Steve Jobs on Tuesday issued a press release/essay/blog post, whatever it is, stating the three choices that Apple has in the future for furthering the adoption of digital music.
Jobs offers up three scenarios:
- Carry on as we are, with multiple propriety formats, with consumers as the losers
- Open up FairPlay to 3rd parties, with Apple and the consumer as losers
- Remove DRM from the mix. Everyone’s a winner
Bizarrely the option least expected, option three, Jobs seems most enthusiastic about.
This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
This is a bold statement by the head of Apple, with over a billion downloads from Itunes, all protected by their propriety FairPlay DRM, it seems unfathomable that Apple would really drop DRM when they already pretty much own the market, whether labels wanted them to or not. However what with Yahoo offering DRM free tracks and the buzz at Midem for dropping DRM, the pressure may be more on the labels themselves, and Jobs could be just paving the way for them. It’ll be interesting to watch the fallout from this article from all the different corners, RIAA, Majors, Microsoft(Zune), et al.