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Our Blogs The BeerFiles No DRM, no renting, the new Apple mantra
Our Blogs The BeerFiles No DRM, no renting, the new Apple mantra | No DRM, no renting, the new Apple mantra |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Monday, 30 April 2007 | |
  
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This of course is not good news for recording industry executives, who are looking for ways to boost revenues. Music rentals already provide record companies with a perpetual source of incremental recurring revenue. However, with the dominant player in the music downloads space refusing to play the rental game, they can only sulk and shake their heads in bitter disappointment at an additional revenue earning opportunity missed. For the Jobs-led Apple, however, a few million dollars in incremental revenue is less important than the populist positioning of coming down on the side of consumers. Any statement that in effect puts Apple on the side of consumers and seemingly protects them against the greedy desires of the recording industry is a clever exercise in marketing that cements the company's growing loyal fan base. Similarly, Apple's new found opposition to DRM, arguably a technology that helped build iPod market share, could easily be viewed as a cynical attempt to both satisfy the demands of EU regulators and further ingratiate users to the company. There is no doubt that providing a superior DRM-free option to users could widen the iTunes user base. What it will not do is make the iPod interoperable with other DRM downloads. However, Apple could argue quite justifiably that sites other than iTunes and record companies other than EMI should also offer DRM-free music.{moscomment} |
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