iTunes?

[Grant Robinson]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 11:45 AM, Jason Wright wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Levi Pearson <levi at cold.org> wrote:
>> yet a smart company MUST play the game in
>> order to remain competitive in the market.
>
> Amazon.com seems to be doing fine without DRM, Walmart as well. Heck,
> any individual artist selling music on their site almost never uses
> DRM.

You are conveniently forgetting that Walmart and Amazon.com selling  
DRM-free music happened AFTER Apple started selling DRM-free music  
through the iTunes Store.  Apple started selling DRM-free tracks in  
April 2007, Wal-mart in Aug 2007, and Amazon.com in September 2007  
(dates pulled from Ars Technica and Wikipedia articles).

Before that, Wal-mart was playing the SAME DRM game with the same  
record labels.  Prior to 2007, NONE of the labels were letting their  
cash-cow, mainstream artists music onto the market without some sort  
of DRM. (eMusic has always had DRM-free MP3 songs, but prior to these  
moves, they didn't ever have the mainstream stuff "popular" stuff).

Grant