Punters finally realise why DRM is bad

According to PC Pro Magazine UK, consumers are finally wising up to the restrictions placed on digital music tracks once they buy them from online stores.

Some poor chap spent £40 on music only to find that the DRM’d WMA files he’d purchased weren’t compatible with his mp3 player (it only played free-WMA tunes). There were other problems, with people unable to copy music from one machine to another (Which also raises the question of what you’re supposed to do when you when you upgrade computer)

It’s something I’ve been saying for a long time, that consumers would soon fall out with online music stores once they realised they didn’t have “full control” of their files. I thought it would happen the moment iPod stopped being the “must have” player, and people migrated to non AAC/Fair-Play DRM players.

The iTunes Shop model works because most of it’s customers are going to work exclusively in the Apple/MacOSX/iPod world. The minute you start looking elsewhere, you’re screwed.

I hate everything the iPod stands for (form over function, proprietary platform, inflated price to promote exclusivity) – my mp3 player is some non-branded 1Gig USB stick off eBay that cost half the price of an iPod Shuffle yet it comes with a screen and built in radio.

I use three different operating systems on about 6 different computers on a day-to-day basis. I don’t like AAC or WMA proprietary formats. I like to play my music on stand-alone mini players like WinAmp (not “music jukeboxes come DRM enforcers” like iTunes and Windows Media Player). I don’t like chart/pop music – the inde labels I listen to are more likely to give the music away for free rather than chum up with an online store.

There’s no reason why I’d buy music online. It’s a shame that for many, they’ve had to pay out good money to go round a few iterations to realise that buying online music (in it’s current form) is dead.