desh | (no subject)

Dear Apple,

I have no problem paying for music. I really don't. Never have. I just hate DRM. Refuse to play any locked music, ever. It's not that I want to share music (though I sometimes do); I just like to be able to play things wherever I want. Plus, it's the principle of the thing. So back when JHymn worked on iTunes-purchased songs, I happily bought from you. When you blocked out JHymn, you stopped getting my money.

I still held out hope that I'd come back to you. You're the market leader, after all. For a year or more I've really had no good alternative. I may have downloaded some music through some less-than-industry-supported means, shall we say. And I never did stop buying and ripping CDs on occasion. But for the most part I just got less music. A shame, really.

But now I hear that Amazon has a new digital music store. MP3-based. No DRM (which might not even be possible to put on MP3s anyway). And it's even cheaper than you. I've tried it already, and it's quite nice.

Sorry, Apple. It's over. For good. You're off my speed dial.

Love,
Desh

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So basically, Apple's stubborn refusal to license their DRM system caused the music industry to essentially license Amazon to compete with Apple? Thus perhaps causing Apple to lose market dominance via the same stupid business model that caused them to lose market share of home computers in the 1990s? (Though in that case it was only market share; they never had dominance.) Fantastic! Thanks, Apple!

Seriously, I'm surprised I haven't been buying DRM-free stuff on iTunes for months already. I remember an announcement of $1.29 tracks. But I never found any of them. And Amazon had the one thing I was looking for, and it was only $0.89; cheaper than iTunes DRM stuff and way cheaper than the supposedly-available iTunes DRM-free stuff. And from what I hear, when Amazon sells "other songs more expensive[ly]", it's only $0.99. Still better than Apple.

And thus you miss the point of the article entirely. The point is not their refusal to license FairPlay DRM... the point is Apple HAS market dominance, in both software and hardware terms. For Amazon to compete with Apple, they have to make music available that plays on iPods - and since FairPlay isn't licenced, it HAS to be DRM-free (and, since Amazon is starting at a disadvantage, it has to be cheaper than iTunes). The music industry would prefer to keep DRM, but Apple has forced it into a corner.

Also, Jobs is no fan of DRM, either. Of course, he's not going to sacrifice Apple Computers to make his point, because he's also not stupid. So instead, he's bullying the music industry around so that it either HAS to adopt a uniform music platform - with DRM - and a uniform pricing scheme (i.e. the iPod, FairPlay, and iTunes) or it has to go DRM-free to acheive variable pricing and more content control (i.e. Amazon's new store). So, quit yer whinin', take the Amazon's $0.89, DRM-free music while you can get it (i.e. until they either renege on their pricing and/or DRM-free-ness or until their music store goes out of business), and shut the hell up. Goddamn hippie.

--Jeff

Your mom.

My impression is that you're talking about the basic paradox of DRM. I don't want to get into the parallel tradeoffs for computer hardware, but with DRM, compatibility and deliberate incompatibility is the whole story. If your system is made public, defeating it becomes too easy. If you license it, you have a problem when someone defeats it, and you want to make changes in a hurry.