Apple Drops DRM, Adopts Variable Pricing

Apple has dropped the use of its FairPlay DRM that restricted the number of copies that could be made of music tracks while adopted variable pricing and giving pricing control back to the labels. This Variety article has a good summary of the situation.

Since the labels are throwing in the towel on DRM for music, it's not so surprising that the RIAA appears to be shifting its focus as well. After all, FairPlay DRM was pretty effective in protecting music obtained from iTunes. It now makes even less sense for the labels to pursue individual file sharers and colleges and universities since eliminating FairPlay DRM can be interpreted as encouraging file sharing, or at least not discouraging it.

And the label's business model is evolving as well:

In the last eight years, sales of physical and digital albums have fallen to 428.4 million from 785.1 million. The singles business in 2000 was practically non-existent; in 2008, 1.07 billion digital downloads were sold, a rise of 27% over 2007.

As I and others have argued, the difficulties of the record labels notwithstanding, the movie studios are not going down the no-DRM road:

There have been no signs, however, that iTunes or other online videostores might start offering movies and TV shows without DRM. Studios and networks are still hopeful they won't lose the battle against online video piracy the way they did music.

The studios have been far more strategic in the development and deployment of various technologies that protect movies and television shows than they have for music. HD and IPTV provide evolutionary opportunities that have been largely absent in the music industry, this despite various attempts to introduce copy protection on physical media.