In what turned out to be a huge day for digital entertainment news yesterday, Sony announced that they would be dropping DRM from their music, as well.
BusinessWeek says that Sony BMG will join us here in the 21st century when they become the last of the top 4 big record companies to drop DRM.
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Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com’s (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.
I am, of course, happy about this, but I think some credit is due.
People have been bad-mouthing DRM for all of the obvious reasons: incompatibility, vendor lock-in, loss of freedom, stole my bike… (srsly — drm stole my bike!). What everyone seems to overlook, however, is that drm actually played a key role in the musical revolution we’ve enjoyed over the past 5 years of so.
I’ll say it: DRM WAS GOOD FOR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND CONSUMERS.
What? Really? Yeah — lemme explain before you go nuts.
You see, without drm, there’s no WAY Apple could’ve convinced the record labels to allow their music to be sold on the iTunes Store. It was that assurance that gave the record execs the comfort level to let the experiment even happen, but it was the amazing sales numbers that opened their eyes to the fact that people actually WILL buy music online.
The battle to convince them to remove drm, however, took a while to win, but still… w/o drm, that first step could never have been taken.
Goodbye DRM: you’ve been martyred, and I thank you for it.