Ricardo Perez Garrido

By this time you probably have already seen the article that Steve Jobs presented at Apple's website dealing with digital rights and the music industry. What is interesting is looking at the reactions of some of the opinion leaders in traditional business worldwide. One of them, The Economist, finishes its note on the issues with these two statements:
"Mr Jobs’s argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right"

Basically the argument is that customers are already buying most of the music they buy (CD's, that are 85-90% of total sales) unprotected. And if you sell unprotected music you will foster sharing, ease of use, trust in companies... and a growing effect in the market as a whole.

The truth, as the article tries to signal, is that at this point, with total dominance of the market and not many options to keep this growth rate in the next years, is that Apple needs a change in the market and in the options customers have when they interact with music and the iPod-iTunes new Dynamic Duo. Once it has reached enough bargain power with music firms, Apple is in a position to force a change, and, in the effort, place its brands again on the side of the customer, leaving the dangerous shadows of being the hated giant of the digital music world, and maintaining its aura of design-made-cool-and-eve-spiritual.

Posted on 15 February 2007

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