Thoughts on Music

A lot has been written about Steve Jobs’ shot across the bow of the music industry. If you haven’t read them, Mr. Jobs’ Thoughts on Music are on the Apple website. He envisions a world where DRM is no more. Apple’s iTunes has had some of the most lenient restrictions among online music stores, but even that is too restrictive.

DRM is the way that digital media is locked down. It can mean that you can’t copy a song to another computer or it might mean that you can’t burn it to a CD. Each music store online has a different scheme. Some charge for burning rights. Others limit whether you can place it on a portable device. Basically, it’s interference with what you do with your music.

The precedent is there. As Mr. Jobs rightly points out, CDs have no copy-protection, well, most of the them. So a person can simply buy a CD and rip it. Simple as that.

If you haven’t been to the eMusic store at emusic.com, you might want to check it out. eMusic has two million songs from mostly independent labels. Tons of great music on eMusic, and best of all, it is all in MP3 format so there’s no DRM to worry about.

Hopefully iTunes also, will eliminate DRM, if the music companies are willing. If and when that happens, I hope Apple will provide a utility that will free people’s music. So that the songs they downloaded with DRM can become unprotected. Otherwise that music is essentially a loss. It will be stuck in a doomed format. There are utilities out there for doing just that, but it would be nice to have something that was officially endorsed by Apple. That is, something not ostensibly illegal for having broken the DMCA.

All in all, there have been rumblings that the music industry was already headed in this direction, and Steve Jobs is simply making himself visible. He can take the credit for getting rid of DRM on music. An important distinction should be made though between music and video. He is distinctly not talking about video here. Video has always been produced with some copy protections. Unlike rippable CDs, DVDs carry copy protection. While that protection has been cracked, it is illegal under the DMCA law to break that protection. So to be sure, Jobs is not saying video should be open. Just music. And I must admit, that’s okay with me. Music is my first love, and video be damned.