Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Yesterday the world’s third largest record company, EMI, announced that it would begin selling music from its artists as digital downloads without any kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) or copy restrictions. The songs will have a higher sound quality than your typical iTunes download, but will cost $1.29 instead of the usual $.99. The company made the decision after hearing numerous complaints from its consumers that they preferred having format-less music that could be listened to on any computer or any device, using a multitude of programs. Eric Nicoli, EMI’s chief executive, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “It was clear what we had to do because we hold the consumer at the center of our focus.”

This is an amazing move, and is exactly what big media companies should be doing. EMI has taken the exact opposite approach to Viacom, who recently sued YouTube for copyright infringement. EMI wants their music to reach as many ears as possible, while Viacom would rather sue people who try to do their marketing for them. It seems to me that EMI fully understands the “attention economy,” while Viacom clearly doesn’t get it, and would rather create plaintiffs instead of an audience.

In terms of the “print is dead” debate, the decisions about DRM that are now being made in the music world could mean a lot for trade publishers and eBooks in the years to come. After all, one of the big problems which has restricted eBook adoption is the restrictions of DRM. True, publishers are only reacting to authors and agents who are very leery of digital delivery (and the devilry they fear it will bring: copyright theft, loss of revenue, mass piracy). But compared to the alternative — no one wanting to read their books — it’s apparent that the time has come to experiment and put the power in the hands of the consumers. After all, as Tim O’Reilly says (and which I repeat all of the time), “The enemy isn’t piracy, the enemy is obscurity.”

What’s also amazing about the EMI situation is that the price-per-song is higher, proving that people will (hopefully) be willing to pay for the convenience that digital delivery provides. $.99 locks you to your iPod, but $1.29 lets you take it anywhere you want. This could one day be the same for books. So instead of electronic books being priced ridiculously low (as some people have called for, wanting eBook prices to be somewhere in the $1-$2 range), consumers will instead pay comparable if not premium prices for digital downloads of books. Why? Because — if the files are not straitjacketed with DRM — then the users can read the files on any device or on any computer, at any time or in any place that they want. This could prove liberating, and would finally be one in the win column in the “books vs eBooks debate,” since a digital file is a virtual item that can live in many places at once, while a printed book is a physical thing that has to be dragged in hand from place to place.

In terms of music, it remains to be seen how many of the other major record labels — if any — step forward and make a step similar to EMI’s, but at least it’s a start.

EMI Dropping Copy Limits on Online Music