About two and half years ago (I think - it seems to me it was just as Vindicia moved into its current office, which would've been then) I got a call from a recruiter. He was looking for someone to be VP of Technology and/or CTO for Yahoo! Music. This isn't that surprising - I was EVP of Tech at EMusic, and, if you're looking for software development executives with downloadable music experience, there's like maybe three people with that on their resume, and I'm one of them.
Ian C. Rogers, late of Nullsoft (the guys who did Winamp) ended up taking some sort of management role with Yahoo! Music (though, I'm not sure precisely what). He has updated his personal blog with an extended anti-music-industry rant, in which declares he's done with the DRM crap Yahoo! Music has been shoving down customers' throats:
I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
The start of this rant is an overview of the digital music history - one which does not touch on GoodNoise, which was selling unencumbered MP3s for $.99 in 1998, nor the company it became, EMusic, which was selling subscriptions for $9.99, again, to unencumbered MP3s in 2000. Ian just tried Amazon's new digital download service, which is unencumbered, as well. It beats GoodNoise's offering by having the content of two major labels - something were never thought it would take nine years to convince them was inevitable. Ian wonders what took so long: "But now, eight years later, Amazon's finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that's simple and works with any device... PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years." Well, to some of us, it was obvious in 1998, but, I'm glad everyone else is finally coming around.
Ian's bottom line is right on, though: "Convenience wins, hubris loses."
Oh, and that recruiter - I had a vision pop in my head of endlessly trying to convince major labels, yet again that they should drop DRM because it was killing their sales while not preventing piracy. I told him, "There's not enough money." He was taken aback. "We're Yahoo! It's never been a problem, before."
"No," I explained, "I didn't say you don't have enough money. I said there isn't enough."