A year ago, it looked like the iPod and iTunes had won the battle to become the established way of playing and buying/obtaining music digitally. Two recent news stories illustrate how the digital music market continues to develop and that the debate over digital rights management ("DRM") is not yet over:
- The BBC reports that only 17 percent of iPod users buy tracks every month on iTunes and that only 5 percent of the tracks on an iPod have been bought on iTunes.
- Yahoo! is trailling the sale of digital music in unprotected MP3 format. This has been reported by the Paidcontent.org blog, citing a news story in Variety.com.
The above stories suggest that businesses in this field must listen to their customers or lose sales. Yahoo!'s launching of an MP3 service at a time when the unpopularity of DRM-protected music such as that on iTunes is becoming clear is a good move. We don't know if this is just clever timing on Yahoo!'s part, or a happy coincidence for the company.
There are lots of related and very relevant issues here, such as the fact that in the UK there is no general right to take a private copy of copyrighted materials you've bought - unless your licence for those materials says you can. The BBC report on iPod users suggests that there's lots of private copying going on in spite of this.
Anyway, too many relevant issues and areas to cover all in one post. All are worth thinking about by businesses in or wanting to get into the digital music market.
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