When most bloggers say something, we get the attention of a relatively small section of the global community. When Steve Jobs says something though, nearly the whole internet community stands up and listens. This time the topic he's chosen to target is music and
DRM; his essay's available
here if you haven't seen it already.
Essentially he grapples with the unfeasibility of DRM on music, and calls for DRM-free music, using non-copy-protected CDs as a precedent. It was probably written not just for marketing purposes, but also maybe to throw the blame of DRM on to the music industry as Apple faces lawsuits in various European countries for its DRM system, FairPlay.
My thoughts on DRM can be found in this forum thread from the MediaPortal forums (my username there's samuel337):
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=14234&highlight=vista+drmThe gist of it is that DRM will continue to exist, but possibly not in its current form. There are many useful uses for DRM, e.g. protecting confidential company documents by implementing a password as well as a timebomb to prevent staff from passing on documents; a big issue nowadays. (Referred to by Microsoft as Information Rights Management, or IRM.) Its just unfortunate that music was DRM's first user, and as such has generated such negative connotations.
Also, maybe the music industry is holding on to a dying business model, but its important to remember that we're telling it to dump a business model that's been working for them for the last 50 or so years, and leaping on to a largely untested model with uncertain gains. That said, apparently,
EMI's considering releasing DRM-free MP3s.
Thomas Hawk's two blog posts about this is also quite interesting:
http://thomashawk.com/2007/02/marketing-genius-of-steve-jobs.htmlhttp://thomashawk.com/2007/02/yes-they-took-bait-music-industry.htmlAnd amongst all this, Apple's plans for Apple stores in Australia have appeared - one in Sydney, and one in Melbourne, apparently in South Yarra.
More info and an artist impression on Long's blog.
Geez, Jobs is a busy, smart and bloody influential man.
Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to bumble along,
launching a site presuming that there's something wrong with asian gamers who don't like the 360, and have the mass media come down on them for a
'flaw' with Vista where potential damage could be caused by the user inadvertently playing a sound file of someone issuing commands and having that being heard by the computer's microphone, speech recognised and acted on by Vista.