While Steve Jobs call for the record labels to end DRM has been warmly received around the world, his remarks’ reception from competitors and the labels themselves has been downright chilly.

The harshest criticism, though, comes from Apple’s iPod competitor, Microsoft, who recently entered the portable media player market with its Zune.

Jason Reindorp, marketing director for Microsoft’s Zune portable media player, said Mr. Jobs’s call for unrestricted music sales was “irresponsible, or at the very least naïve.”

“It’s like he’s on top of the mountain making pronouncements,” adds Reindorp, “while we’re here on the ground working with the industry to make it happen. ”

Meanwhile, the RIAA seized on an option that Jobs raised in his comments yesterday, but dismissed - licensing Apple’s own copy-protection system. “Apple’s offer to license FairPlay to other technology companies is a welcome breakthrough and would be a real victory for fans, artists and labels,” the Recording Industry Association of America said.

eMusic recently announced that they’ve reached a milestone, having sold 100 million songs as unencrypted (DRM-free) MP3s.

Tech bloggers are freaking out about the news:

• Digital Music News asks “So, uh, Mr. Major Label executive guy; How many million DRM free tracks does eMusic have to sell before you join the party? No, really.. how many?”
• Techdirt says that DRM-free music is the way to go, and that the major music labels are pretending that the jury is still out.
• MacWorld says that the labels are mulling life without DRM.
• WebProNews warns that they are going to keep slamming on Apple’s “rotten to the core” DRM in response to the “ever-growing consumer backlash revolving around Digital Rights Management.”

These guys need a reality check. Like it or not, sales of non-DRM’d music are trivial in the context of music industry sales, they are insignificant compared to the sales of DRM’d tracks at iTunes, and they don’t offer artists a serious new option for making money.

Continue reading ‘Why Bloggers Don’t Run Record Companies’

So what did Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music, have to say when questioned as to whether any of his seven kids pirate music?

“I’m fairly certain that they have, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences.”

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Caliente pop star Gloria Estefan says record industry executives were “idiots” to try to halt the downloading of music on the Internet and that that a lack of foresight “has taken the music industry down.”

“It needn’t have gone to this level had the multi-nationals not fought technology,” Estefan told the weekly Vegas celebrity-interview podcast “The Strip” this weekend. “They should’ve been the ones putting the music out there. ‘Here, buy this on the Internet. You don’t have to have the whole album, Here’s the single you want.’ … I fought my company tooth and nail when we stopped putting out singles.”
Continue reading ‘Gloria Estefan: Record Industry Execs Idiots’

FairUse4WM, a so-called DRM-stripper, is creating headaches for Microsoft, because the free program lets users strip the rights management software from music downloads in Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM (digital rights management) 10 and 11.

The formats are used by many online music services to enforce limits on the use and distribution of downloaded music.

FairUse4WM was originally posted to a forum devoted to using software to maintain traditional fair-use rights.

According to the poster, viodentia, “This program is ONLY designed and intended to enable fair-use rights to PURCHASED media.”

Many have reported success removing Microsoft’s DRM using FairUse4WM.
Continue reading ‘Stripper Creates Headaches for Microsoft’