The fact of the matter is that the DRM or to give it is full name Digital rights management, could be said to help save the music industry, yet it could be said to be too late to limit online download sales. Industry attorney Peter Paterno as quoted in Rolling Stones magazine has said, ‘…the record business is over. The labels have wonderful assets; they just can’t make money off them.’
Supported by this claim in the article are the figures for the top ten albums in the US in 2000 where artists combined sold 60 million copies. Astonishingly, 2006 saw that album sells had plummeted to 25 million with digital sales increasing, music labels are struggling due to online downloading sales.
Subsequently, one of the major music labels EMI are the only label offering music in an unencrypted format.
This leads one to believe that DRM is possibly not the best way to save the business the point of the matter is that there will always be a way of downloading free songs as long as there is a market. EMI are offering variation to consumers through different mediums such as iTunes, Amazon, Snocap and HMV’s newly launched online music store at lower prices. Perhaps the other major music labels should follow suit?
In conclusion, possibly the best way to save the music industry would be by examining why people download in the first place. Thus illustrating what the music industry could do in order to ‘tap’ into what the free service does not offer in order to compete. Most importantly consumers are looking for one thing, that they can acquire music or tracks they want at a low cost. It is whether or not the music industry can adapt to this that will save them.
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As a point of order, the music industry has no interest in limiting 'online download sales' as these are legal and profitable. It is file sharing and the illegal downloading of music that DRM has attempted to combat. Also the magazine is called Rolling Stone (no s).
I am not entirely sure that I can agree with Peter Paterno's doom ridden claim in the light of January's Apple announcement that they had sold 4 billion tracks through iTunes.
Overall this is a well constructed post that occasionally seems to fall foul of the misapprehension that somehow all downloading of music is damaging to music industry profitability.
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