14 DAY TRIAL // What started off earlier this week as Steve Jobs' "Thoughts On Music" may turn out to be a revolution in media material sales. Jobs' open letter was a plead for DRM-free music sales and he said Apple would happily ditch their proprietary solution FairPlay as soon as the music industry's four major companies dropped their digital rights management requirements.
Also, The Apple CEO said they surely will not license FairPlay to other companies because that would only jeopardize content security. Multiple companies sharing the same product will not be able to quickly and efficiently manage leaks, and they are surely bound to happen.
Reactions to Jobs' statements quickly emerged. RIAA didn't exactly get Apple will NOT open FairPlay and said it was a great idea, though Jobs clearly dismissed it. Zune marketing director, Jason Reindorp, called Jobs 'irresponsible' and said he's only trying to take credit for an already existing trend. Warner Bros. also rejected the idea.
Well, the music industry giant EMI doesn't seem to feel so strongly against losing the DRM solutions, as The Wall Street Journal sources state that the group already talked to several online retailers about selling all of their audio materials as simple mp3s, with no digital rights management protection, as suggested by Jobs and various others.
EMI is the first and, apparently, only one who considers and takes action towards this alternative. They hope that by allowing customers to freely play their rightfully bought music on any digital music device, their sales will become more profitable. Strategy experts say EMI can still back out and we should wait for an official decision to be made public. Only then will we know where to digital copywrited media sales are heading.