Steve Jobs gets it right in his recent thoughts on music. In a nutshell:
DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.
So why bother will all the expense, pain, and interoperability nightmares? (C.f. Engadget’s related post in which they point out that “The only way for DRM to be successful is if it’s painless and seamless, and we get tons of emails from consumers complaining about how hard it is to get Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music Unlimited, etc. tracks on to their players, or, god forbid, Macs.”) DRM SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK.
So I have an idea… how bout we stop throwing our money away on something that doesn’t work *and* everybody hates?
Oh yes! Why not go for sites like eMusic and the new NotSoUnknown.co.uk – they offer MP3 files with no DRM from some amazing unsigned and independent bands. It’s never worked, is an annoyance, can be bypassed and is a huge waste of money!