Tim Green ponders the desire to own stuff, as DRM disappears from digital music services.
All my life I've been a keen shopper. The female and male halves of my brain seem perfectly aligned in this respect. Like any female (which I'm not, check the picture) and unlike many men, I take great pleasure in pounding the high street looking for the perfect pair of jeans.
I can spend all day doing it, as long as I have my iPod and no one else to hassle me. But I can also turn my grasping hand to the male way of shopping. Task me with buying a pair of headphones, for example, and I will research the sh*t out of it – poring over specs and reviews until I am the most tedious and unwelcome expert in the subject.
So, what's happened to me lately? I've become the opposite of a shapaholic. I can still do the process, but when it comes to the climactic exchange of credit, I just can't be arsed. Does this wrap dress flatter my balding pate, I ask myself? Do I really need more stuff?
Maybe it's the recession, maybe my age. Or maybe I'm getting infected by the move away from ownership prompted by the digital era. Mmm.
When I first started working in mobile, I was given a six month free trial of RealPlayer's Rhapsody unlimited subscription music service. It was wonderful, and I remember boring my friends about it. "Imagine having the world's record collection available whenever you want it. You don't need CDs any more."
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Just occasionally, when I was being quite lucid and not ranting like a nutter, I would see the light go on in someone's eyes as I made my point.
But Rhapsody, like (legal) Napster, was ahead of its time. There wasn't enough broadband penetration, and the DRM got in the way. But recently, thanks to Spotify, PlayNow Plus, Comes With Music and MusicStation, there have been the first signs of a mass market change in attitudes.
The announcement by Virgin Media and Universal Music can only speed that up. It will offer unlimited digital music without DRM for the first time.
The floodgates have opened – download as much as you like for a fixed fee and keep it. Carte blanche for the file sharers? Perhaps, but not if Virgin makes good on its promise to clamp down on illegal sites.
It was such dramatic news that I had to ask Nokia what it thought. After all, its Comes With Music service (which hides the subscription in the cost of the handset) would benefit massively from the removal of DRM.
It told me that, subject to label approval, DRM would go in 2010. It has since made statements saying it has 'no plans', but that's not the impression I got.
Overall, you sense that the move away from DRM is unstoppable, and that the long-promised switch in consumer's heads from ownership to access is underway.
Fascinating times. You know what? You should come to our conference Mobile Music Now in July 9th to discuss it some more. But this is not open access. You have to own a ticket.
