Breaking…ish…
By Dan O'Connor April 2nd, 2007
In Brand innovation · New technologies · Stories
The Beeb’s ticker is saying that EMI are going to drop their anti-piracy tech from their digital products. Splendid. Watch the other majors quickly follow suit.
UPDATE: EMI you are rubbishmissing an opportunity! Apparently the anti-piracy tech will only be removed from products which, in a fit of profligate imagination, they have named “Premium”. According to the Beeb:
The higher price will apply only to single tracks that customers download. On iTunes EMI tracks free of digital rights management (DRM) software will cost $1.29 (99p). Itunes users will be able to upgrade previously purchased EMI songs and albums for 30 cents (15p) a track. Fans will be able to buy “premium” tracks in a variety of bit rates will be of better quality than existing downloads varying qualities up to CD-twice the sound quality of currently available EMI tracks.
I can’t even begin to describe what an half-assed unecessarily complicated, patchy, have-our-cake-and-eat-it response to a near-universal cultural phenomenon this is.
Instead, I chose to concentrate on the totally awesome image that the Beeb used to illustrate the story:
Behold! It is a man STEALING badly Photoshopped, ummm, picture frames, I think, from EMI! He is in shadow! Feel the implied espionage! Thrill to the implication that downloading a single is the same as stealing the Maltese Falcon!
Also, the article - when it takes a pause from the breathlessness of it all - tells us that the following artists are contracted to EMI: “Lily Allen, Joss Stone, Robbie Williams, Coldplay and Corinne Bailey Rae”
A plague upon your slightly dis-DRM’ed house, EMI, a plague.
1 Mat Morrison // Apr 3, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I don’t agree. Nor do
mostmany people. Even the EFF says that it “welcomes this development wholeheartedly (although they do whinge about the 30% surcharge.)I’m a big fan of the Lessig argument: I think that it’s natural for people who work in the new media to think in terms of openess, sharing, and building on the works of others as being the way to drive better services. I know that - even though I own cookbooks written by many famous chefs - I’ll still pay to eat in their restaurants. I was an early (and sweatily fervent) signatory to the Cluetrain Manifesto.
But I also think that you can’t just turn your business model around overnight. This is a huge step in the right direction, as far as I can see. EMI and Apple are to be applauded, not censured. Very few people in my experience have real problems with DRM. Most people I know don’t even know what DRM is; when it is explained to them, they do tend to think that it may even be a reasonable idea. Of course, we all know that they’re wrong. It’s like the underpants gnomes’ plan.
There’s a real tendency, on the part of innovator and early adopter audiences to dismiss any attempt by the mass audience to accept their way of thinking. Green activists of long standing scream that government policy changes are “too little, too late”. People dismiss bands they were into before thay got big as “sell outs” (like Scroobious Pip says, “Thou shalt not stop liking a band just because they’ve become popular”).
It’s this tendency towards shrill denial of the mainstream (or any commercialisation) that makes it so hard to cross the chasm. People look at the anti-DRM fanboys and ask “where’s the money?” The answer, according the the Cluetrain bunch is as follows:
This argument butters no parsnips.
2 Dylan // Apr 5, 2007 at 10:44 am
Full disclosure: I worked on the announcement on Monday, but am writing in a personal capacity. I also count myself a friend of RMM, and I think that this blog often has some well structured insightful thoughts on digital communications.
Which is why I couldn’t let the playground squealing and point scoring of this post go without some kind of response.
I think the key to the whole debate is choice. By creating a new premium product with higher sound quality and no digital rights management restrictions, EMI is giving consumers another choice. If you’re happy with digital music as it is, feel free to carry on buying the standard tracks. If enhanced audio quality and the ability to move your music from device to device is important to you, then maybe the premium tracks are for you. And if you don’t like either product, you have the right to choose not to buy digital music at all.
While music (digital or otherwise) may be a “near-universal cultural phenomenon”, it is not an inalienable right. I’d love an Aston Martin DB9, but the fact that I think it is too expensive doesn’t mean that I have the right to steal it. Not even if the doors are open and the keys left in the ignition. And despite its lower price, the same is true of digital music.
Like anyone choosing to go into - say - communications planning, musicians have the right to make a living from their chosen career route. Whether a session musician or one of the five million selling artists dismissed in the original post, artists should be allowed to make a choice about how they want their music to be marketed, sold and distributed. I believe, that this site operates under a Creative Commons license, allowing people to use your work under certain conditions. You have made an active choice about how your creative work is utilised, and that is your right. An artist having their intellectual property stolen through illegal downloading via p2p is not being given that choice. The same, by the way, could be said of the AFP agency, whose picture was used - presumably without their permission - in the original posting.
The announcement that one of the world’s biggest music catalogues is being made available DRM-free is a step forward for the digital music market and a real move towards interoperability. It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge leap in the right direction, as the vast majority of consumers and commentators who have opined at some length on the decision since Monday have agreed.
Everybody’s got a right to an opinion, and hell, I’m probably wrong more often than I’m right. But it would be great to see this blog get back to reasoned debate that touches on the issues that face all people who communicate for a living, rather than the desperate attempts to assert impeccable new media street cred that it has become lately.
And enough of the Doctor Who, already.