The digital rights management debate moved to the mobile space today, as delegates at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona heard Larry Moores, senior VP global product management for Real Networks, call for DRM-free music to be made more widely available. While all four major labels have experimented with DRM-free music online, most mobile downloads still come with some form of the technology.
"The problem should have been solved last year," agreed Moores, "But it's a business problem not a technology one. DRM free content is an ongoing experiment and the expectation is that [sales] volume is going to increase and start mitigating for declining physical sales. If that isn't occurring a year from now and free sharing of music is running rampant, DRM could come back. The dream won't happen unless we generate revenue today."
Better Than Free
The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.
In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold. Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, Findability
Is Microsoft's PlayReady ready to go yet?
Announced one year ago at 3GSM in Barcelona, PlayReady is Microsoft's DRM solution for mobile content providers. Now one year later, more partners have announced planned deployments...but it has seen no rollouts yet. PlayReady strives to provide the mobile content industry with an easily deployable implementation that cover any mobile hardware or software. Though Microsoft announced in 2007 it had partnered with Telefonica, O2, Verizon Wireless, Bouyges Telecom, and Cingular Wireless (now AT&T), a whole year went by without a single rollout.
NBC report blames poor album sales on iPod, iTunes
Album sales have declined rapidly in recent years, and Apple bears a large responsibility, NBC claims. The TV network notes that although R&B singer Alicia Keys debuted her new album at the top of the Billboard album charts last week, this amounted to only 61,000 or so discs, nearly the lowest amount for a number-one album in Billboard history. Album sales fell 15 percent as a whole in 2007, the sixth annual decrease since 2000; artists who were once able to sell 10 to 15 million copies of an album may now be fortunate to reach 1 million.
The reason, says NBC, is that people are switching en masse to digital downloads, as evidenced by sales of 120 million iPods since 2001. More critically, people are often choosing to buy songs individually, instead of collections that may contain mediocre tracks or filler. Purchases of individual tracks are said to have grown 500 percent within the last three years. Imagery and language in the report implicates iTunes, which is the largest source of digital music sales and frequently ties people to iPods through use of Apple's FairPlay DRM restrictions. On the iTunes Store, people can buy most tracks for 99 cents, cheaper even than would be possible with a CD single.
eMusic Selects Launches As "Curated Boutique Music Space"
Music has launched eMusic Selects, a "curated boutique music space" on their site to showcase unsigned and underexposed new artists. Each month, eMusic's staff will handpick up to two deserving artists for high profile visibility to eMusic's 400,000 subscribers. The acts will be featured prominently on eMusic's homepage and receive editorial coverage on the eMusic Selects page and blog and subscribers can grab free download from each act. The artists must agree to provide their often previously unreleased music exclusively to eMusic in the digital format for 60 days
Apple TV Take 2 now available
- HD/Standard Def movie rentals
- the ability to purchase items from the iTunes Store directly from the Apple TV
- Flickr/.Mac photo browsing
- Browse the iTunes Podcast directory from the Apple TV
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