Apple Drops DRM from iTunes Music; What We Really Need Are DRM Free Videos

Yesterday, Apple (AAPL) announced at Macworld that by the end of the first quarter, all songs in its catalog will be DRM free. While that's nice, but not really that big of a deal, the real question is when DRM free videos will be made available?

Let's face it, most folks who buy music from iTunes only want to play it on an iPod anyway and are not moving the content around to many other devices. Music is not what's driving the growth of the Internet, new applications, or bandwidth consumption. It's all about video. If Apple really wants to push the market forward and help video consumption explode, it needs to convince content owners that offering DRM free videos would help jumpstart the industry. New business models would be created overnight and consumers would be happy, which means they would buy and consume more content. We'd see an amazing amount of growth in just a year's time.

For all we know, Apple is already doing this and trying to convince content owners of the need for DRM free videos. But until the day consumers can buy content once and move it to any device they want, the market for purchasing video content won't see the kind of growth that many of us in the industry have been waiting for.

Comments

[James Katt:]

DRM free videos from major studios will NEVER occur.

Movies have not been distributed without DRM of some kind. There is no established basis for this like with music.

Further, why should the movie industry want to go downhill like the music industry clearly has? Yeah right.

Jan 07 10:52 AM

[Joe Public:]

Dan, I disagree in part. Maybe for Apple's bottom line, DRM-free in the iTunes store is not a big deal. And maybe it is not a big deal for users who view their purchased music as somewhat expendable. But I know there is a significant number of people who will not buy DRMed music. It's too much hassle to insure that your licenses are properly backed up and that you can transfer your music to other devices you may own in the future. What is the life span of the typical iPod, two or three years? If I buy a music track, I don't want to lose it simply because my old player gets replaced.

I happily buy DRM-free downloads from the Amazon MP3 store and from lala.com. I have never bought a DRMed MP3, and I don't expect to in the future.

Jan 07 11:40 AM

[Jonathan Be...:]

Apple seems to downplay it, but DRM-free music videos are available on iTunes as of this morning.

Also wondering how proliferation of DRM-free media and music editing apps will give life to new copyright laws and legal debates of backbeat.

Jan 07 11:50 AM

[Steve K.:]

Yup!

www.apple.com/itunes/w.../
- Music video upgrades are 60¢

Music videos are now DRM-free. However, I see no way in iTunes to actually buy the upgrade to the DRM-free music videos. Music had an "instant upgrade" feature (which didn't update all of my songs even though they are available as iTunes+ currently).

Please post how to go about updating to iTunes+ DRM-free videos!

Jan 07 05:03 PM

[Paul KJ:]

When I went to upgrade my iTunes library the upgrade message reported that it would upgrade "362 songs, 4 albums and 2 music videos". None of the numbers account for all of the items per category that I have purchased from iTunes. Then again when EMI went DRM free on iTunes months passed before upgrade offers stopped trickling in.

Jan 07 05:33 PM