Music labels losing sales over DRM - It's not news that consumers hate DRM, especially the kind that keeps Little Johnny from ripping that Velvet Revolver disc to his iPod on Christmas morning. What is interesting, though, is how little the major record labels care. By Nate Anderson. [Movies & Music]

Even though DRM is completely legal and doesn't actually do any harm to someone’s computer, consumers hate it and it is causing music companies to lose money. The problem is that music companies thought that DRM was great since no one knew about it when it first came out. For those who don't know what DRM(aka Death to Ripping Music) is, let Microsoft explain it for me; "Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) is a proven platform to protect and securely deliver content for playback on a computer, portable device, or network device. It's flexible to support a range of business models from single downloads or physical format delivery. The latest version of Windows Media DRM enables new scenarios and provides consumers even greater access to protected audio and video content." That was taken straight from www.microsoft.com where it has always been publicly available. When Velvet Revolver became the first DRM media to hit number one on the billboards, this gave a false signal to record companies. Since nobody knew that they couldn't rip the cd and put it on their ipod until after they bought it, of course the quality of the music is what will keep the sales going. DRM is supposed to be used to prevent copying and trading of licensed music. So it’s not hard to expect this since the entire file sharing controversy from the hit of napster and kazaa. The one thing that record companies seem to not realize is that only the biggest of bands are losing revenue due to file sharing. The unknown bands are getting great distribution and recognition. People are now not buying the DRM cds because of all this and are causing sales to drop. Funny how the record companies still insist on using this software.

I must say that I despise this whole theory of DRM. Who wouldn't want to take songs off their favorite cds and make a mix tape for a crazy Saturday night party? I understand the issues behind the effort of DRM, but this software also affects the hardware companies who make cd burners and the software companies who make that nifty software to rip those cds. When you can't actually rip cds anymore, I'm pretty sure no one is going to keep buying all the hardware and blank media. Plus, who wants an Ipod if you can't put non-Itunes songs on it. I don't think DRM will be around for long; mainly due to the fact that we already are causing sales to drop be revolting against it. But hey, at least it’s not Sony's rootkit.