This article really gets at the center of the issues around digital music distribution and why “encrypted” music, at least as it is today, serves no one but the hardware manufacturer whose line of music players you’re now locked into using.

Apple’s employment of DRM drives me crazy. The iTunes store was the first big digital music store, and I think their DRM is a relic of early deals with fearful record labels. It may not be very (legally) easy for them to shut off at this point. Apple is a lifestyle, so I understand why it’s important for them to control the horizontal and vertical, the hardware and software. But in my opinion, proprietary standards like FairPlay do not last. Sure, it has seen a lot of use because of the iPod’s popularity, but I think MP3 will win in the end because it is open.

I also think services like Rhapsody, where you can subscribe and stream any music you want for a fixed monthly fee, ala NetFlix, could win out in the end. It’s a funny psychological difference—between purchasing music and having a subscription to listen to music. It really depends on people’s feelings about music: do they want to “own” it or do they just want to listen? You never really own music, though. You own a license to play it, and you own some packaging material. So the idea of music ownership is really about the sentimentality felt by a collector about the packaging, and so far there is no replacement for that sentimentality in any digital service. The extreme music collector hardly even has a CD collection, because they know the only real emotion—the only true sentiment—is cut out of vinyl, not plastic.