Dave Horvath
15 Nov 2007 12:26
The CEO of Warner Music who as many know usually for being one of the forefathers of current DRM practices, Edgar Bronfman said in a statement that he feels the music industry may have made a mistake in waging war on file sharing. He stated that the music industry as a whole has to take the blame for the increase in P2P file sharing.
"We used to fool ourselves," said Bronfman. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."
Bronfman went on to state that mobile operators risk the same and fewer than 10% of mobile owners actually buy music on their mobile devices, most of these being ringtones.
"The sad truth is that most of what consumers are being offered today on the mobile platform is boring, banal and basic," he said. "People want a more interesting form of mobile music content. They want it to be easy to buy with a single click - yes, a single click, not a dozen. And they want access to it, quickly and easily, wherever they are. 24/7. Any player in the mobile value chain who thinks they can provide less than a great experience for consumers and remain competitive is fooling themselves."
Further within his statement he embraced what he had once criticized and stated that mobile companies need to take a look at Apple's business model and learn from their practices. "For years now, Warner Music has been offering a choice to consumers at Apple's iTunes store the option to purchase something more than just single tracks, which constitute the mainstay of that store's sales. By packaging a full album into a bundle of music with ringtones, videos and other combinations and variation we found products that consumers demonstrably valued and were willing to purchase at premium prices. And guess what? We've sold tons of them. And with Apple's co-operation to make discovering, accessing and purchasing these products even more seamless and intuitive, we'll be offering many, many more of these products going forward."
During his statement, it appeared that Bronfman had reached his own epiphany about digital music and the DRM practices that are forced upon it. He's gone from threatening to withdraw from iTunes and suggested that dropping DRM practices would be without logic to praising Apple on their recent DRM-free section of iTunes.
Source:
MacUser