The Modernish Father

Yesterday, Apple senior VP Phil Schiller concluded his extremely underwhelming Macworld keynote address with the news that they’re finally phasing out DRM on their vast library of musical offerings in the iTunes store. It’s something a lot of people have been waiting for – and grumbling very loudly about -  for quite some time. Naturally, now that the blessed event has happened, some folks are going out of their way to get all fired up about something else.

So what could be bothering people in what should be a time of exuberant celebration? Apple is charging iTunes users who want to strip the DRM restrictions off the songs already in their libraries thirty cents a song to do so. A lot of people – including a couple of the sites I usually frequent – have started grumbling about it. I’ve also seen more than a few people expressing frustration about it on Twitter. All of these complaints seems to be centering on the same question: “Why should we have to pay again for something we’ve already bought?”

I totally disagree with those who feel that Apple is trying to rip them off. Just because folks didn’t realize how dumb it was to purchase an entire collection of rights-restricted music doesn’t mean that Apple or the record labels should waive their magic wands and let them out of their end of the deal.

That’s right, I said their end of the deal. Because when everybody snapped up all those songs for 99¢ apiece, they did so by agreeing to a very specific set of terms and conditions limiting where and how they could use that content. Apple never tried to hide the fact that DRM restrictions were part of the iTunes store. Lest we forget how radically different the music industry was six years ago when Apple opened the iTunes store, songs weren’t going for 99¢ a pop online. Implementing DRM was really the only way that the major record labels were going to agree to selling their songs online at such a low price.

For that very reason, it’s not Apple people should be mad at, but the record labels. They’re the ones who have been pushing for DRM ever since digital music formats hit the mainstream. Apple overlord Steve Jobs has actually been an outspoken critic of DRM over the past few years. If anything, Apple should be lauded for haggling the record companies down to just thirty cents a song. I’m sure if they had their way, the Big Four music outfits would have insisted that everyone buy a completely new copy of their songs at full price if they wanted an unlocked library. There’s no way that they were going to let Apple unlock over six billion downloaded songs for free.

Plus, Apple is actually offering added value for those thirty cents. For every 128-bit DRM file that’s unlocked, Apple’s replacing it with a 256-bit file. That may not mean a whole lot if you just listen using cheapo earbuds, but if you connect your iPod to a car or home stereo system, it’s a noticeable jump up in audio quality. It’s a good thing and, quite frankly, something that Apple didn’t have to do.

Speaking of things that people don’t have to do, I think that’s why all this whining bothers me so much. Nobody is making people unlock their existing DRM’d music files. If you’re happy with what you’ve got and how you’ve operated with iTunes, more power to you. You can pay absolutely nothing and just go along on your merry little way. Or if you’d like to unlock your files but don’t care so much about the audio quality, there’s number of options for converting your existing iTunes songs into unlocked mp3s for free.

Yes, it sucks that people face the prospect of spending more money (in some cases quite a bit of money) if they want to unlock their libraries, but that’s what they get for accumulating a massive collection of restricted music files.

For that very reason, I steered clear of getting an iPod and purchasing music from iTunes for a very, very long time. Until The Wife’s sudden and overwhelming need for a trendy pink iPod struck over the summer, we had stuck with less cool but equally functional audio players. Nearly all of our library is made up of stuff I’ve ripped from our old CD collection or purchased without DRM from Amazon. If I want to convert all of the DRM’d stuff I’ve bought from iTunes over the past couple of months, it’ll be less than $20. And I’m perfectly fine with that, because when I bought those songs I knew I was making a trade off – accepting DRM restrictions in exchange for the convenience of using the iTunes store.

I’m not an Apple fanboy and I’m certainly not a corporate apologist, but I just can’t stand it when people cry foul when they were the ones who failed to read the fine print. Or the rather large print in this case.

End of rant.

Those men inside my brain

While we’re talking about music and such, I got another iTunes gift card for Christmas and managed to hold on to it for nearly a week before wiping it all out in a five-minute fit of unbridled consumerism. I’ve decided to slowly expand my very small jazz collection, so I spent most of the gift card on a single album.  Here’s what I got:

• On Time (Dave Brubeck) – includes Take Five, Blue Rondo à la Turk, Unsquare Dance, Besame Mucho, Forty Days and five other songs
• Dream Police (Cheap Trick)
• The Flame (Cheap Trick)
• Surrender (Cheap Trick)
• Broken Wings (Mr. Mister)