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Steve Jobs speaks out against Digital Rights Management

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc, has posted an open letter about the current DRM situation outlining his personal view (and therefore probably Apple’s as well) for music fans, (European) governments and record labels to ponder.

Due to the success of Apple’s iTunes + iPod music solution, the music industry has been looking for ways to unlock, replicate and exploit the system Apple spearheaded. Microsoft have launched their Zune player to little praise, Wal-Mart has started selling music and movies online, certain labels have boycotted Apple until they received a fair cut of the profits and European Governments have been lining up to have a go at Apple about their DRM.

The European ‘issue’ is probably the one that prompted Steve Jobs to release an open letter to the community.

“Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.”

Apple, according to Jobs, would happily sell DRM free music to customers that could be played on any number of devices and be copied to CD, DVD or whatever medium one could think of. This would usher in a new age of sharing once more, just as we all used to share tapes and CD’s in the past. The reason Apple haven’t released their music without protection is simply the record companies, particularly the big four (Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner), would not allow Apple to sell their music without DRM. This is obviously not what Steve wants and just like the rest of us, he probably would like us all sharing our music just as we were in the glory days of Napster. But Steve Jobs does not want Apple to take the heat from European Governments on this issue, clearly pointing them at the people they should be talking to.

“For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.”

This is music to my ears, excusing the pun. I love the iTunes Store and will continue to use it even if DRM is not removed. Napster, Limewire, eDonkey and the rest are all fine, but the certainty you get when you buy a song from iTunes is unprecedented. You get a very fast and secure download, correctly tagged and with album art. Not only that, the artist gets some money for their work and everyone walks away feeling a little better about themselves. Napster (before it went legitimate), Limewire and the rest are all stealing and there is no getting away from it. Some artists release their music for free, but most need to make a living and if you’re enjoying their work, surely 79 pence per track isn’t a lot to pay.

My problem with the iTunes Store starts exactly where the European complaints kick off. Once you have brought your music, you can only play it on five computers, burn it a few times to CD* or transfer it to an iPod to play on the move. You can’t play it on another manufacturers portable music player, or in a music player that isn’t tied to QuickTime/iTunes. This isn’t so good and certainly doesn’t follow the model of the humble CD or tape, which could be played on any CD player/cassette player. Steve Jobs is a huge music fan and I can imagine that he had to grit his teeth when the original deals where signed, hoping that if iTunes took off he could renegotiate the deals later. The record companies did come back and want to renegotiate, except they wanted to raise the price of the music on iTunes, not free it. Steve had to tell them not to be greedy then and now it seems Steve is telling Europe to point the finger at the right people.

But can it happen? Technically it is possible, of course it is we’ve been there before, but is it going to be accepted by the music industry. Steve Jobs makes a concerted effort to point out that even with iTunes record sales, only 3% of the music on an average iPod is purchased from the iTunes Store, leaving the other 97% as either copied from CD or downloaded illegally from the internet. So for all the money the music industry is making from Apple, it is having very little effect on the illegal music trade.

Music is never going to be free. It can’t be and we wouldn’t like it if it was. Popular Music, more than anthing else would suffer most as most ‘Pop’ music requires hours of production, all costing thousands of pounds per hour. Other artists need to make money and record sales is the easiest and fairest way for them to make a living when they are spending all their time entertaining us. So music can’t be free. Continually downloading music illegally from file sharing services does do damage and although I was a heavy Limewire user in my past, I can honestly say (with my right hand on heart) that I haven’t used Limewire for aquiring music in over a year. If we go on stealing music without buying it, the music industry will suffer and more importantly artists will suffer. However, if record companies were less draconian about how they distribute their music, then the public would be less inclined to steal it in the first place. For this reason I hope we all force the ‘Big 4′ to change their reasoning and the freedom to play music on any device becomes a reality.

You can read Steve Jobs letter in full at http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/