In early 2002 Sony and Universal started shipping CDs encoded with copy-protection systems that made them unreadable to computers’ optical disc drives. The idea was to prevent users from ripping the music–no ripping meant no file sharing. The labels tried to cut off online music piracy at the pass, but all they did was kick off the latest in a long series of struggles between copyright holders and the general public.
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This may all be changing, though, and sooner rather than later. On February 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an essay titled “Thoughts on Music” on his company’s Web site. The piece begins predictably enough, with Jobs boasting about Apple’s “stunning global success” in the digital-music field–with more than two billion songs sold worldwide, the iTunes store accounts for about 80 percent of total sales. But by the time he wraps up he’s made a persuasive case for a transformation that until now has seemed like the sort of thing only idealistic activists bother to hope for: that the labels “abolish DRMs entirely.” And he’s not alone–a recent survey by the Internet business intelligence firm Jupiter Research shows that a majority of music-industry executives, convinced that DRM hurts sales and doesn’t work, shared Jobs’s opinion even before he published it. Over the past five years the major labels and their customers have been trapped in an asymmetrical conflict fought in courtrooms and in lines of software code, but it’s starting to look like the little guys might actually win–the big guys might finally bring their practices into line with common sense and popular opinion.
DRM is an especially unwise investment now because album sales are down overall, despite the enormous expansion of the online market. I don’t trust the Big Four’s numbers regarding the income they’ve lost to file sharing, but it’s definitely taking a bite: a huge launch week followed by a vertiginous drop in sales is becoming the norm for new releases, which is pretty strong evidence that once a critical mass of consumers buys an album, people just start passing it around. Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come, for instance, sold 680,000 copies its first week and 139,000 the next–an 80 percent decrease in sales and only slightly more extreme than what many big releases are experiencing. The uncertain financial situation created by the changing music marketplace means labels that insist on fighting the DRM battle are committing money they may not have to spare. No DRM scheme has ever gone unbroken–including, as Jobs admits, Apple’s own FairPlay system–and while Sharpies are cheap, DRM schemes cost millions to develop.
For more on music, see our blogs Crickets and Post No Bills at chicagoreader.com.
