DRM Discarded: EMI Dashes My Editorial Aspirations

Continued from 'Apple's Steve Jobs: Not The Commander in Chaff (At Least This Time)'….

I posit that Jobs knew full well, when he wrote Thoughts on Music, that there was no way the record labels would ever agree to drop DRM. However, by suggesting, "Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free…Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly," he deftly dodges the heat Apple's feeling. Instead, he paints the record labels, already the target of consumer anger due to the heavy-handed actions of the RIAA, as the bad guys.

Thoughts on Music is a stirring speech, devoid of meaningful content but liberally sugarcoated, and pulling all the right strings to make consumers dance. It might not impress Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, but I bet a lot of modern politicians wish they were as linguistically adept. Today 1 Infinite Loop. Tomorrow, the White House?

Like I said at the beginning of this writeup, sometimes it's good to be wrong. What are your thoughts on today's EMI and Apple news?

Followup: Interesting comments from Gizmodo's interview with EMI. As I predicted in part 1 of this writeup, this is not an Apple-exclusive deal. Also, the premium pricing, AAC format and higher bitrate aspects of Monday's announcement were Apple's idea, thereby implying that 99 cent DRM-less 128 kbps tracks (which I'd argue are perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of listeners, esp. if encoded in latest-generation AAC or WMA formats) are feasible from other online music merchants in the future. Gizmodo also points out, as I did, that iTunes Store-sourced albums are no more expensive in their new DRM-less, higher-bitrate form than were their predecessors.