Digital Rights Management Controversy

The History of Music Management

If you look at the history of the music industry, you will notice a familiar cycle of events playing out. A technological breakthrough comes along that makes sharing of recorded music between fans easier, and the music industry jumps up and down, shouts about the death of music, and attempts to shut down or control that technology by any means possible. Right back to the old "home taping is killing music" days (which ended up netting the major labels a penny off of the price of every blank cassette sold) to today, with music downloads and P2P file sharing networks, the music business has always had a love/hate relationship with new technology.

It is, of course, this brave new digital music world that is currently keeping the industry awake at night. The internet has opened up a tremendous number of opportunities for sharing music, from file sharing networks to CD-Rs, and in the face of dwindling music sales, the record labels naturally want to find a way to turn these new music markets into revenue streams and control the distribution of the music catalogs. The answer they came up with? Digital Rights Management - DRM.

What is DRM?

DRM is software included on a CD or tied to a music file that controls the way you can use the file. It may prevent music from being copied, it may prevent you from listening to a particular music file on more than one computer or playback device, it may dictate the kind of playback device you need to use to listen to your track, or it may do some combination of these things. The basic idea behind DRM in any application is that you pay a price for a CD or a song, and the record label gets to determine how much usage of that song the price you paid gets you. For instance, buying a CD may entitle you to listen to it over and over again, but with DRM software installed, the record label gets to say that the price you paid does not entitle you to copy that CD for your friends by blocking those songs from being copied. DRM is what makes the songs downloaded from iTunes only play on iPods (unless you pay for the special DRM free version) and it is what blocks you from sharing a song more than three times on paid music downloading services.

DRM Lawsuits

Starting around 2002, the major record labels started going ga-ga for DRM and began including it on just about everything they could find. At first, DRM was only found on promo CDs, to stop the flow of unreleased tracks to the internet, but it didn't take long for DRM to find its way onto just about every commercial release. The problem came to a head in 2005, when it came to light that Sony had included DRM on some of their releases without warning customers (DRM including a rootkit that caused computer security issues). Cue millions of CD recalls and several class action lawsuits. In the end, Sony agreed to do away with DRM loaded CDs - in fact, in the end, everyone did. EMI became the last label to ditch DRM on CDs in 2007.

DRM Online

Getting rid of DRM on CDs was one thing - getting rid of it on digital music files is quite another. As things stand, some music that is sold online included DRM and some does not. iTunes downloads come with DRM embedded, unless you pay an extra 30 cents to get the DRM free version, while other sites, like eMusic, do not. Record labels are making noise that they want to move away from DRM in online music, but that means a battle with online music providers. For instance, Apple likes music files that can only be played by iPods, for obvious reasons. In fact, the battle between the major labels and iTunes over how to distribute music online will have significant ramifications for the whole industry and will partly shape the future of the music business.

What about the Future?

It seems inevitable, however, that labels and providers alike will be forced to go for non-DRM managed music to stay competitive. As more portable digital music players enter the market to challenge iTunes, labels and providers will be forced to sell music that works with all of these players. The only way to sell music that can be played back from a number of different music is to sell DRM free music. What remains to be seen is what methods labels will use to make sure files can't be shared again and again and again, or if indeed they will even try to come up with methods. After all, people have been sharing music since long before the internet entered the equation. Home taping didn't kill music, maybe the internet won't either.