Dave points out a wonderfully lame Business 2.0 quotation, on a par with Steve Ballmer’s “most common form of music on an iPod is ‘stolen’”: “In an ideal digital world, we’d be able to buy copyrighted music and videos wherever we wanted, not just on a designated store. But that’s been the fate of iPod users, who can only buy content off of Apple’s iTunes Music Store.”
And the second paragraph makes the points that I would have: you can also use eMusic or your own CDs. But it’s dismissive of those two options. Why? Why is it journalistically acceptable to dis eMusic’s limited selection and limited market share while in the same breath complaining that iTunes users can’t experience restrictive DRM from a bunch of content producers with a vested interest? And who benefits from the type of reporting that makes these other music experiences sound desirable?
Well, Navio, for one. But I don’t think the customers win from yet another model to lock them into restrictive licensing of content that cares more about “protecting digital assets and maintaining brand control” than it does the rights of consumers.