DRM-Free Downloads At Last?

The big news clanging around the pipes today is the announcement by EMI Music that they will be releasing their entire digital catalog free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) while at the same time offering them at a superior quality to the DRM laden tracks that are currently available. The first online music service to support the “upgrade” will be Apple’s iTunes Store.

This sounds like the news that tech geeks and music aficionados have been waiting for for a long time coming, but the devil is in the details. Both, the clean version, and the former DRM infested version of each track will be available, however, the newest offering will cost you thirty cents more per track. The good news is that all the benefits will come at no additional cost when buying albums in full. Oh, and by the way, none of this will take effect until May, so you’ll have to salivate over the details until then.

While I agree that this is good news and a step in the right direction for the consumer, I have a few problems with it. First off, the labels have admitted that they are currently selling crippled music. DRM was (I suppose we can talk about this in the past tense now that it looks like it’s on it’s way out) the labels’ answer to piracy. In theory, it was meant to keep piracy from spreading and costing them billions in lost revenue. In practice it creates restrictions on what a consumer can do with legally purchased music. We ran into a DRM issue a couple of months ago when we held our iPod Shuffle contest. We couldn’t preload the music onto the iPod without it being wiped off when the winner attached it to their computer. I believe the major labels actually forced Apple to implement this functionality in iTunes so that people couldn’t use their iPods as portable hard drives with the ability to transfer music to any computer they attached it to. I can understand the concern, but despise their solution. We ended up just burning the music to CDs in MP3 format and sending them along with the iPod.

With the advent of DRM, the labels have successfully created a scenario in which they can effectively charge more without actually having to do anything. They poured millions into DRM research and licensing DRM schemes to limit consumers’ legal rights under fair use laws. What they were really doing is just playing a cat and mouse game with music pirates at the expense of the average consumer. A new DRM scheme would be developed, a few weeks or a couple of months later, it would be broken and the cycle would continue. This did nothing but increase operating costs, which in turn are passed to consumers. Now they decide that they’re going to cutout those costs and still charge more for the music? It’s ridiculous. It’s easy to blame something you have no control over (pirates) for a loss in revenue while conveniently ignoring internal shoddy business practices (DRM implementation and lawyer fees that are a result of being sue happy).

It could be argued that the charge could be attributed with associated costs in distributing higher quality music, namely bandwidth. Those distribution costs would fall on the online music services themselves (Apple iTunes, Real Rhapsody, Napster, etc.) but it looks as though the labels are the ones mandating the price hike.

In conclusion, I think EMI Music told complaining consumers to put their money where their mouth is, so now it’s the consumers turn to let the industry know whether or not they were bluffing. You’re the man now, dawg.

By the way, EMI’s website could definitely use an overhaul. They haven’t even updated the copyright date at the bottom since 2005. So to anyone in charge, I know of a great web design company. Hint hint, wink wink.