Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Steve Jobs and DRM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6337275.stm

this will have many interesting implications for the music industry now that the largest online music retailer supports having restriction free music.

4 comments:

marissa said...

agreed. please expand and discuss. how do you think this will impact the music industry? copyright? the music labels? is he just blowing smoke up our collective asses?

tina said...

im really interested in how the music industry will end up dividing royalties. i mean if they charge a licensing fee (like that of a blanket license) to everyone that subscribes to the internet, music corporations would be benefitting.

of course, music labels aren't going to want to lose control of their music by moving to an MP3 format.

The end result would benefit users and musicians - music being freely traded and not be hindered by inflexibility and an increase in sales of MP3 players (not just ipods).

Elena said...

I think that this is an inevitable change in the music industry. I used to download a lot from Lime Wire, especially when I got my iPod. But after a while I realized that I don't really have the time or patience to sit through each download (even though its really fast) and listen to each song to make sure its not corrupted or what not. So I end up buying music on iTunes (the gift certificate that I got probably helps ...) but either way, it's becoming more and more bothersome to download for free so people are bound to gravitate toward paying for downloaded music. The music industry needs to get over itself and change up the revenue model ...

As a side note, I think Jobs is going back to his hacker roots -- he's gotten a 70% market share of online music downloads and he can finally put some real pressure on the music industry folks!

lunatwinkle said...

honestly, i think steve jobs is finally stating what a lot of the public has been thinking of for a long time. downloading music from online has been growing at rapid rates and i don't forsee a stopping to it for a long time. i think steve jobsb is more flexible with where the future generations trends are going. however, these big music labels are not going to have an easy time with this transition.