[NatCh]

What's Brought Steve Jobs All The Way to London Today?

EDIT: EMI and iTunes have agreed to drop DRM on the EMI content (Still no Beatles music, though)

No, it's not reading, but DRM is DRM (and DRM is Bad), and the Publishing industry seems to be following the Music Industry's lead on it (sorta), so, here's the deal: apparently, Steve Jobs is in London today, meeting with EMI (one of the world's top four music labels, it seems), and everyone is expecting big news. What will it be? One rumor is merely that iTunes might be picking up a lot of Beatles music (piffle), but the more interesting one, and the one that the Wall Street Journal is touting, is that EMI and iTunes are about to drop DRM from a substantial chunk of their offerings.

From the tiny sliver that the WSJ (graciously, if I'm honest about it) allows out for free:

In a major break with the music industry's longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce today that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter.

From Crave:

EMI has previously experimented with distributing music on the Net without copy-protection. Late last year, the label released a track by popular artist Norah Jones completely devoid of DRM. The song was unprotected, meaning there was no barrier to pirating, and had to be bought from Yahoo's Web site. It sold incredibly well. This move was instigated by Yahoo, but it seemed that extracting DRM-free music from a major label was harder than pulling iron from your blood with a magnet. That might be about to change.

The resounding success of the small number of DRM-free tracks released on to the Net by major labels should only further highlight that most people are honest and will pay for the music they like, but they also want to use it in whatever way they see fit, on their computer or on whichever portable player they choose.

Only two months ago, Jobs himself called for the end of DRM, claiming "[DRM-free music] is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

Crave further notes that the second most popular legal download venue (after iTunes, duh), eMusic, is totally DRM-free. While it does tend to offer music that is less mainstream than iTunes, it clearly manages to make enough money to keep its artists/labels happy completely without DRM, " ... because it recognises music fans will pay for music they could always pirate for free, and it doesn't treat its customers like criminals."

Crave's conclusion:

For these reasons, we think today's announcement from Apple and EMI could go one of two ways, if not both, and either would be met with voluminous applause by music lovers. Music without DRM would be a sensational success and EMI has the power to prove to the other three major labels -- and the world -- that music lovers are not crooks; they're devout and passionate people who will continue to support the artists they love by paying for music.

If it's only the Beatles thing, then the e-reading world might not be too excited (except, of course, for the Beatles fans among us ), but if it's the DRM-Dump, then we should have something to cheer about too -- if the music industry goes without in a big way, and succeeds (as we all expect it would), then the publishing industry won't have them to point at and tell us, "See? we have to do this DRM stuff to stay alive!" -- we'll be able to point to that same music industry and say, "See? No you don't!"