Apple: Drop DRM and We Will Too

Today Steve Jobs made the call for the four major record labels to start selling songs online without DRM. These four companies, Vivendi's Universal Music Group; Sony BMG Music Entertainment; EMI Group; and Warner Music Group, were addressed by Steve Jobs in an open letter, "Thoughts on Music," on the Apple web site.

In his post, he outlines three alternatives to "fix" our current situation with music downloads. One is the status quo, one is the licensing of FairPlay DRM to others (ain't gonna happen) and the third:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

While this would be great, how much is PR?

I mean, some of this, undoubtedly, is prompted by the problems Apple is having in Europe, where its dominance and "FairPlay" technology have ended up with "FairPlay" deemed illegal in Norway. However, Norway's response to the letter was a bit tepid.

While I agree with many of Norway's points, it's encouraging to see some sort of statements that might get us to what would eventually be a great world for digital music. On the other hand ... I'll believe it when I see it.