iTunes store hobbled by DRM

The Beeb misses the point a bit:

On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites.

The report warned against simple characterisations of the music-buying public that divide people into those that pay and those that pirate.

The glaring omission in that report is of course podcasts, which have shown huge growth, and have been part of the iPod and iTunes experience for over a year now.

Even though I got $250 of credit on the iTunes Music store from ValleyWag, we have been reluctant to spend it, compared to buying CDs from Amazon. The need to burn your own CDs after purchase (to be sure that the tracks don't vaporize next time you have disk trouble) is a significant extra burden, driven by the DRM. Apple's sync-back from iPods to computers in the new iTunes is a step in the right direction, but a more sensible policy towards failed or deleted downloads is long overdue - failed TV show downloads, and purchases lost through disk failure meet with shrugs from Apple.

From Apple's point of view, the iTunes store is a small part of their business - the bulk of the money passing through it goes straight to the rights-holders or in payment processing or bandwidth costs, while they make far more revenue and profit on the iPods themselves. Overall this is a good thing - if Apple were really beholden to the labels and studios for significant revenue, then online culture would be in worse trouble. As it is, Apple's neutrality means that they are happy to encourage podcasters to show up in their listings, as more media means more iPod sales.

Technorati Tags: audio, iPod, iTunes, podcasting, video