Do You Really Own Your Music?

You like to own your music. You would never consider “renting” your music from a subscription service. When you buy music, you want to own it for the rest of your life, right? Well, I have news for you: you may already be renting your music and not even know it.  In fact, you may not actually own any of those tracks you think you purchased online.

You’ve probably heard about some of the subscription services being offered by online music stores. You pay a fee, usually around $15 a month, and you can download as much music as you want for as long as you continue paying the monthly fee. The benefit of this model is obvious: you can download as much music as you want for one fee, and try out anything that strikes your fancy without having to pay for individual songs or albums. The downside is a big one, though: if you cancel your subscription, your songs will eventually expire, and you will not own any of the music that you downloaded. Essentially, you are just renting the music for the period of time that you are willing to pay the fee, and when you stop, your tracks go boom.

Ever since these subscription models came on the scene, people have questioned whether iTunes would ever make the option available.  Steve Jobs has dismissed the idea completely, and basically stated that iTunes would never offer subscriptions. Of course, he also said Apple would never offer video iPods, and we all know how that turned out. Still, Jobs’ reason for not offering a subscription service is that “people want to own their music.”  You see, with the iTunes store, you buy a song for $.99 and it’s yours forever, right?

Well, maybe so and maybe not. If you had asked me a year ago whether you own songs purchased from the iTunes store, I would have said yes. But that was before Google Video showed us all that “purchase” is a fuzzy term. Earlier this year, Google Video’s Premium service shut down. This was a service that allowed you to “purchase” videos, such as television shows, download them to your computer, and watch them anytime. Sounds like iTunes, right? Well, it turns out that in order for the video to play, the player has to go online and authorize the video every time you play it. When Google closed the service, the server that handles the authorizations would be shut down as well, rendering all those downloaded videos unplayable. Customers were outraged. They were under the impression that they owned these videos, which is not unreasonable considering they paid real money for them. Originally Google handed out refunds via a Google Checkout credit rather than an actual refund. The customers complained so much that Google eventually sent out real refunds and even allowed customers to keep their Google Checkout credit, effectively doubling their money, but the damage had been done. Suddenly, owning downloaded content feels a little more like renting. Do you still feel like you own your iTunes songs now? 

The real issue here is DRM, or Digital Rights Management. DRM is a form of copy protection encoded into digital media such as video and audio to prevent users from copying the media and sharing it with others. Some versions of DRM require the player to check for authorization when the media is played, which is what caused the problem with Google Video. The real issue is that iTunes and any other store that uses DRM is susceptible to the same problem. Right now it seems unlikely that the iTunes store will ever shut down, but what happens if it does? Eventually, your songs will require authorization to play again, and without any way to authorize them, they will become unplayable.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Apple wouldn’t just leave its customers hanging out to dry like that. They would arrange for us to authorize the songs forever. I agree they would try, but this is a very sticky issue. You see, Apple isn’t the only company involved. The media companies who produced and distributed the content would have a say in this, and most of these companies do not have a good record of thinking about the consumer. If they see an opportunity to make you buy their songs a second time, they might jump at the chance. The other possibility here is that if Apple were going bankrupt, they may not have the resources, time, or money to make this right. Worse yet, they may not care. But even if Apple doesn’t shut down, iTunes itself could become obsolete from a new technology or a new way of listening to and selling music. 

Even if none of these scenarios happen, it points out the inherent flaw in DRM. When I purchase content I expect to OWN that content. When I buy a CD or DVD, it will sit on my shelf for the rest of my life. If I pay for and download something from iTunes that is protected by DRM, I have no idea if it will even be playable in two months, let alone two decades. Apple has recently started offering songs DRM-free, and that’s a good start, but I’m not willing to pay extra money for these tracks, as I have to do on iTunes at the moment.

The good news is that other options are starting to show up. Amazon just opened a new Amazon MP3 Store that sells MP3 tracks (not AAC) with no DRM, for $.89 or less per song. It will also automatically add your tracks to iTunes. These tracks require no authorization in the future, and since they’re MP3 (the most compatible audio format) they will play on almost any digital music player on the market, including players from Creative, Microsoft, Sandisk, and other companies.

I believe that eventually DRM for music will become obsolete. It never really stopped piracy, which is what it was designed to do, and even the media companies are beginning to realize that it causes more problems than it’s worth. Apple has taken a good step by selling DRM-free music on iTunes, but stores like Amazon are hitting them where it hurts by offering lower prices for the same quality and a more open format. My hope is that all stores will eventually get rid of DRM, and then it won’t matter where you shop for music. All of it will be compatible with any player on the market, and you can shop by price and service instead of having to shop at a compatible store. The real winner here is the customer, as we will continue to get more options and less restrictions, and we don’t have to worry whether the music store where we bought our tracks is still in operation.
 
Then all we have to do is worry about video…