Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Music

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has concisely elucidated the issues associcated with music encryption, and why the market needs to transition away from proprietary download and playback systems.

Yes.

For confirmation of his theory, explore the history of competing formats in the early days of consumer video: VHS, Beta, etc. Market fragmentation and inferior transitional products. From an ecological standpoint alone, consider all of the quickly obsoleted equipment that now stuffs our landfills...and flushes toxic chemicals into our water supply. The more universal and versatile the hardware, and the longer its operational life, the less ecological impact it will have. Quality is always better.

I always buy music, because I am an artist, and I want to support other artists. But I will never buy reduced fidelity DRM-encrypted music online...too many times I have lost data, or reformatted my hard drive, and consequently am unwilling to wrestle with authorization systems.

DRM encryption does not stop piracy. Piracy is a question of morality, and immoral people will continue to pirate music. Several technologically proficient people I know have easily $20,000 worth of pirated music in their personal collections. Wave that skull and crossbones.

The most welcomed benefit of removing encryption however, will be for unsigned musicians. In the past five years recording technology has advanced enough for me — as a skilled musican and engineer — to record on my personal equipment with fidelity equal to a major label. I can now bypass the clone selection machinery of record labels, retain my copyright, and sell directly to my audience...but...how?

Exposure, and distribution, have been the stumblers.

Imagine you log onto iTunes > search for new music > discover a peer-rated link to my latest-world-changing-song (which I licensed to Apple for distribution) > you preview > like > purchase. Steve Jobs takes his cut for designing iTunes, and passes the remaining profit to me. I have just been directly rewarded for my self-recording initiative. Simple. Brilliant.

Go, Steve.