Yahoo!, Jessica and DRM

Yesterday on the Yahoo! Music Blog, ian c rogers shared more details about the new Jessica Simpson promotion that they are running. The personalized version of her new single may attract some interest from the younger set and highlights the opportunities of digital distribution. What is more interesting is that Yahoo! is a selling DRM-free MP3.

In late February 2006 at the Music 2.0 conference, Dave Goldberg, the VP & General Manager, Music at Yahoo! urged the major labels to ease the restrictions that they place on consumers who choose to purchase music from legitimate download services. Goldberg equated DRM as a consumer cost and not a consumer value proposition.

I can understand in a true subscription model (, Napster, etc.) that DRM is part of the equation. In exchange for access to a couple million songs, users agree to restrictions on how they can use the content. Users are renting access to the library and not purchasing the songs.

If a user is purchasing the song, then it should be free of DRM. They should have portability of the content whether that be between home/work PCs, MP3 players, or their car stereo.

I have purchased DRM’ed songs in the past. It is a frustrating experience and has curtailed my interest in further purchases. I’ve had at least 5 different PCs and a couple MP3 players over the past few years . I’ve also had to replace motherboards in two of my machines. I’ve maxed out on the restrictions for number of PCs/downloads allowed for content that I purchased. This doesn’t happen when I buy a DRM-free CD and rip it to my harddrive.

I could go on and on about DRM but I won’t. Others have covered this space.

I do have a question for Yahoo! If eMusic can license content from the indies to sell free of DRM then why are you not doing the same thing already? Have you chosen not to because it complicates the marketing message (i.e. some of our songs you can do what you want, some of them you can’t – oh the ugly UI headache) or is it that the major labels have forced you to DRM ALL the content you sell or they wouldn’t provide their catalogues?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Music, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.