Steve Job’s is apparently sensitive to the “closed shop” comments surrounding iTunes. Bambi Francisco takes up the Apple’s cause on her blog: “Apple’s Jobs makes a good point”.
Update: Tim Adnerson has very well written counterpoint to Mr. Jobs calling for DRM free music: How about licensing FairPlay or supporting other DRM standards.
Let’s face it this isn’t about music, that battle is mostly over and the entertainment industry lost. They didn’t believe Moore’s law applied.
This is really about video/movies, which are far more expensive to produce and promote. Ultimately they’ll loose again because they still can’t understand how fast technology improves.
Daniel and I spent several months looking at the issues surrounding content distribution over the net and concluded that while the technology is already here (Wal-Mart Intros Movie Downloads) the incentive for the industry to change isn’t. The economic paranoia, represented by DRM will continue to make the experience less than satisfactory. I don’t want the Small screen experience I want to use my home theatre!
A New economic model needs to be demonstrated (in a big way) before they’ll change. Something equivalent releasing “Napoleon Dynamite” on the net and supporting it with targeted advertising. Given the conservatism in the industry there’ll need to be multiple successful releases of both music and video before things will begin to change.
This will truly be the attention economy! Embed personalized marketing download tags into an unencrypted MPEG2/4 stream. When one viewer redistributes the video for you, you get a new customer for free. Come see us we’ll help you make it happen.
