Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a Big Fat Red Herring

C|Net, Ars Technica and many other technology and entertainment news and information providers have been hollering for years about the outrageousness of Digital Rights Management (DRM) imposed on purchased and downloaded music and video files. DRM, which essentially limits your ability to use or copy a downloaded music file on anything besides the music device for which it was meant, is and always was a red herring offered by a music industry that's suffering through a needlessly difficult transition. My take on DRM is much different.

I don't give a sweet darn about Apple, iTunes or Steve Jobs or whether or not the record labels do or don't still control the majority of decisions and directions in the music business. I don't care about DRM - at all! All I want is to be able to purchase and download high fidelity, 396Kbps variable bit rate MP3s instead of the lo-fi 128-196Kbps fixed rate garbage currently available. Until Apple and other major music sites, in partnership with the record labels, offer at least the same quality as I can currently get from a commercial music CD, what's the point? Of course the tracks only cost 99 cents each online because they're all just lo-fi crap. DRM? Who cares! Online music purchases are pointless in the first place not because of DRM but because the audio quality is terrible! So the labels lift DRM and we then rush online to purchase and download the same lo-fi (but un-DRM'd) tracks? Good lord, have we all gone crazy? If you want great quality, un-DRM'd music right now - today - from any artist you choose, just go to your local record store and buy a CD. When you get it home, you can RIP it at any quality you want and then listen to the music in your car, on your living room stereo, on your computer and on your portable music player. What's the problem?

Technology writers and music/media/entertainment writers talk about everything in this space except product quality. So are all of these paid writers simply unwitting pawns of the technology and entertainment companies? For pete's sake, get to the crux of the matter - the quality of MP3/music downloads - and put pressure on Apple, the other music sites and all the record labels to provide us with the quality we deserve in return for the outrageous amounts of money we're paying for all this stuff.

The music industry doesn't want us to think about quality. For the time being it's less expensive for them and their licensed partners to RIP and store in their online libraries lo-fi, low bitrate files, marketing them to us with the same energy and language previously reserved for high fidelity LPs and CDs. While the brick & mortar music business and distribution channels become financially unwieldy as more and more people move online, the music industry and the record labels worry about everything except product quality. It's pathetic. DRM? Even more pathetic. Like any DRM scheme is going to remain undefeated for more than 10 minutes? It's idiotic.

I'll pay for quality. We'll all pay for quality. Unless you're purchasing a commercial CD however, you're not going to find quality at an online music store unless you mail order a commercial CD. DRM is, and always was, a minor issue.