Mike McCracken

As an advocate of legal DRM free music downloads, my initial response to Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music was excitement that change might be coming along with some potential re-assessment of my opinion of Apple which is design-wise rosy, but politically not so, as I don’t want to support their market-leading DRM dissemination.

Not much later, I read the Defective by Design blog post which points out flaws in Jobs’ position (in the context of Pixar) and of course pushes for real action on the subject. But then it occurred to me, if he really thinks that music downloads would be better without DRM, then why does all of the non big four music that already sells their music without DRM (on eMusic, Audio Lunchbox, etc) come from iTunes music sore with DRM? Nobody’s making Apple cripple those files!

Given that his “I only put the DRM on because they make me” argument falls apart for a non-trivial portion of the music Apple sells, I have to wonder why he made this announcement. Taking the DRM off of the music you buy on iTunes would be by some wisdom financially irresponsible (not locking people in to iPods may lose them money), but could also gain them money, as more people might download music and need some place to play it. The latter is suggested by analyst Gene Munster who also predicts that the big four going DRM free is highly unlikely.

Looking at the profitability for Apple to go DRM-free: In some ways I can see Munster’s point about people buying iPods to play all of they’re music they bought because they could get it DRM-free, but with the DRM, Apple has a long-term, self-perpetuating lockup on that marketplace, that I don’t really see him being that giddy to lose. He says in his letter that people aren’t locked up because only 3% of people’s music has the DRM, but this has problems: people don’t like to throw away money, even if it’s only $20 and I, and most people I know, have 0% DRM files on our iPods, meaning that there are probably plenty (toward 1%, perhaps) of iPods with a decent amount to lose by switching players.

This leaves the question at: is Jobs doing this because he actually wants the big four to go for no DRM or does he just want to look less like the bad guy, knowing they probably won’t and being fine with that. Does he mean it, or is he just acting cool? The guy has a tremendous sense for good design, but that doesn’t preclude Apple from possibly being evil. I’d buy his argument a heck of a lot more if he sold me Spank Rock, Aphex or Moby DRM-free.

On this tiny UMPC I’ve been using, when windows has decided it’s time to let me know that it isn’t connected to a wireless network (I haven’t turned on the wifi card, but still, I should know it isn’t connected), the message often covers part of what I’m working on, interrupting what I’m doing until I close it or wait for it to go away.

I liken it to, say, if you’re rushing to get out of the house to go to a meeting, working to get your jacket on while getting the door open, and a wall in front of the door suddenly blocks your way to tell you that the dishwasher is done.