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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Thoughts on Music | Steve Jobs

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.

Read the entire article by Steve Jobs at apple.com

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1 comment:

JD said...

Interesting. Apple is also having major issues with third party software and the iphone. People are going to be quite upset that the iphone doesn't support open source software.

The bottomline is Apple can use DRM all they want, but it really isn't saving artists any money. Bands make most of there money on touring, not album sales. So if 1000 people steal the new Jay-Z cd, it really isn't hurting his overall sales. Besides, I'm sure he is doing quite well from his Anheuser Busch endorsements.

2/6/07, 4:53 PM

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