All the big players are at the final table of the World Series of Music Downloads.  Billions of dollars are at stake.  Customers are frustrated by Digital Rights Management (DRM), because it means paying for downloads but being limited by only playing music on certain devices.  Yet the music purveyors find themselves in the precarious position of fighting off their competition with better offers, while trying to prevent unauthorized duplication of their music to ensure continued revenue streams.  Many argue that DRM is backfiring by pushing consumers to illegal downloads.

When a consumer decides to purchase an mp3 player, they must also take in to account what music download service they want as well.  If they purchase an iPod, they are stuck with Apple’s iTunes, for example.  Then there are music rental services to consider, where you pay a fee of, say, $15 per month, and can download all the music you want to one player. 

So here we sit at the Big Poker Table, and Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon announces an all in, "Amazon moved to shake up the online music business on Wednesday by setting up a direct rival to Apple’s iTunes that will sell tracks without copyright ­protection. Amazon said its decision to abandon so-called digital rights management software and instead sell tracks in the MP3 format would allow consumers easily to transfer music among a variety of devices – from iPods to personal computers and compact discs. The pioneering online retailer believes that will help to spur the next growth phase of the burgeoning digital music market.“ Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device."

Is it game over?  Let’s see how this one plays out.  I’ll make one prediction, the winners will be the downloading consumers, and this will help eliminate illegal downloads.

Source: Pocket PC Thoughts

[tags]drm, mp3, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]