Gawker: valleywag, thoughts on music

Many music execs not DRM fans either

Chris Mohney — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:00:30 EST

Setting aside the weirdness of this supposedly real image used to illustrate the story, a Jupiter Research report from December-January found little support for DRM among European music execs. The data is marginally interesting, as it presaged Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Music" thing. But without seeing the full data ($750, anyone?) you can't really tell which kinds of execs said what. A few breakout stats are worth examining.

Among all record labels 48% of all executives thought ending DRM would boost download sales - though this was 58% at the larger labels. Outside the record labels 73% of those questioned thought dropping DRM would be a boost for the whole market.

Not surprising that worker bees at major labels would cling more tenaciously to their DRM. More telling is this:

Among all those questioned, 70% believed that the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible. But 40% believed it would take concerted government or consumer action to bring this about.

In other words, the music biz side is not going to drop DRM unless forced to. I'd be curious to see if there's been any shift in music exec opinion after the recent debate. I'm betting it's the opposite, if anything, as the major labels crack the whip of DRM orthodoxy among their ranks.

EMI to break ranks on DRM?

Chris Mohney — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 15:25:24 EST

Rumors are flyin' that EMI, one of the "big four" record labels that use Apple's DRM copy protection to license their music through iTunes, may be dropping DRM requirements — possibly announcing as early as today. Supposedly, EMI had actually been negotiating this point for weeks, "[b]ut on Thursday, those negotiations slowed dramatically." That would no doubt be a result of massive, frantic pressure from the other labels after Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Music" anti-DRM barnstorming. Speculation about the other labels caving is premature to say the least.Universal just forked out plenty of money to Microsoft for protected airplay on the Zune; Sony BMG is so fanatically anti-pirate that they got burned for invading users' own computers with copy-protection software; and Warner's Edgar Bronfman is already on record as calling Jobs's ideas "without logic or merit." EMI's in the worst shape of the big four, and so has the least to lose by dropping DRM. But its competitors are going to be leaning very hard on the struggling label in order to maintain that united front, at least in the short term.

RIAA response to "Thoughts on Music"

Chris Mohney — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 10:40:03 EST

Mitch Bainwol, head of the RIAA, responded to Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Music" by way of thorough agreement. No one seems to have the full Bainwol letter online, though the substance depicts Bainwol as more than happy to endorse Jobs's thought-experiment of licensing Apple's Fairplay DRM to all the world. Of course, Jobs only mentioned that possibility in order to strike it down as impractical. Bainwol dismisses such concerns, purring, "We have no doubt that a technology company as sophisticated and smart as Apple could work with the music community to make that happen." Beware the record man — he speaks with forked tongue.

[Photo: Getty]