and still contemplating what to do next. Even though we have 5 seasons of The Simpsons on DVD, it's easier to choose from 8 episodes currently on the DVR than it is to dig through 15-20 discs. It doesn't have to be that way.

With a convenient system as I've described above, I have no doubt that I would not only watch the DVDs I own more often, but I would buy more (that's right, the movie industry's greedy measures attempting to force more sales are actually costing them sales, at least from me). But today, such a system would be illegal in the US because it's against the law to decrypt a DVD for any purpose, even if that purpose would otherwise be covered under fair use rights. With the law in their corner, the movie industry is far less likely to buckle under the pressure to rid their products of DRM, even after their music counterparts set a precedent.

Too bad.
Something you, me, and Steve Jobs can agree on: DRM sucks and will hopefully go away, and I'll be delighted if Amazon's approach to this helps make that happen. And mightily amused at what it's taken to wrestle the music companies into doing something good for their customers: Nothing less than years of complete failure on a massive scale to make them budge an inch.

I currently have 20 gigabytes of music/audiobooks and about 17 gigabytes of podcasts in iTunes, all of it 100% legally purchased or no cost and all of it 100% DRM-free. I've never purchased a single DRMed item, and I have no plans to (hmm, more on that below). I've always been flummoxed by people who refuse to buy an iPod because they don't want DRM -- if you don't want it, don't use it. What's that got to do with an iPod?

Actually I lied a bit above...I have purchased DVDs, which are region-encoded. This angers me to no end, and in my case has done nothing but lose the industry money, as there are various foreign TV shows that I would purchase if they weren't region-encoded.

Yes, I know I can buy an encoding-free player, but so far we've made DVD player purchases on other basis, which means that we have simply been forced not to give the DVD industry more of our money.
What they need to do is have a system of buying Licenses directly from the producers of said content. all brought to one central location. After obtaining the license downloading the content on itunes/amazon is a matter of bandwidth cost, and you should be able to download it as many times as you want and instead pay a very modest monthly fee. DRM pisses me off.
Why do you have a title saying "Working With The Enemy" and a picture of a bunch of black people under it? Are you saying black people are our enemy?

.>


Or are you just a Clippers fan and hate the Lakers or vice-versa?
I do remember Mike being a Clippers fan.
Hmm...

*pushes Ctrl+C*

"19,99$ has been successfully deducted from your Visa credit card for this use of CTRL & C. Thank you, come again!"

Wha...?