An open letter to ‘the big four’…

DRM. Three little letters that seem to mean so much to you.

You pretend that you created DRM to protect those people in your care, your recording artists, film makers & authors.

However, what you fail to understand is that your firm, unrelenting grasp of your media, is squeezing the very life out of it, drop by drop, and if you do not change, it will be mortally wounded, if not stone cold dead within a decade.

Let’s put our cards on the table here, DRM was created by you, not to protect your recording artists’ sales, but to protect an old and outdated distribution model, (physical CD distribution), from the digital download age.

You see digital downloads as a danger, a danger to your current cash-cow, CD’s.

The ease in which CD’s can be ripped to a PC and therefore be easily, and illegally shareable on peer-to-peer sites is something that you grudgingly accept – you failed to see it coming.

There’s very little you can do about it now (short of installing root kits), so your current approach is to keep the status quo as long as possible. CD’s can be ripped to MP3 and distributed with ease, but it still isn’t an easy process in comparison to taking an non-DRM’ed MP3 file and giving it to someone else.

You know however that this is a temporary situation, the future is almost here – complete digital downloads of media, in all its forms are inevitable, once the pipe is big enough.

Every new step forward, (in the past from LP’s to CD, at present from CD’s to digital downloads) you now take with the utmost care, nothing is left to chance. You failed to see the ripping of CD’s to MP3 coming, you won’t let that happen again.

So you enforce draconian DRM on iTunes purchases. It was only the forceful personality, and resourcefulness of Steve Jobs that gave us the option of getting around this DRM easily (by ripping to a CD).

And you enforce even more draconian DRM onto Windows Media Files, and even manage to get kickbacks from every Zune purchased. This was a lot easier because of the willingness of Microsoft to cooperate. Microsoft do not care about the ordinary consumer, just like you. To them they are the lowest of the low, to be controlled like sheep, under the watchful eye of an IT Administrator, or in this case, a faceless corporation.

So here we are at the present. A time of conflict, confusion & struggle – and it doesn’t have to be like this.

Instead of staring at our feet, at where we are today, let’s look to the future, at where we’d all like to be, and plot a course on how to get there.

Seeing as this is all about protecting your current business model, let’s look at what your actual current business model is.

You have a recording artist you wish to sell records on behalf of. You do this by displaying their currently released track in various advertising mediums – on the radio, TV, billboard posters, adverts etc. The mix of these mediums is dependent on your target audience, but the path this audience takes to purchase (and therefore fulfilling the marketing exercise, i.e. making money), is always the same.

The target audience is exposed to the medium, say through the radio and likes the sound of it. But what happens then? Can they purchase that medium? No, they cannot. The medium has to (hopefully) have made such an impact so as to have stayed in their memory (billboard & press reinforce this), so that when they just happen to pass an outlet where they can buy they physical media that they heard, they can finally complete the purchase which started out with the time they heard the song play on the radio, sometimes weeks previously.

It’s not very efficient is it?

The period between the exposure to the medium and the purchase is too long. A lot can go wrong in this period of time, including the target audience forgetting all about your product. This is why the song must be played again and again on the radio, why you must spend huge sums of money on billboard & press campaigns – your marketing plan is too complex.

There’s a famous acronym in marketing and it’s K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid!

In contrast, look at the iTunes Store. You launch the application. You may have many reasons to do this but it’s mainly because you want to play one of your songs. You look at the mini store, or click on a store link next to one of your favourite artists. You go straight to the store, play the song, like it, purchase it. 30 seconds later it’s on your iPod and you are listening to it.

Simple.

My thoughts on ‘thoughts on music’…

Steve Jobs’ unexpected ‘Thoughts On Music’ posting took not only the tech world, but the music world by surprise. If any one thing demonstrates the power that Apple have today it’s statements such as this. When Steve speaks, the world listens, when Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Rob Glaser, or other tech luminaries speak, the world barely glances in their direction.

The statement that Steve made, boils down to this:

For some reason, the wider media have assumed that the reason why the iPod and iTS combo have DRM built in to every item purchased from it, is because Apple desired it, and they desired it because it locks iTS software content, to iPod hardware. This results in the concept that the more content you buy from the iPod, the less likely you are to buy competing hardware.

This apparently isn’t the case.

iTS content is locked to the iPod, and does have the side effect of locking people in to the hardware, but what most, if not all, tech columnists fail to mention, is that this DRM is easily circumvented (and FULLY supported by Apple – no hacks required), by simply re-ripping the DRM’d tracks to CD and re-importing them in to your competing players’ software.

This sounds a little long-winded, but is a walk in the park compared to stripping the DRM from Microsoft’s DRM, which is all but impossible for the average user, and certainly isn’t documented in any way by Microsoft.

Somebody should really let the Norwegians in on this little secret, but I feel that they are perfectly aware of this already and are simply acting on behalf of a certain group of privately owned businesses – I wonder who they could be?

No, the reason why DRM exists on the iTS, is because the music companies demanded it, and not only demanded it’s inclusion, but also demanded that Apple actively fix it, should it be broken.

I myself (unlike the BBC), believe him (by and large).

There are a few questions however. If Steve is so against DRM, and the only reason he agreed to it was to get contracts for the iTS, then why does he not allow DRM-free music on the iTS from indie labels, who are quite happy to give contracts out (such as for eMusic), right now, with no DRM in sight?

Who knows. It could be that the contracts that were signed by the big four, specifically exclude DRM-free music such as this, but even I admit that I’m reaching here.

Or, more likely, Steve was quite happy to go with DRM-free music, but when it was forced on to him by the big four, he saw the potential to sell more iPods and could not turn it down. Don’t forget Apple is a public company and has a duty to it’s shareholders – you cannot turn down the chance of increased profits no matter what your principles.

So, I think that the reason why Steve did this was to clear up the blame for DRM, and to point out to certain European Marxists that it ‘aint Apple’s fault – they need to talk to the big four.

And also, as a little, tiny, eeny-weeny side effect (if this results in DRM being abandoned), it also completely destroys, from top to bottom and inside-out, Microsoft’s entire business plan.

Sorry Bill, what can we say, except ‘whoops’?

The UK Apple ads…

I was out jogging last night with my new iPod Shuffle. The iPod Shuffle I bought just before Apple released the new coloured iPod Shuffle, with the new style headphones…

Hmmm…

Anyway, that isn’t the point of this article. It’s what I saw whilst out running that caught my attention. There upon the side of a bus shelter was a UK version of the ‘I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC’ adverts.

Apple of late has completely gone against character, and started actually advertising the Mac for a change. These ads started in the US, spread over to China, and now here in the UK we are blessed with ‘UK-centric’ versions of these ads.

I’ve already spoken of the US ads before, but these new UK ads do need to be commented on further, not on whether they work, or are well put together, but on the very subtle differences between our versions, and the US ones.

Firstly there’s the cultural differences, the Mac guy says ‘hello’, instead of ‘hi’, for instance, and there’s a healthy smattering of UK colloquialisms. This shows that a lot of thought has been given to making these ads work in a UK setting, instead of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ marketing the UK has got used to from global brands.

If I hear ‘zoom-zoom’, or ‘auto-emocion’ one more time I’ll scream.

Secondly are the changes to the scripts. Where the ads are the same, (in ‘Viruses’ for instance), the US Mac states that those 114,000 viruses do not affect the Mac, whereas the UK Mac says that those same viruses do not affect Mac OS X.

This difference is important. It shows that Apple is refining the text of each advert, making them more explicit in their meaning. For the first time, they’re highlighting the difference between the software, not just the hardware. All this is gearing up for Leopard I expect.

After running past this advert on the bus shelter, and being more than a little surprised, it struck me that we are witnessing something of a change in Apple. This is the first time I’ve ever, EVER seen a bus shelter advert for the Mac in the UK, and by the looks of it, it’s a nationwide campaign.

Such a high-profile campaign as this, to be given a UK push is unheard of. Coupled with the anti-Vista jibes on the Apple website, it seems that Steve Jobs is finally ready. Now he has a first-class, portable OS, and first-class hardware in place, he’s ready to go for it – he’s ready to attack Microsoft.

There’s a technique in marketing which states that there is no point in launching a huge advertising campaign, unless the product you are selling (and the customer experience that surrounds it) is the best you can provide. If your product is second rate, then the extra attention that your advertising will give you, will actually damage your sales and image, doing more harm than good.

Apple has been playing the waiting game, waiting until all the pieces are in place, before they launch their long-overdue attack on the Microsoft monopoly.

If this continues, (and I can only see Apple getting more aggressive against Microsoft when Leopard launches, with all it’s tie-ins to the iPhone, the inevitable new iPods, & TV), Microsoft will then be forced to launch it’s final nuke, the one it’s been threatening Apple with for years, the one that started all this.

They will cancel Microsoft Office for Mac – with some pointless reason attached of course.

Many years ago, Phil Schiller (the then CEO of Apple), gave away the crown jewel of Apple (the Mac GUI), because Microsoft threatened to pull Mac Office. This allowed Microsoft to get away with launching the travesty that was Windows 95, and it all went downhill for the Mac after that.

I wouldn’t worry though, by that time it will be too late for Microsoft. Apple will have the Intel version of Office released, which should last Apple at least 3 years before it would need to be updated anyway.

That will be the year 2010. By which time the tech landscape could be very different indeed.