Some of us knew this 30 years ago
Some of us knew this 30 years ago
Posted Jul 26, 2013 12:09 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784)In reply to: Some of us knew this 30 years ago by khim
Parent article: Android 4.3
Music industry lost and was forced to drop DRM because they did a mistake 30 years ago when they started releasing digital copies without DRM. They are pretty much unique in this regard - few other industries are in similar position.
As we all know, the music industry made several attempts to reintroduce DRM, which obviously doesn't "protect" music already released on CD, but it quite clearly had the potential to "protect" newly released music. Unfortunately, the industry made several mistakes: incorporating rootkits, making non-standard media that wouldn't work in various devices, releasing some works with DRM in some regions and not in others, to name but a few.
It doesn't help that the people in charge of the music industry had their business practically running by itself without any need to exercise any serious judgement - that's what you get when you have a state-enforced revenue stream and free advertising on state-funded media - so that when the time came to make important decisions that would have a serious impact on their future, they were arguably not competent enough to execute a coherent strategy.
There are plenty of other reasons why the music industry has imploded, notably in retail. Specialised music retailers have effectively retreated from music, tried to sell games and DVDs, and where I live have mostly gone out of business. Many of their former customers will not have switched to unlicensed downloads but will have gone to online retailers who offered the choice and convenience that the physical retailers used to do, albeit in their traditional clumsy fashion.
You can see the same phenomenon with book retailing. People still buy books and they can't easily copy and redistribute those books. So why are physical retailers failing? Because they can't offer the choice and convenience of online retailers, even though they can offer the immediate acquisition of the goods. What have many of these retailers done? They have pared down the choice, emphasised blockbusters and things like travel literature, introduced toys and games and other things. Does that draw in the customers they have been losing? Of course not: those people were not interested in toys, games and travel books. And so those retailers will continue their cost-reducing, revenue-reducing strategy until they give up as well.
But notice that DRM is not a credible excuse for the book business. I would argue that it isn't much of an excuse for the music business, either. Customer convenience has been the decider in both businesses, and the traditional custodians of those industries have failed to understand this. But for the music business, DRM is the quick fix that executives hope can bring back the glory days. Well, those days are gone forever.