True. There's no stopping the hackers. You either make it easy for people to buy your music or you make it a pain in the butt. The easier and cheaper it is to buy the more you'll sell. I think the record companies are shooting themselves in the foot. Good post Alex.

Audioholics has a nice perspective on this:

http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/apple-open-letter-DRM.php

Also check-out CEA response to Warner:

http://www.cesweb.org/shared_files/edm/2007/lettertomeyer.doc

I think Steve Jobs made a very good point with this.

what record labels need to realize is that their products are overpriced.

consumers are far more willing to spend $12 on a CD than they are $15-$18.

and I would much rather buy a CD than a download. I prefer to have a real "hard" copy instead of a digital copy. also, I like to choose the bitrate of a file instead of being offered only one, lower quality option.

I have a hard time beleiving that Steve Jobs is against DRM given Apple's own AAC format includes DRM Technology. Sounds more like lip service to make Apple products more attactive.

From Wikipedia
"FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology created by Apple Inc., built in to the QuickTime multimedia technology and used by the iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes Store. Every file bought from the iTunes Store with iTunes is encoded with FairPlay. It digitally encrypts AAC audio files and prevents users from playing these files on unauthorized computers."

At the end of the day, DRM is nothing more than a hinderance to the consumerr base. Consider how much money companies like Sony put in to technologies like Blueray to prevent ripping of content.

From Engadget
"AACS has already been compromised in at least two widely known ways, after DRM hackers posted on the Doom9 forums methods to retrieve and utilize volume, and later, processing keys to copy every Blu-ray and HD DVD movie released so far. Today a third method has appeared, as poster ATARI Vampire reports they were able to find the "sub device key" of the WinDVD 8 playback software. That key identifies the player and allows it to decode AACS protected titles."

DRM accomplishes 2 things. Annoying the general consumer base by making it more difficult to enjoy the content they have legally purchased by making it difficult to enjoy it where (home or car) and how (on which device) they would like to and making companies look like a total joke when a 16 year old hacker finds a way around copy protection that cost tens of millions to implement. Hopefully, this will result in companies moving away from DRM and looking in to alternate methods of securing their investment while avoiding hindering the consumers experience.

I say we ditch downloads and make CDs cheaper. Think about how many CDs would be sold if the $9.99 sale price were the regular price.

Downloads could still exist, like for singles or b-sides instead of full albums. Honestly, the only reason I see (aside from price) to buy a download instead of a CD is the convenience of not having to get up from the computer. In every other sense (like sound quality) CDs are superior.

If CDs and DVDs will be gone then where will I resell all those downloads that I am no longer enjoying?

Do you really think that there will be choices when it comes to format quality if everything goes to download? I realize that you can currently get high quality downloads, but they are limited. And if there ever is a universal format, chances are it will be equivalent to the so-called "near CD quality" of 128kbps.
 

Yes, because much of it has already gone to download and there are many mainstream formats - ogg, aac, mp3, flac, wma, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc

Some of these are compressed formats - lower quality than original but still good and some are lossless - compressed without loss of quality. A better question is why would you ever want 5000 CD's when you could have 1 hard drive /flash device with every song on those CD's but compressed with no loss of quality? The music then becomes more transportable, easier to access and more resilient - CD's scratch and CDR's degrade.

Consider this, the next "next" gen consoles (PS4 / Xbox 720) are, according Sony/MS not going to use physical media. Trust me, the days of "physical" media are limited.

Keep in mind, I am referring to mainstream media (for the general public). There will always be special cases and users who don't fit in to the norm. This is just one man’s opinion, I could be wrong.

Regards,
Sean

Sean Gilbride:

Consider this, the next "next" gen consoles (PS4 / Xbox 720) are, according Sony/MS not going to use physical media. Trust me, the days of "physical" media are limited.

Absolutely - digital distribution makes so much sense for both the publisher and consumer - it's going to be a huge deal, and I honestly look forward to the day when all my shelves aren't taken up with rows of boxes.  The only real question is what will happen if your drives implode and you're stuck.  Microsoft is having decent luck on this front with the xbox live arcade downloads.  They're attached to your account, and you can download them unlimited times after purchasing.  If everyone (looking at you here, Apple) adopts this practice, I think everyone wins. 

RIAA slams Steve Jobs

Hipocritic oaf

DAVID HUGHES, senior vice president of technology for the RIAA, dubbed the spiritual leader of Apple Steve Jobs as a "hypocrite" over his attitude to DRM on iTunes.

While Steve has been banging on about the music companies dropping DRM he has been unwilling to sell his Pixar movies through iTunes without DRM and DVDs without CSS encryption.

Hughes said that when he asked about interoperability of downloads from the iTMS, Jobs said he would only think of that when Apple has less than 50 per cent of the market share again.

Hughes thinks that Jobs posted an Open Letter on DRM to get the attention off of him and the bad press he'd been getting regarding Norway's anti-trust laws.

 Full Article - http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38874

I like Vinyl. Not siding- records. I listen to them almost daily. I like the smell of the record, the dust I have to get rid of with my special, expensive cleaning pad/solution and the totally uncompressed, albeit sometimes noisy, warmth that only vinyl can deliver.

I also enjoy reading liner notes and knowing who the musicians in the band are. It's this crazy thing I have for bands with actual musicians in them whether it is in a CD sleeve or on the back of the record.

I am in the minority. As much as I enjoy these little perks of having conventional, physical media, the days of that media are numbered. The market leaders don't care what people over the age of 35 want because in 5-10 years, we aren't their customers- kids are. Today's youth like downloadable content. They like their content on-demand and they will sacrifice quality for convenience any time.

Actually, that sounds familiar. I think my generation did the same thing when we started buying CDs.

;-)