When EMI, the smallest of the “Big Four” major labels, announced to start selling its music without technological protection measures (“Digital Rights Management”, DRM) in 2007, the other three majors quickly saw no other possibility but to follow down this road. Flanked by Apple’s CEO Steven Jobs’s “Thoughts on Music”, this move brought an astonishingly unsuccessful decade of attempts by industry incumbents to establish DRM technologies to an end.
In theory, put forward for example by industry researchers such as Mark Stefik, DRM technologies should not only prevent illegal copying practices (“piracy”) but also allow new streams of revenue by tailoring prices individually to consumer’s needs. In praxis, however, this vision never became reality: while in the world of small and many independent labels DRM never was important (see, for example, the online-store “finetunes”, which was DRM-free from the beginning), the cartel of major labels first tried to develop industry-wide and all-embracing DRM standards in the realm of a so-called “Secure Digital Music Initiative” (SDMI). Remains of this bold attempt, which was silently shut down after only two years of existence in May 2001, can only be found in the Internet archive. Controversies between content owners and hardware producers about the necessary protection levels had delayed DRM development, whose outcome was then rejected by consumers, leading DRM-mastermind Stefik to conclude in 2007: “The situation reflects the core issue that current DRM provides no compelling benefits to consumers” (see the paper “DRM Inside”).
The only refugium, where DRM solutions still prevail, is the – far from thriving – field of mobile music: supported by all four major and hundreds of independent labels, Nokia’s bundling of phone hardware and music-flatrate entitled “comes with music” uses Microsoft’s “plays for sure” DRM solution. But even in this field DRM seems to be in retreat, since Nokia recently abandoned DRM when introducing “comes with music” in China. Ironically, Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson justified waiving copy protection measures with fighting piracy (see Economic Times):
“It’s unique for China where piracy has had a stronghold.”
Does this mean DRM measures against piracy do only make sense, where piracy is weak? While such paradox lines of reasoning seem to finally herald the end of DRM in the music industry, Michael Arrington at techcrunch nevertheless reports renewed attempts of introducing DRM through the backdoor – via watermarking and cloud computing:
“All the big music sellers may have moved to non-DRM MP3 files long ago, but the watermarking of files with your personal information continues. Most users who buy music don’t know about the marking of files, or don’t care. Unless those files are uploaded to BitTorrent or other P2P networks, there isn’t much to worry about.”
Quoting an anonymous source, Arrington explains how this watermarking in the future may be used for introducing new forms of DRM protection measures, namely when users wish to store their music in cloud-computing services for ubiquitous access:
“Certain record labels have aspirations to use this hidden data to control future access to music in a return to DRM (digital rights management). The labels yearn to control where you can listen to your music and this could be a backdoor for them to achieve it. When personal libraries are stored in the cloud, it becomes possible to retrieve this personal data and match it to a user identity. If the match is successful the song plays, but if not, access can be blocked through a network DRM system such as the one Lala patented (which is now owned by Apple).”
As it stands, attempts of reviving DRM seem to coincide with the introduction of new technologies: similar to the (short-lived) hype around mobile music, cloud computing again inspired DRM initiatives, indicating that music industry representatives have not given up on DRM, yet. The example of “comes with music” in China in turn demonstrates a nearly unlimited willingness to make concessions when facing continued and severe consumer defection.
For consumers, who wish to avoid personally marked files, techcrunch points to a list of music services selling clean MP3 files without embedded personal information.
(leonhard)
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
April 13, 2010 at 05:35
hansi
This demands digging up a classic…
http://xkcd.com/488/
April 13, 2010 at 07:12
leonidobusch
Great Hansi! I love it!
April 15, 2010 at 21:49
Tweets that mention DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat? « -- Topsy.com
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Phonelicious. Phonelicious said: DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat? – When EMI, the smallest of the “Big Four” major labels, announced t… http://ow.ly/172jRO […]
April 25, 2010 at 20:10
Free Culture Research Conference 2010 in Berlin «
[…] Among the issues discussed are private regulation in form of digital rights management (“DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat?“) or alternative licensing (“Alternative Licensing: Subverting or Supporting […]
May 8, 2010 at 15:31
Brett Hoffman
Great post! This was a very interesting read, and so was reading Steve Jobs ‘Thoughts on Music’. I think for the future of music, it would be great if say apple licensed its Fairplay DRM system to Microsofts Zune and Sonys Connect Store, this would allow alot of freedom for people with players such as the iPod and Zune to freely move their legally obtained music as their tastes in music players change. Even though the statistics are small: “3% of the music on the average iPod was not bought on iTunes”, in my opinion its still music that is locked.
January 4, 2011 at 09:14
Damian Brady's Blog » (Predictable) Trouble in the House of Google
[…] DRM is really only renowned for pissing people off (those links took mere seconds to find – in Google coincidentally), and we’re […]
January 19, 2011 at 00:45
Tagged Tabs (1): Copyright, Human Rights, License Compatibility and Irony of History «
[…] “Comes With Music”, one of the last examples of DRM in the music business (see “DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat?“), will be discontinued in 27 of 33 countries and only survive in countries with high levels […]
July 8, 2011 at 11:27
‘Copyright Alerts’ against ‘Content Theft’: Three Strikes through the Backdoor of Private Regulation? «
[…] Yesterday, as is reported by the 1709 Blog, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that “Music, Movie, TV and Broadband Leaders Team to Curb Online Content Theft“. The press release not only obtrusively evidences the change in wording from “piracy” to “content theft” (see “Too Sexy for Being an Insult: Framing Piracy“), but also advertised two remarkable initiatives: the introduction of a common framework for so-called “Copyright Alerts” and the foundation of a “Center for Copyright Information“. Taken together, these initiatives constitute the most comprehensive attempt of private regulation in the field of copyright since the (failed) attempt of establishing all-encompassing Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s (see also “DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat?“). […]