Rich Fiscus
24 Jan 2008 23:20
According to the IFPI's annual report on the music industry, released today, it was innovative labels, rather than frustrated consumers or knowledgable online store management who came up with the DRM-free music model that's taking over online music sales. It's an apparent bid to rewrite history, in which they were actually dragged kicking and screaming into the DRM-free marketplace. In fact, last year's report describe DRM as "the enabler of flexible music offerings."
The IFPI is also pulling no punches in their campaign to turn ISPs into their proxies in the fight against internet piracy. opens with a section titled "Making ISP Responsibility A Reality." Interestingly, however, the report also features another section highlighting the mobile music market in Japan, in which that coiuntry is characterized as "setting a fascinating example to the rest of the world."
If nothing else it's certainly fascinating that the report would be giving so much praise to the online market in a country where according to the report "One key reason for Japan’s digital market success has been the formation of a mobile music retail service jointly owned by record companies." This is unlike the U.S., E.U., or other areas of the world where music executives aparently expect other companies, like Apple and Amazon, to build their new distribution model for them.