By Sean McManus

February 7th, 2007

DRM is killing music

DRM is killing music

Steve Jobs is urging the record companies to start selling music without DRM. Good move. If they stop adding copy protection to downloads, I might start buying them.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a pirate. I’ve never used peer to peer networks and my spend on music is probably my top entertainment expense. But it’s all CDs.

I’ve never bought a song from iTunes because of the digital rights management (DRM) that stops me from using music how I want. Music bought from iTunes has controls that stop you from playing it on portable digital devices not made by Apple. Even though I use an Ipod, I don’t want my music to be tied to a single device. Jobs argues only 3% of tracks in Ipods are sold via iTunes and so doubts the lock-in effect. But when it comes to music, you can’t argue quantity over quality. It’s not about whether I’d sacrifice 3% of my collection to switch providers. It’s about whether I can play my favourite songs when I want them, or whether I’ll have to pay twice for them.

I still play some CDs that I bought in the 80s. In 20 years’ time, I might want to play today’s new music for a nostalgia trip too. But if it can only be played on Apple devices, and they’re all kaputt, I’ll have to buy my music all over again, assuming someone is still selling it. Downloads are poor value, particularly when you add in the cost of having to buy an Apple device for playback.

It isn’t just downloads that are affected: near the office in Chiswick we have a branch of Fopp and I’ve seen quite a few ‘best-of’s being released at a bargain £3. The catch is that they include copy protection that stops you playing the music on an iPod. That’s no use to me either. They even had a CD for a pound I might have bought if it didn’t have DRM. But with DRM, it’s broken. It’s rubbish.

For anyone who wants to copy music, the restrictions are ineffective. The so-called ‘analogue hole’ means that there’s always a point where the music can be re-recorded. But for music fans who just want to buy music and listen to it on their choice of device, DRM deters sales.