andrew.hedges.name / blog
Apple’s Deal With the Devil
May 6, 2003, 9:08 am · 5 comments · Filed under: Apple, Music, Scree
Apple Computer launched an online music store last week to much hype and much rejoicing among the Mac faithful. In the first week since its launch, the store has moved 1,000,000 tracks out across the Internet at US$0.99 a pop. This is all glorious and righteous … right?
The Register offers another take on the situation:
[The] music “industry” is desperate for the venture to succeed, as it represents the first public acceptance of DRM, which it has spent fruitless years seeking to promote. DRM is a restrictive technology which will assure these villains’ future.
DRM, for those not in-the-digital-music-know, stands for Digital Rights Management. This technology—enabled by a combination of software and information embedded in digital media—determines where and how often you can enjoy the music, video, or e-book files on your computer.
Historically, users have rejected DRM out-of-hand because it has been cumbersome to use and too restrictive. Now, consumers are voting with their wallets and the message is loud and clear: the Apple Music Store has found a sweet spot by combining ease-of-use with minimal rights restrictions.
So, what’s got The Register all worked up? They argue that any DRM extends the lifespan of Big Music, the major labels that effectively control what most people hear on the radio and what’s available to buy in all but the most fiercely independent music stores, both on- and off-line. Is that all bad?
Running a music label is a business. Even for the minis and indies (there are no mids left, they all got bought out by the bigs) have to make money to survive. The big labels have this down to a science, with focus groups informing professional pop-lyric writers and ear-candy-spewing producers who doll up (what seems like) a new pretty face each week, handing off their creation to marketing who claims for the gazillionth time this year that this is “the next big thing.”
There is good, original music out there. Ideally, a record label helps it get noticed. Unfortunately, the industry of music often makes it harder rather than easier to find. In the bad old days, it was next to impossible to find music that wasn’t promoted by a label. Now, technology exists to enable artists to reach listeners without their help. This has the major labels running scared. Perhaps The Reg is right, DRM merely lets the Big Five cling to an undeservedly large role in the process. If so, artists will find a way to reach listeners without them and the whole argument will be rendered, once and for all, moot.
This article was first published on a group blog I started with some friends called Scree. Reprinted with permission.
Short URL to this article:
Tweet this article!
5 comments
I don’t believe that DRM exclusively benefits the big 5 labels, especially Apple’s implementation of DRM. While in an ideal world all content would be accessible to anyone who wants it, there is such a thing as intellectual property. In order to offer this content Apple had no choice but to sign deals with the Big 5, because they own the rights to a large chunk of the popular music out there. Apple is free to make different deals with independent labels, and many of these labels are much more flexible and honorable in the treatment of their artists.
Apple’s cut is a very reasonable (approximate) 30% of the sales. The thing is, and this is where I disagree with the Register’s article, the Digital Rights Management built into Apple’s music store is so transparent that many users will never notice it’s there. Especially if you’re using the songs you buy honestly. You really can do whatever you like with ‘your’ songs: copy them to CDs, put them on external hard drives, put them on other computers, stream them over a network to other computers, you could even put them on an illegal file sharing network. You can do all of this without butting up against the DRM - until you attempt to perform that last task, and even then it’s absurdly easy to circumnavigate the DRM.
What Apple’s done with the DRM is offer the owners of intellectual property (the Big 5, Indies, or individual artists) a peace of mind. They can reason that at 99 cents a song and nearly no (apparent) restrictions people will do the right thing and not hassle with downloading the illegal content. Why should they? I read an article this morning in SFGate stating that what Apple’s done is wrong because not enough money is going to an artist and that their is no selection of Indie labels. This has nothing to do with Apple but the labels. Of course Apple’s going to sign up the Big 5 first, but they’ve announced that they will be adding Indie labels as soon as possible. These things take time though (and lots of lawyers), but in a years’ time I see a legal alternative that makes so much sense to end users (us) that we wouldn’t think of going anywhere else. Yes, this is a shrewd business decision for Apple and Jobs, but it also benefits the consumers, and it will ad extra income (eventually) to independent artists and a possible distribution method that could even save them money
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t see this implementation of DRM restrictive, and as long as it stays this way I don’t see any problems with it. Am I making any sense?
CNet reports that Microsoft is working on its own version of the iTunes Music Store, which will work with music services such as Pressplay. The MS version of the service would employ a far more restrictive implementation of DRM, with consumers only being able to play downloaded music while their subscription to the service is active. In this case, the consumer rents rather than owns the music they download.
It’s restrictions like these that have made it so difficult, in my opinion, for legal online music distribution to truly take off. I think Apple, with the far more consumer-friendly iTunes implementation of DRM, is on the right track.
Apple held a meeting with 150 reps from dozens of indie labels recently. I was going to write how cool this was and link to a page with detailed notes from the meeting. But, it looks like Apple Legal may have jumped on CD Baby’s case because the notes are gone! Oh well, so much for Apple doing the right thing.
BuyMusic.com (which some people muse should be renamed “LicenseMusic.com” because of its restrictive DRM) is attempting to steal Apple’s thunder by offering 300,000 songs for download, starting at $0.79 each (undercutting Apple by $0.20 per song).
Unfortunately, that’s not all they’re stealing. They also completely ripped off Apple’s advertising campaign. I find it pathetic when a company resorts to blatant imitation rather than coming up with something original.
In case that’s not enough to roil the blood of Mac lovers everywhere, Macintouch today ran a letter sent in by musician Jody Whitesides:
My name is Jody Whitesides, I’m an artist that is about to be brought to the Apple iTunes Music Store. Of course I recently heard about BuyMusic so I decided to point my Mac browser at it (with Javascript turned off you can see the site).
I did a search for one of my old CDs that will be going onto iTunes and It turns out my CD was there on BuyMusic.com, as were the CDs of several other bands that I’m friends with - all of whom were not contacted about being placed for sale there.
Here’s what I’ve deduced… BuyMusic.com (which I will refer to as BM) got their “vast” music library of 300,000 plus songs from a company called The Orchard. The Orchard is a distribution company that has consistently shafted artists […] So, without the express consent of what is likely lots of The Orchard’s catalog, BM has put it up for sale at the bargain price of $.79 a song.
So, now they can tout they’re selling tracks at $.79, and they can say they have a library of music of over 300,000 songs. But what they don’t tell you is that it comes from musicians/bands who were not asked for permission, and who will likely not see a penny of any sale made through BM. […]
I’m currently looking into legal means to have my music removed from their site and strongly encourage users to not browse BM’s site nor purchase from it.
So, there you have it. The best the competition can come up with to take on Apple’s iTunes Music Store is a service with draconian DRM, a nearly unusable Web site, and songs being sold without the artists’ permission.
I hope that when Apple makes their music store available for Windows users, they clean the clock of BuyMusic.com!
Comments close automatically after 15 days.
Still have something to say? Drop me a line!
I must say I find it somewhat amusing whenever the “cult of Apple” gets a sudden wake up call to the fact that Steve Jobs is not a guru for the digital millenium but a shrewd businessman riding herd on a company with a shrinking market share. One of the first items I read about iTunes was fairly upfront about the consumer restrictions on the use of the music they “purchase.” For what it’s worth, Apple seems to be less restrictive than most of its peers.
None of this is surprising, really. The music industry has been on a crusade for wide-use copy-restricting technology since the days when cassette tape decks were the standard for home music transfer. All they needed was someone with “connections” to make the proper introductions so they could be welcomed into the family. Looks like they may have gotten their wish.
★ Posted by: Darren · May 7, 2003, 11:56 pm