DRM's Demise Accelerates - Faster Forward
DRM's Demise Accelerates
Steve Jobs wasn't kidding when he wrote that "Thoughts on Music" essay back in February that condemned the use of "digital rights management" technology in music sales--the iTunes Store will feature DRM-free downloads by the end of this month. Similarly, EMI wasn't fooling around when it joined Apple in this new initiative; yesterday, that record label said it would also offer its catalogue in "unprotected" form on Amazon's upcoming MP3-only store, as well as a variety of European music-download sites.
This morning's column tries to get at the significance of all these moves. I think this is huge: One of the recording industry's core beliefs is disintegrating almost overnight.
Not everybody in the business believed this idea in the first place, though. People at many independent labels and smaller music-download sites have long thought otherwise--as I was reminded in some interviews yesterday, most of which didn't make the column.
Ah, Rob you might want to go back into the Post archives to take a look at this story Plus over the years we have tried to speak to you so many times about this that seeing in the post made us sick.........
Way back in 1995 a site called Altavoz.com was started, one of the first 50 thousand dot coms in world, to do just this and more. The idea we had at the time was to expose Indie music to the masses and they would support these artists and it would change the way the labels and more particularly the Distributors do business. So 12 years latter almost to the day I see the world is catching up.
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