Steve Jobs on DRM

Steve Jobs has published an article addressing DRM. From someone whose iPod music devices make up the majority of digital music players and whose iTunes Store is the most popular digital music store, this is a clearly important piece.

Jobs outlines three possible scenarios for the future of digital music.

1. The industry will continue in the same direction with proprietary systems of music stores and players with unique DRM. The major critique of the current system is that the DRM "locks" a consumer into a system. That is, will you always use an iPod? Or at some point might a better player exist? Well, iTunes music is not usable on other players and never will be. Jobs, using his internal data, says that on average only 3% of music on an iPod is iTunes. So, he argues, consumers are not "locked in." This is a weak argument. We are in the early days of digital music and the percentage of digitally purchased music will only continue to grow - thus locking future consumers into a proprietary system.
2. The second possible scenario is that Apple licenses their DRM, FairPlay to others like Sony or Microsoft. Therefore, the music is still "protected" but the consumer is not restricted in the same manner as today. Jobs dismisses this as impractical from a logistical standpoint and I think it is a fair criticism.
3. Finally, Jobs outlines a world without DRM. He makes the case which is not new to anyone in the field, but is important coming from such a luminary and influential business person. Where the music labels have only sold 2 billion songs on iTunes in its history, 20 billion have been sold DRM-free on CDs.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free,
what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentageof their
music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the
technical expertise and overheard required to create, operate and update a DRM
system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If
such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of
new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can
only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

According to Jobs, "Apple will embrace [a DRM-free world] wholeheartedly."

I imagine Jobs has been telling the music executives this for a while, but he has taken his fight public and will undoubtedly garner public support from both consumers and other technology executives.