ON STEVE JOBS' GRAND GAME OF POKER

CALL AND RAISE

By now you've heard of Steve Jobs' inaugural "blog post" titled "Thoughts on Music", which is posted as an open letter on the Apple site. 

If not, this long discussion thread on Techmeme is a good place to start.

It's a grand game of poker, with the world watching, and Steve just called:

"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players.

This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music."

The ball is in the court of the four companies in question.  As Steve describes them:

"...the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music."

Wouldn't it be great if one of the companies in question actually responded in a similar fashion? 

Hey, one can dream..  Why, until yesterday, many would have thought that Apple willing to give up control of the Fairplay digital rights management (DRM) system on it's iTunes and iPod franchise, was a dream as well.