Digital Rights Management or DRM, has been a controversial snippet of software embedded into music files for a long time. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM wrapper or Apple’s FairPlay for iTunes it appears the coming death of DRM is from two powerhouses in online sales: Amazon and Wal-Mart.
Funny that Microsoft’s own DRM software will not run on their Zune product. Wal-Mart ditched DRM music in August and a month later Amazon’s site launched DRM free. With larger numbers of online shoppers, the control over digital rights now sit in the hands of the big resellers and not the music industry or even technology companies.
PS – The disappointment with Wal-Mart is their decision to NOT support Mac or Linux systems for downloading music. Not a good sign for a lot of users.
Tags: Amazon, Walmart, music store, music download, Fairplay, PlaysForSure, The Long Tail, trends