I’m glad the music industry is finally allowing legal sales of music online without DRM. Before this, the situation was absolutely screwball. Consumers had three choices for getting music onto the electronic devices:
- Buy the CD and rip it
- Illegally download it through a peer-to-peer network or sketchy Russian service
- Buy the DRM’d track legally
The first option sucked because it either involved driving to a brick and mortar store or waiting for somebody else to drive the CD to your house. There’s no instant gratification. Then there’s the hassle of converting the CD to electronic format.
The biggest problems with the second option are things like not knowing how to do it. There’s also some risk of viruses, etc by trawling shady parts of the net as you try to figure it out. And there’s a minimal risk of the RIAA suing you. But once you overcome these fears and startup costs, you end up with exactly the product you want.
The third option kinda sucked because modern DRM systems don’t work very well. I think there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with DRM. Enforcing copyrights through technical means is a good part of a multi-layer security and incentive system to promote the creation of valuable intellectual property. But modern DRM systems are incompatible with each other across brands and devices and often they just plain break. So as a music consumer, if you do the morally correct thing and pay for your music, you end up with an inferior product.
Now with DRM-free track sales, consumers can do the right thing and get the best possible product. How this fact has been lost on the RIAA for so long amazes me.
This is just one example of why the digital music industry is a horrible one to be in right now. I wrote a thorough analysis of the industry for my strategy class at school will likely post more of it as time goes on, but I wanted to start here.