EMI ditches DRM
...sort of. Last night, posts started littering the web announcing that EMI might make such a move, instigated by an article in the Wall Street Journal. Some respondents in talkbacks on other sites wondered if this was an April Fools' joke, though I doubted it, given that EMI has been rumored to be considering this and the source was the WSJ, not "Ronaldo's cool stuff" blog.
The motivations are obvious. Unprotected music is a nearly ubiquitous reality right now, with anyone who owns a computer and a CD reader capable of ripping DRM-free copies of music. Of course, getting a physical CD is a bit more complicated than downloading from a web site, and given that the process is the same for both legal and illegal music downloads, it remains to be seen whether consumers will show an honorable streak and opt for the legal music download sites (which carry a fee) now that the DRM lock-in risk has been removed.
As I expected in the stub of a post I wrote last night, EMI is not going to release their entire roster. Dipping your toes into a pool before jumping head first is normal business behavior. Still, it sounds like their experiment is rather robust, given that they are planning to release most of their library in DRM-free form. At first glance, I wondered if customers would go for $1.29 per song, but the higher quality of such music - using a 256 kbps samping rate versus the 128kbps typical of normal DRM-protected iTunes music - provides a credible incentive.
Further, Jobs promised in a statement this morning that more than half of all tracks available on iTunes will be available DRM-free by the end of the year. Many (myself included) insisted that Jobs put his money where his mouth is (was) when he announced Apple's preference for DRM-free music. Well, Jobs has just sat down to a 9-course meal of the green stuff. "Props" to him for following through on this, and I'm sure European regulators will take notice.
Still, will consumers "show that honorable streak?" When I wrote a piece last week discussing the drop in CD sales (which, obviously, must have been a factor in EMI's decisions...the fact of the drop, not my blog, that is), a surprising number of people still claimed that "bad music quality" was the real reason for the drop, completely ignoring the fact that we have ALWAYS had lots of bad music. We just don't remember the bad stuff so much, because it never sold that many copies, which is why music hindsight appears like an endless string of amazing bands. Great bands from the past is all you will find on music store shelves.
Such a response, to me, sounds like a market that is still trying to rationalize its desire to download free music (though generalizing based on the Talkbacks to my blogs is a very bad idea). I hope I'm wrong, and EMIs trust in its customers is reciprocated financially. Even so, I'm sure EMI executives are experiencing something akin to riders on a roller coaster as they reach the crest of a very large hill, with the added wrinkle that no one is completely sure that the rest of the track has actually been built.
Everyone, please keep your hands in the car as we dive into a dark tunnel...and try not to scream.