Global Journey Music Blog Sept 06

DRM - What is it and Why Should I Care?

DRM stands for "Digital Rights Management" or perhaps a better description might be "Dreadfully Restricted Music". Although used for a number of purposes (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6337781.stm) when it comes to music DRM is a system that controls what you can; or more importantly; cannot do with the music you download from sites such as iTunes.

Copy it more than the allowed number of times and suddenly the music you thought you bought will no longer play. This is fine if you are a pirate making multiple copies to distribute and depriving the musicians/owners of the copyright and performance. However if you are a legitimate user effectively (as far as DRM is concerned) making a new copy each time you move the music to a new PC, player or other device then you may be surprised to find that after the allotted number of copies your tracks no longer play. You thought you bought the music but in reality you just bought the right to play/store it on a limited number of devices after which it expires.

As peoples' downloaded music collections grow the issue grows too. Many people are not aware of DRM and as they become so the backlash against DRM grows.

On the Apple website Steve Jobs has written an open letter explaining how the major music labels have forced Apple to impose DRM on consumers and calling on the labels to drop the system. As Becky Hogge the executive director of the digital advocacy organisation, the Open Rights Group says of DRM "It locks consumers into specific products. It's anti-competitive and anti-consumer,"

The current system is untenable. Depending on where you download your music you could end up with music that is not only restricted to how many devices you use it on but also restricted to a particular brand of player. Unique music formats as used on iTunes will ensure that you cannot use your music on other players at all. If you've just decided to switch your trusty Apple iPod for a Microsoft Zune player then too bad - your iTunes downloads are incompatible.

As the consumer you are restricted by both DRM and proprietary formats. Add this to the fact that the music you download is compressed and therefore at considerably lower quality than a CD and you wonder how the download industry has been successful at all!

So how can you make sure that your music is accessible to you in future and when you change players? Ensure that you buy unrestricted music from companies such as emusic and you will overcome the restriction issues. Alternatively and as I have previously highlighted, buy the CD and you will own the music in the safest format and highest quality. After all downloads don't save you money and are of inferior quality so why not buy the best and stick with the humble CD?

The cynical among you may feel that as a music label we have something to gain by promoting CD sales but in fact for us download sales are higher revenue as we have no physical product to ship to and from our warehouse.

And if you feel that you are helping the environment by downloading then think again. Although there are numerous debates on this issue one thing is clear; the download industry operates huge music server farms with massive air conditioning plants to cool them which have a considerable effect on the environment. Add to this the fact that people who download music are themselves using 400W PCs while downloading. In many cases people buy extra hard disk drives to store their files or to (wisely) back them up - another environmental impact. Many will also copy the music to CD too obviating the point of downloading in the first place!