Warning: Industry punditry ahead. Adjust your speed and headlamps. 

So, yesterday Apple expanded “iTunes Plus”, which removes the proprietary DRM use limitations on songs. It’s not a digital media industry game changer but rather a significant game accelerator and a net positive for Apple and iTunes, Pioneers and Songbird and the digital media ecosystem.

Non-DRM’d songs from the iTunes Store improves interoperability and portability for users switching away from iTunes. Amazon has been selling DRM free since Q3’07 so this is a step towards a la carte non-DRM song parity for Apple. However Amazon has made scant progress in  the market despite the non-DRM head-start because consumers value integration convenience over other factors including DRM hassle and  price combined. (And FWIW, the iTunes Store continues to sell DRM’d music videos, TV shows, movies and audiobooks.)

iTunes remains a closed ecosystem, stymying transactions between digital media consumers, service providers and device manufacturers. Like iTunes, Songbird’s value prop is a user’s control point for digital media. Like iTunes, Songbird supports DRM and non-DRM content. Unlike iTunes, Songbird is built to streamline third-party service integrations (e.g., Amazon, 7digital, Last.FM, etc.) and third-party device synchronization (e.g. Philips, Sony, Sandisk, etc.) into a consumer’s media player, which is key to user utility and convenience that underpin customer satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Apple’s done a great thing here by furthering the current thinking with respect to the digital media market past the real and imagined pitfalls of DRM’d content and to awareness of the emergent Internet digital media value chain — a segmented, multi-vendor, open market ecosystem of content producers, consumers, developers, service providers and device makers.  

The industry just lurched towards the inevitable.

Chirps,
Rob