From the European FT this weekend:

“Blackberry owners will soon be able to download music wireless tracks to an application that will help the smartphone compete with those made by Apple and Nokia. … Most tracks will not have copy protection software, which restricts how many devices the music can be moved to.”

It’s the word “most,” which has triggered today’s rant on PR, technology, media, and more. First of, what kind of statement is that most tracks will not have copy protection? Why not all, why not none?

Looking at the past, we all know that copy protection, aka DRM, has plenty of negative associations attached to it. And, as with most negatively perceived technologies, it has been hacked so often that the word “protected” has just become a PR term. Copy protection is not a feature, it’s a handicap, but clearly most songs on the Blackberry platform will not be handicapped, which is… a feature??

We all know that optimally, no producer (or organisation associated with music production) would allow music to be released DRM-free. But the very fact that protection means Zilch, means that actually there is no point to implementing any kind of DRM-system, except on the request of the owner(s) of particular songs (which probably happened here). So, instead of all or none, we get “most,” which is just BS. I already predict that this new initiative is going to fail, by the sheer indecisiveness of the PR message alone, which is a reflection of how little thought-out the business strategy must be.

My point in all of this, infused by a single expression of vagueness, is that somehow technology has spun out of control. There is a system of checks and balances in place, there is a self-correcting mechanism at play, but no one has the complete overview of how it works and when it will work. In the case of the recession, for example, things will balance themselves out again. And hopefully we will get a system in place, the more open the better, that will regulate what is happening. But there will very likely be many casualties of war.

In the case of media and profiting from it, it looks bad, very bad. The word “most” perfectly reflects the uncertainty of where it is all heading, but anyone can see that with production and distribution becoming cheaper and more decentralised, there is hardly any need for centralised music companies, except to build systems that track what is out there and rate it (e.g. CBS/Last.fm, Hypemachine) or to fund the more expensive part of the formula: getting on TV/radio (which will also disappear at some point) or setting up a concert (which will hopefully never disappear, but is hopefully self-sufficient).

Sadly, the only solution I see to saving “the industry” is to silo everything off, which is arguable already happening when you look at the behaviour of businesses like Pandora, CBS/Last.fm, and Hulu) and sue the crap out of anyone infringing. That would make everything nice and predictable again, but only if you could make it impossible to go from one side to the other. Star wars.

Some systems where this is the case, more or less, would be gaming consoles, and you would need the same for audio and video content. But because the light and the dark side (traditional media vs. new media vs. piracy) are not separated, you will continue to see a shift towards freeing everything until the only thing predictable will be that there is no money to be made from media, just from the products (e.g. merchandising) and services (e.g. concerts) around it.

Yes, I continue to be very down on traditional media. Feel free to lift my spirits in this area.

Vincent

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