A new survey from those Jupiter Research people reckons that almost two thirds of executives working in the music industry in Europe reckon that removing DRM from legitimately sold digital music tracks would increase digital music sales. Nevertheless, the majority of those surveyed said they didn't think DRM would be axed anytime in the near future.
The survey follows the previously reported and recently increasingly high profile debate regarding the policy adopted by all four major record companies regarding the sale of their digital catalogues. As much previously reported, the majors will not sell music without an approved DRM embedded, meaning they cannot sell their music in the most popular and user-friendly file format MP3. The majors fear that, because MP3s can be duplicated and shared an infinite number of times, if they formally issue their catalogues in the format it will enable even more widespread online piracy.
However, those against DRM argue that because pretty much every track ever released ends up on P2P networks in the MP3 format anyway (either having been ripped off CD or having had its DRM removed by hackers), the use of DRM on legitimate digital music sales does little to cut piracy. In fact DRM arguably adds to the piracy problem because music fans, who dislike DRMed music, are put off legitimate download platforms because of the DRM, and will illegally download MP3s from P2P sources instead.
The Jupiter survey of execs at major and indie record labels, rights bodies, digital stores and technology providers, which took place before Apple boss Steve Jobs' recent high profile comments on DRM, found that 54% of those interviewed felt that current DRM systems were too restrictive, while 62% said they thought legit digital music sales would go up if DRM was dropped.
Meanwhile, 70% said they believed the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible (one of the side effects of DRM, of course, is interoperability issues), though 40% said they felt government or consumer action would be required to force the technology sectors to address the interoperability problems of DRM.
Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan said he was "surprised" how much opposition there was to DRM within the music industry, but added that he didn't think that would mean any quick change of policy in this regard from the majors. He told reporters: "Despite everything that has been happening the record labels are not about to drop DRM. Even though all they are doing is making themselves look even less compelling by using it".