Steve Jobs 'Thoughts on Music'

Doesn't work like that

rktheac said:
the deal is that, according to Jobs, statistically speaking, most songs on a typical iPod has 22 (out of a 1,000 average capacity) songs with DRM. So people are free to choose a different player/software practically at any time. So in effect, what Jobs is saying is that Apple sold iPods (nearly) solely on the virtues of the player and software, not based on DRM and the "lock in" it provides. So even if DRM on the iTunes store was removed, he's saying that they'd still be able to sell a ton of iPods.
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It doesn't actually work like that even though the implications might be the same. 3% is an average that means that lots of people have no or little music from itms on their ipods and some may have 70%. I have 1813 which is about 20%, however it is not the 20% that would stop me going for another player it is the 1813, I doubt someone with 5 itms tunes on their ipod would bat an eyelid at changing players. Of course this doesn't actually change the fact that very few people would be bound to the ipod because of DRM.

My big question is though:

If all music had no DRM, how would I prove all my music had been purchased legitimately or ripped from legitimate sources.
 
Nice!

These words are music in my ears! :)

DRM simply doesn't work. It only makes hassle for legitimate customers. If Apple starts selling music without DRM I will certainly buy from iTunes. Will this mark the shift towards people waking up to the insanity and abandoning DRM? One can dream... The big labels will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

Still it's good that Steve is talking the talk. Now if he could walk the walk...
 
balamw said:
Watermarking?

B
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But wouldn't the watermark be copied to another persons computer along with the music.

CD's I accept there is no real way, you could always produce the original I know, but some of mine have gone out the window when I turned a corner and left them on the dashboard, others have warped in the sun and many are just plain lost.
 
clevin said:
unbelievable,, Bill Gates deserve more of your praise then.
Jobs not interested in money? is he god?
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There is a difference between need and want. Neither Bill nor Steve need any, but they want more. It is fair, if you are the soul of a company why should you not be rewarded?

I agree that Steve is driven by his creations and not so much by the money. Money comes on its own when everyone likes your product.
 
Freedom

clevin said:
it should be surprising consider not everybody are as fixed as you, they pay for something, and they want to be totally free about what they want to do with it.
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Yeah, it's the concept of freedom that I'd like to explore. I agree with the original poster. I could care less whether DRM is on iTMS downloads. My whole family has iPods. We share by burning CDs. No hassle. What other freedom do I want - to be able to copy everything that I purchase to another. player? You may care about that - I do not. It's only with the advent of tape and CDs that such "freedoms" have been realized and argued. Although it was technically possible to copy vinyl most people just did not even think of it. This freedom to use another player or to copy endlessly that is allegedly being abridged by Apple is therefore not inalienable nor is it a "natural" right (it does not come from the Bible or from some metaphysical origin). It was a freedom moulded and made articulable by changes in technology.
 
fatfish said:
My big question is though:

If all music had no DRM, how would I prove all my music had been purchased legitimately or ripped from legitimate sources.
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The same way you would be able to tell which of your music you ripped from C... I'm sorry, were you going somewhere with this? :confused:
 
Psychic Shopper said:
My take on Steve's article is that the itunes store is doing poorly. He admitted that only 3% of the music on an ipod is from his store. He's looking for someone to blame and he points the finger at the record companies. I don't know if Apple invented fairplay on their own or if they were forced to by record companies, but I do know that it is hurting sales on the itunes store. I don't think Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, or any phone company will be major players in online music sales in the future. How hard is it to set up an online store? The hard part of music sales is getting peoples attention in an increasingly over entertained world.
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Apple makes its money off of hardware. How well the iTS does is mostly immaterial since the margin is so low. Basically the iTS is a low-profit service Apple provides to ensure a well-integrated service top to bottom. Also, having their own store DRM ensures that they have control over the total experience--imagine how ****ed Apple would've been if they relied on Microsoft's DRM schemes.

Steve's letter is essentially a publicity stunt. Apple has nothing to lose in calling for a DRM-free universe since they make all their money off the hardware. The record companies, on the other hand, has everything to lose, if things don't go as planned. Apple will sell its ipods even if all the music in the world is pirated. In fact, Apple would probably sell more ipods if all music is free.
 
Steve, you are my hero... folks, the Zune started the begining of the END of DRM. Microsoft's newest operating system was the latest example. And NOW look! This is greatest news article I've read in years. Words like these from Steve have significant power. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the most unethical legislation ever presented in in the last decade.
 
agreed. On a macro level, if one takes the number of iPods sold and average the total capacity and compare the number of songs sold through iTunes, the average number of DRM songs per iPod is low. Of course in reality, there are many, many people whose iPods are full of songs purchased from iTunes. But taking the former, Jobs' point is that generally, iPods are being sold on their merits as a music player and iTunes and DRM is at best incidental. That, and the convenience of having the iTunes store and the great interoperability are the formula of great iPod success, and my take is that even if DRM is taken out of the picture, he (Jobs) feels confident that Apple will sell tons of iPods.

fatfish said:
It doesn't actually work like that even though the implications might be the same. 3% is an average that means that lots of people have no or little music from itms on their ipods and some may have 70%. I have 1813 which is about 20%, however it is not the 20% that would stop me going for another player it is the 1813, I doubt someone with 5 itms tunes on their ipod would bat an eyelid at changing players. Of course this doesn't actually change the fact that very few people would be bound to the ipod because of DRM.

My big question is though:

If all music had no DRM, how would I prove all my music had been purchased legitimately or ripped from legitimate sources.
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2) License FairPlay to other companies. "The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. .... Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies"
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Well that is a load of crap if I've ever seen one. MS has licensed their DRM to more manufacturers and OEMS then you could count. Of all the crack and hacks that have occurred AFAIK not one pertains to industrial espionage. Oh and DVD CSS encoding that is probably the most famous and widespread crack around? Ditto. It was a bunch of hackers who figured out how to break it without needing to steal the secrets. What this boils down to is once again Jobs is a paranoid nutcase. :rolleyes:
 
daveL said:
It's easy for Steve to say that DRM-free is the way to go, because he knows the labels will never let it happen.
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It would have been even easier for Jobs to have said nothing.

By expressing his thoughts in the written word and published on Apple.com as an official statement, he is taking a huge risk even if you choose not to believe it.

Or maybe we can set our cynicism aside and realize that Jobs could not have written this open letter 5 years ago or even last year. He is sensing the time is right to tip the momentum in favor of ridding consumers of all forms of DRM (at least in music).

In business and in poker, it's all about knowing when to show your hand.
 
What's with this amazingly short-sighted assumption that the "Big 4" will never agree to DRM-free downloadable music?

Every massive entertainment corporation has sworn they will not go along with the next big thing. Just look VHS movie rentals- "it will destroy the movie industry". After being smashed in the face with money the finally went whole heartly into it because it's what the consumers wanted and would pay for.

It is just really mind boggling how these companies can consistantly NOT do the one thing that will make them the most money, which is all they really care about.

Non-DRM music will sell more. That means more money for greedy men (and women). Why are they not doing this?
 
The only way I'd ever buy music from iTunes is if it's DRM-free and in a lossless format. Otherwise, I'll continue to buy Compact Discs.

thejadedmonkey said:
There's something about it NOT having ANY copy protection that guilts me into buying it. With Windows, I feel like a criminal every time I have to re-enter my COA, where as with OS X I feel like I'm being trusted, and I wouldn't want to break that trust. Hence I buy OS X upgrades, and get pissed off at MS for making me feel like a criminal (but don't ever buy their OS's because my computer can't run a newer OS usually, and I upgrade with the new PC)
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Yes, that's exactly how I feel. I don't want something I paid for to constantly tell me not to steal (like stupid FBI warnings on DVDs). I don't want to have to worry that some stupid copy protection code will suddenly shut me out without warning. These things actually make me want to find some way to bypass protection just so I can comfortably relax. I'd feel very happy about paying for DRM-free music.
 
fatfish said:
But wouldn't the watermark be copied to another persons computer along with the music.

CD's I accept there is no real way, you could always produce the original I know, but some of mine have gone out the window when I turned a corner and left them on the dashboard, others have warped in the sun and many are just plain lost.
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You used to be inclined to replace most of those with new physical CD's. Not any more!

:)

Rocketman
 
SpaceJello said:
Wouldn't the lack of DRM break down the ipod empire? I always assume that part of ipod's suggest is the inability to get songs from other online music stores to ipod...

I love the ipod and doubt i would go get any other music player any time ZUNE *laugh*...
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Only if you believe the meme that there are teeming masses ready to dump the iPod + iTunes if only FairPlay would let them (not).

Actually, Jobs was pointing out that even though Apple has sold 2+ billion DRM'd songs online, the reality is that most people probably have never touched a DRM song. The "22 iTunes songs per iPod" figure is an average...it could easily mean that only 5% of iPod owners are responsible for 90% of iTunes song purchases, for example, with 95% getting all their music directly from CDs (or P2P downloads).

Jobs is saying, "Look, Apple has the most successful DRM system in the world, but in the big picture, it matters squat. Apple hasn't sold 100 million iPods because people are welded to FairPlay. The reason Apple has sold 100 million iPods has almost certainly nothing to do with DRM."

In other words, the success of the iPod is because it just is the best solution for millions of consumers (due to style, functionality, popularity, price, simplicity, etc.), and has nothing to do with FairPlay, despite the delirious rantings of certain anti-Apple people who act like FairPlay will bring about Armaggeddon or something.
 
Here's the one thing that puzzles me. Jobs says we wants a level playing field. If that's true, why not make a little bit of money by licensing fairplay. Any player or jukebox software that plays normal ACC files should be able to play fairplay protected ACC files with minimal firmware and software updates. It wouldn't be a final solution, but it would be a start. I'm not so sure, this isn't a PR move meant to deflect attention on Apple's monopoly away from apple and on to the record companies instead. They're not going to change, so Steve and Apple end up looking like the good guys.
 
BenRoethig said:
Here's the one thing that puzzles me. Jobs says we wants a level playing field. If that's true, why not make a little bit of money by licensing fairplay.
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Steve mentioned the reason against licensing Fairplay in his article. The cost to update software to protect against uncovered DRM keys would prove a daunting task if third party vendors were involved.
 
If Apple could, they'd keep with the iPod + iTunes lock in.

External pressures are forcing Apple's hand.

Unfortunately, if digital music stores do go DRM-free , SJ will be worshipped for this turn of events ( when reality is quite different ).


BenRoethig said:
Here's the one thing that puzzles me. Jobs says we wants a level playing field. If that's true, why not make a little bit of money by licensing fairplay. Any player or jukebox software that plays normal ACC files should be able to play fairplay protected ACC files with minimal firmware and software updates. It wouldn't be a final solution, but it would be a start. I'm not so sure, this isn't a PR move meant to deflect attention on Apple's monopoly away from apple and on to the record companies instead. They're not going to change, so Steve and Apple end up looking like the good guys.
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maxterpiece said:
I have two criticisms of Jobs' 'Thoughts on Music'.

1) Why not cooperate with other companies to allow users who switch from one music store to another to just redownload all their purchased music in the new format?

I doubt the RIAA would have any concerns about this - the music remains DRM'd. Apple has logs of all customer purchases and I'm sure other music stores do as well. Apple doesn't have to worry about supporting fairplay on other devices and media players, but people are no longer locked in.
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I'm pretty sure you are wrong on this. The labels are very anal about stuff like this, which is why they also went after Internet radio stations because they weren't paying the proper royalties for playing music on their radio shows. There was even a case of a restaurant owned by a celebrity (or was it athlete) in Philadelphia where the music company presented a bill in the tens of thousands because the restaurant had been using an iPod to play mood music without paying royalties. You can bet the labels are wanting to be paid for every additional download, just as they expect you to pay for a new CD if you lost the original or it got scratched up.

2) As has already been mentioned, Apple keeps the DRM on songs even if the label doesn't stipulate that they must be DRM'd. Most independent music lables have made it clear that they don't care if their music has DRM, but apple continues to encode their music. Jobs is being a hypocrite by not selling these songs unlocked. It is the perfect opportunity: open up the independent music, promote that it is unlocked, watch as independent music sales explode, rub the statistics in the RIAA's face.
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It's all about simplicity. It's the reason Apple insisted on flat rate pricing on songs, with few exceptions. It's the reason why all songs on iTS have the same sharing rights, i.e. 5 authorized computers and unlimited iPods.

Apple doesn't want to get into a situation you are advocating that plagues the PlaysForSure music stores and Zune, where songs have different usage rights. It was recently revealed that about 60% of the songs purchased in the Zune marketplace can't be shared, for example. Some songs can't even be burned to a CD. And you can't tell until you try to do it, and the Zune software tells you that you can't.

This is what will happen if you go "DRM free is optional." Because then DRM-free becomes just a gimmick that the labels will manipulate. They'll begin offering 1 song on an album that is DRM-free, and the rest of the album is locked up. They'll sell a song DRM-free for the first 5 weeks for $1.50, and then it'll revert to DRM'd-only after that for $0.99. They'll do things like "only the 1st million downloads are DRM-free" to try to generate hype and mindless buying.

Steve Jobs knows what happens when you give the music labels "options" when it comes to DRM, even if one of those options is DRM-free. It has to be all or nothing, either all-the-same-DRM or no-DRM. When the labels have options, consumers lose, so Steve Jobs is about to try to make them an(other) offer they can't refuse.
 
crees! said:
There is the DRM on DVDs to prevent you from making a copy of a movie but then again what's to stop people from bypassing that? Obviously I can be done. So where are the studios then? They still use the same copy protection granted it's been breached. Why should Apple or any other company have to update their software in said amount of time from when a breach occurs?

Steve is right and not because he's the one who said it.
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Updating the DRM on DVDs would involve updating every DVD player in every home in America (and the world). DVD's aren't software; they can't be updated. It is just not possible.
 
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