[Fmpro] More PRO chinks in the wall -from the biggest Apple

[Les Hurdle]

And the CEO/Pres of ASCAP poured boiling oil on the
AACO as this all began to emerge those many years
ago.... what did they know ??


Shouldn't be ignored\

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/m/219456/1146/#msg_219456


Les

--- Phil Kelly <lonearrngr at comcast.net> wrote:

> read it and weep      Phil Kelly
> 
> February 7, 2007
> 
> Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection
> By JOHN MARKOFF
> 
> 
> SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 6 —  Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s
> chief executive, 
> jolted the record industry on Tuesday by calling on
> its largest 
> companies to allow online music sales unfettered by
> antipiracy 
> software.
> 
> The move is a gamble for Apple. Its iPod players and
> iTunes Store have 
> defined the online music market, and they have much
> at stake in the 
> current copy-protection system.
> 
> Under terms reached with the major record labels,
> online music stores 
> embed software code into the digital song files they
> sell to restrict 
> the ability to copy them. Because Apple uses its own
> system, the songs 
> it sells can be played only on the iPod. That
> limitation has drawn 
> increasing scrutiny from European governments,
> pressure that Apple has 
> recently begun to acknowledge.
> 
> Mr. Jobs’s appeal, posted on the company’s Web site
> Tuesday, came in 
> the form of an essay titled “Thoughts on Music,” but
> in essence it was 
> a letter to the “Big 4” music companies: Universal,
> Sony BMG, Warner 
> and EMI.
> 
> While he said that “customers are being well served”
> by the current 
> approach to digital rights management — with online
> music retailers 
> using incompatible antipiracy systems but
> nonetheless offering “a wide 
> variety of choices” — the subtext clearly pointed to
> the prospect of 
> change.
> 
> He dismissed one possible alternative, in which
> Apple would license its 
> own system, FairPlay, allowing competing digital
> players to play iTunes 
> songs and letting other stores sell copy-protected
> music for the iPod. 
> Mr. Jobs said that approach would only complicate
> enforcement of 
> digital rights management, as myriad companies would
> have to coordinate 
> software and hardware updates.
> 
> Instead, he proposed that labels could shed digital
> rights management 
> altogether. Mr. Jobs pointed out that only 10
> percent of all music sold 
> last year was through an online store and that music
> is already easily 
> loaded onto digital players from CDs, with no
> antipiracy features. 
> Attaching digital rights management to music bought
> online has only 
> limited the number of online music stores, he wrote.
> 
> “This is clearly the best alternative for consumers,
> and Apple would 
> embrace it in a heartbeat,” he wrote.
> 
> Mr. Jobs’s move comes as the music industry appears
> to be facing a 
> crisis. Sales of its mainstay product — the album —
> continue to sink, 
> and sales of digital music, including individual
> songs, have not 
> increased fast enough to offset the decline.
> 
> With a paucity of hit releases to start the year,
> industrywide album 
> sales are already down more than 15 percent from
> last year, the worst 
> January performance since computerized sales
> tracking began in 1991.
> 
> At a forum in France last month, Rob Glaser, chief
> executive of 
> RealNetworks, which operates the Rhapsody digital
> music service, 
> predicted the widespread availability of
> unrestricted digital music 
> within a few years. He said it was “an idea in
> ascendance and whose 
> time has come.”
> 
> But Mr. Jobs is clearly the most powerful voice
> raised so far in 
> support of a change. With the clout built on his
> company’s market share 
> for both players and music, he has already prevailed
> against the labels 
> in disputes over pricing.
> 
> Facing pressure to bolster digital sales, the four
> major music 
> companies have only toyed with the idea of selling
> unprotected files — 
> most notably with a personalized version of a
> Jessica Simpson song and 
> the first single from the new album of Norah Jones.
> MySpace, the 
> social-networking giant that is host to pages for
> countless independent 
> and major-label acts, has embraced the unrestricted
> MP3 format for 
> artists who choose to sell music there.
> 
> More recently, the industry has been abuzz with
> rumors that one or more 
> of the major companies is preparing to lift
> restrictions on some 
> portions of their digital catalog.
> 
> Jeanne Meyer, a spokeswoman for EMI, said, “The lack
> of 
> interoperability between a proliferating range of
> digital platforms and 
> devices is increasingly becoming a real issue for
> music consumers.”
> 
> The Universal Music Group, the Warner Music Group
> and Sony BMG Music 
> Entertainment declined to comment. But several
> industry executives said 
> they viewed Mr. Jobs’s comments as an effort to
> deflect blame from 
> Apple and onto the record companies for the
> incompatibility of various 
> digital music devices and services.
> 
> There is a general sense that the industry is still
> unwilling to do 
> away completely with copy protection, and no
> contracts have been signed 
> yet to change the systems of distribution by any of
> the players.
> 
> A senior executive at one company, who requested
> anonymity to avoid 
> straining relations with Apple, said that while
> labels might experiment 
> with other forms of copy-protection software, “we’re
> not going to 
> broadly license our content for unprotected digital
> distribution.”
> 
> Another digital music industry executive said that
> the record companies 
> — many of them part of larger media companies
> involved in movie and 
> television production — were concerned that lifting
> restrictions on 
> digital music might have perilous effects on the
> parallel market for 
> copy-protected video content.
> 
> Several consumer electronics and music industry
> executives said that if 
> the music industry moved away from copy protection,
> it could 
> potentially make it easier for competing music
> players. Mr. Jobs seems 
> to be betting that anything that stimulates the sale
> of digital music 
> can only help his company.
> 
> “It’s a bold move on his part,” said Ted Cohen,
> managing partner of TAG 
> Strategic, an industry consultancy; he is also
> former senior vice 
> president for digital development and distribution
> for EMI Music. “If 
> anything can play on anything, it’s a clear win for
> the consumer 
> electronics device world, but a potential disaster
> for the content 
> companies.”
> 
> The global music trade group, the International
> Federation for the 
> Phonographic Industry, based in London, has long
> pushed 
=== message truncated ===



 
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