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Divendres, 09 de febrer de 2007

Apple rediscovers music

I am supposed to write about gender, stereotypes, media… at least, that was my first idea when I opened that blog. Nevertheless, sometimes I write about other topics… in fact that is what I am going to do today.

This week Steve Jobs published an article entitled "Thoughts on Music" (click here to read) which might have (I hope so!) very important consequences not only in the "big four" music companies (Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI) but also in our everyday lives. Jobs writes about DRM, not only FairPlay (iTunes' DRM) but in general. He begins with some significant data: through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. Mmmm… An iPod holds 1000 songs so under 3% of the music on the average iPod is purchased from the iTunes store.
Recently, Eduardo Bautista (head of the SGAE, main collective management entity of intellectual property rights) revealed that in Spain only 1% of downloaded music was "legal"… Does this mean that all of us are criminals? At least, that is what they want us to believe. (click here to read the interview

Jobs points out three main solutions to that chaos: continuity (1), interoperable DRM'S (2) and DRM abolition (3). In my opinion, what is really important about all that stuff is the fact that Apple would "wholeheartedly embrace" initiatives in order to create a DRM-free marketplace, that is to say, an interoperable music world.

Por: Mir | Internet | Comentarios (0) | Referencias (0)