DRM is terrible.

Yesterday I started up my Zune software to listen to some music. I was in the mood for something a little on the New Age electronica side. Enigma. Deep Forest. Delerium. Bands like that. I'm originally from Southern New Jersey, so I frequented Philadelphia on occasion, and am well familiar with gothic/industrial Philadelphia events like Dracula's Ball and Nocturne. Out of that eclectic mix of music, I have one favorite: Ego Likeness.

After listening to a few other artists, my attention turned to Ego Likeness' Dragonfly album. Hydra is my favorite song. Unfortunately for me, I double-clicked on Hydra and Zune skipped it with an error. The song is no longer available in the Zune Marketplace. As I later found out from Steven Archer (one half of Ego Likeness), Dragonfly is getting re-issued. As a result, Zune pulled it from their store, which in turn invalidated the DRM on all purchases. I could no longer play songs that I bought.

This isn't the first time this has happened with the Zune Marketplace either. On two other occasions I had complete albums that I had purchased suddenly stop working because their were pulled from the online catalog and replaced with a reissue. Apparently you don't own the music that you buy. You only rent it.

It was because of stuff like this that I stopped purchasing items from the Zune Marketplace. I switched over to Amazon.com's MP3 Downloads, which allowed you to purchase non-DRM music. Eventually iTunes and Zune both caught on and much of the music put out in their stores is not DRM'ed. Unfortunately for me, Dragonfly was purchased at a time when they were still using it.

Steven Archer was nice enough to replace my MP3 files as he emphatically proclaimed that DRM was terrible. I couldn't agree more.

DRM only keeps the honest people honest, but it also keeps people from sharing music. Of course, the RIAA wants people to stop sharing music, but the truth is, music has always been a social form of entertainment and the very nature of sharing music is what spreads the popularity of artists. It's how you discover new music.

I purchase all of my music. In fact, after realizing how many MP3's I was purchasing at Amazon, I switched back to the Zune Marketplace, but signed up for their Zune Pass. I have always preferred to buy my music. Why? Most MP3 files floating around on Limewire or torrent sites are touch-and-go. You can end up with great quality or poor quality. You can end up with edited files or viruses. It's a lot of work to get high quality music. It's not worth the effort to begin with. Besides I like to support the artists whose music I enjoy. Most people do.

Even illegally downloaded music has its merits. Before iTunes and Zune started carrying indie labels, there was no way for me to know if I would like an artist or not. When I wanted to check out various artists from the Nocturne club scene, I couldn't. Ego Likeness looked like a promising band, so I started up Limewire and downloaded four of their songs. Illegally. Oh, no! One of those songs was Hydra, which got me immediately hooked. Dragonfly became available in the Zune Marketplace a short time later. I bought it—deleting the illegally downloaded files, which weren't the best quality anyway. Eventually their other albums (Water to the Dead and The Order of the Reptile) became available as well. Both were purchased. I'm now a big fan of their work mainly because I was able to sample their music through Limewire.

An even bigger example would be my love for the band Sevendust. Sevendust is my favorite rock band of all time. I had originally purchased their self-titled release (as a CD) not long after it debuted. The music didn't really grow on me at that age, so the CD was stored away. Eventually I found my way back to Sevendust when I caught their video for Angel's Son. I always liked the song, but never really had the desire to pick it up—worried that I would buy an entire CD for a single song that I liked. I decided to grab it off of Limewire (Zune did not exist and I didn't have an iPod). While grabbing that song, I decided to check out a few of their other songs. Seasons had just been released and between Seasons and Animosity, I downloaded two entire albums. Illegally. Oh, no. Guess what? I loved them. I ended up going out and buying their second CD Home, and not long after, purchased a better copy of Seasons than the songs that I downloaded. When Next came out, it was bought on the very first day of release, while Alpha and Chapter VII were both purchased as MP3's. I also bought hardcopy CD's of their acoustic sessions and their "Best Of," bought their Restrospect DVD, purchased the MP3's from their Retrospect Volume 2 album, and have seen them twice in concert (buying my girlfriend some merchandise the second time). Sevendust gained a lifetime fan from a couple of illegally downloaded CD's.

Today, illegally downloading music isn't even necessary. Music can be sampled on artists' MySpace pages, or through iTunes, Zune or Amazon.com's MP3 Downloads. Some artists even give music away to spur interest. You can now purchase just one song if you want to, and if you own something like the Zune Pass, you can just stream music from Zune's servers trying out different artists.

There's always going to be some jerk downloading troves of music in his basement. But that's the exception and not the rule. Most people are willing to buy music from artists that they like, and purchasing your MP3 files adds an extra benefit of ensuring high quality MP3's and virus-free files.

DRM—meant to prevent file-sharing—was a dinosaur before it even debuted. It showed that the music industry truly didn't understand the evolution of technology and the marketplace, and truly didn't understand the needs and desires of its very customer base.

More and more MP3's are showing up in things like iTunes and the Zune Marketplace, but don't think that the music industry is understanding things better and adapting. These changes are the result of Apple, Microsoft and others seeing the fallacy in DRM and refusing to use it. Music companies had no choice.

Rest assured though, the same battle is now being fought with digital movies. I'm already hearing complaints from people about the supposed "digital copy" that comes with many DVD's nowadays, but apparently is locked to one install on a single computer. Media corporations will never learn.