Today, Steve Jobs is pledging to get rid of DRM (Digital Rights Management) from music.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Will this be a leap forward towards having DRM-free downloads?

Only time will tell… It will be a hard battle against record companies, but even harder: against RIAA.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 and is filed under Apple, Music, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.