“The iPod-iTunes combination is the very definition of a digital walled garden, at least so far as commercially downloadable music goes. Sure, you can rip music from your personal CD collection into unprotected formats like MP3, even legally make copies for personal use. But when it comes to iTunes, there’s no digital equivalent of buying a CD and taking it home, knowing it will work with whatever brand of CD player you have,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for BusinessWeek.
Hesseldahl writes, “Songs you buy from iTunes won’t play on your MP3 player from Toshiba, Samsung, Sony, SanDisk, or anyone else. Well, they’re not supposed to anyway. The fact is, you can burn the iTunes songs to an audio CD, then re-rip them as MP3s and make them freely available to any player you choose—not that I would advocate doing such a thing, of course.”
Hesseldahl writes how he thinks “the iPod should evolve over its second half-decade, and how iTunes and the rules that govern it should change. The company has sold some 70 million iPods and between two and three billion song downloads, and it’s time to consider the future of music delivery and Apple’s role in building that market… The world is clearly in need of a universally playable digital format that protects the rights of artists and recording labels. As the most successful vendor of digital music, Apple is currently in the position to start the discussion about how to get there.”
“Now may not be the time. IPod sales still account for 40% or so of Apple’s revenue, and let’s face it, the iTunes Store exists to sell iPods. But the time for a universal format is soon coming, because millions of frustrated digital music consumers, including some iPod owners, will demand that a downloaded song be as universally playable as a CD is today,” Hesseldahl writes.
Full article here.
Steve Jobs is many things, but stupid he’s not. Apple will license FairPlay when and if the time comes. For now, Apple’s iTunes ranks as one of the least restrictive services with relatively liberal usage terms and a system that, oh, by the way, doesn’t exclude tens of millions of Mac users. iTunes works for both Macs and Windows users, while the iTunes also-ran music outfits, those still in business, are restrictively Windows-only. If you don’t like DRM, blame the content owners, not Apple.
Apple should not license FairPlay until it makes business sense, not because some writer or competitor thinks it would be nice. This ain’t a commune, it’s capitalism; you’d think BusinessWeek would grasp the concept.
While Apple holds considerable market share in both devices and online services, it makes no sense at all to gift market share to competitors. When and if some competitor shows some meaningful strength, then Apple can use FairPlay licensing appropriately. Then FairPlay, already long the de facto standard for legal online music, will become the universal DRM standard.
When someone makes a real content service (with a desirable library) that includes Mac users instead of excluding them and also begins to take share from iTunes, then we’ll begin to think about the possibility of Apple licensing FairPlay.
Related articles:
Microsoft Zune intensifies chaos in Apple iPod+iTunes also-ran market – October 16, 2006
Apple’s vs. Microsoft’s music DRM: whose solution supports more users? – August 17, 2005
The de facto standard for legal digital online music files: Apple’s protected MPEG-4 Audio (.m4p) – December 15, 2004
Apple’s DRM is too restrictive…
I can’t squirt my songs to Zune losers, I mean users.
Huh. No one else saw it. In the article he says “two to three billion songs sold”. It’s really about 1.5 billion. Haven’t hit the 2 mark yet.
My “bump against DRM” story had to do with music videos.
There was a song I liked and I saw they had a cute music video to go with it. What the heck, I thought–I’ll buy the video. Everything was fine until I tried to burn the music from the video onto a CD. Bzzt–can’t do it.
Audio Hijack to the rescue.
Since then, I haven’t bought any videos. I bought one TV show–a missed episode of 24, which I have watched once.
But the whole “walled garden” angle that everyone is trying to bring up is rubbish. The iPod can play music from a number of sources–including the iTunes Store. The argument that it can’t play music purchased from, say, MTV’s URGE store is certainly not the fault of Apple, nor is it the fault of MTV. It is the fault of the music companies that insist on Digital Rights Management software in the first place.
People who hate DRM should talk to the content managers who require it. Grow up you perpetually petulant children! Apple doesn’t exist just to wreck your life! Apple exists to make a profit. What does ITMS do? Sell music. In order to sell music, they have to get the agreement of whom? Content managers — i.e. record companies. Did they want to give away their stuff? No. Did they want to impose all sorts of draconian rules on purchasers. YES. They still do. So what did Apple do? Apple created a compromise that allowed the record companies to sell songs and Apple to create a profit.
That’s how business works, children. Now get back to economics class and study a bit before you post again.
Yahoo has been experimenting with selling mainstream singles as MP3…I assume the analysis is being done on that…if it turns out to be a winner the walls will come down.
anyway it appears to be much more politically acceptable to bash DRM technology than the people around us who are uploading and sharing MP3s by the billions.
…then you also have analysts saying that hardly anyone is really buying music from iTunes..if this is true what’s the fuss?
Skull buster,
You get out of the classroom. Theft is still a viable option to many people. Content owners and distributors ignore legal rights with DRM under the guise of an arguement that starts fallaciously with “they don’t have to buy it.” Neither side is right.
A middle ground is sought by many. Neither side is close and they both have weapons drawn. The goal of everyone should be to hammerout a system that works for most people.
You have not struck on a novel argument no one has heard before and your language is not helpful. (Nor are any of the people saying “screw DRM” or anything to that effect.) Please don’t waste our time with 101 arguements.