The Nonsense of DRM
Michael Arrington spoke to Yahoo Music GM David Goldberg and Yahoo Music VP of Product Development Ian Rogers, about the notion of labels abandoning DRM for music. The point Yahoo! is making to labels, is that DRM is contradictory to the laws of economic, it is a losing proposition for consumers and since it offers no value and consumers can get music without DRM they will not buy it. The evidence they provide is that CD sales continue to drop and digital sales are slowing down, and are definitely not growing fast enough to compensate for loss.
The good news is that according to Yahoo, labels get it. They understand that DRM will not stop anyone from stealing music but it hinders innovation and so they are ready to sell DRM-les music. However their parent companies are not ready just yet.
Overall a very optimistic forecast from Yahoo, the bottom line is that they are expecting that a significant portion of their catalog will be available for sale in MP3 format, with no DRM, including major labels content, by Christmas of 2007. To that I say Yahoooooooooooo!
