The nightmarish world of mobile digital rights management may have taken a small step toward sanity.
Microsoft Corp. scored a big win last week, agreeing to license its PlayReady anti-software piracy to Nokia Corp. The world’s largest handset manufacturer plans to embed the technology on its Series 40 smartphones and Series 60 feature phones beginning next year.
The agreement expands on Nokia’s 2005 pact to include Windows Media player on its phones.
PlayReady supports a host of audio and video formats including Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Video, as well as AAC, AAC+ and H.264. The technology is also backward-compatible with Windows Media DRM 10.
“People are increasingly using their mobile devices for enjoying digital content such as music, games, videos and photos,” said Ilkka Raiskinen, Nokia’s senior vice president of multimedia experiences. “By adding support for Microsoft PlayReady technology, we are enabling service providers to offer a wide range of content and create truly compelling experiences across mobile devices, personal computers and online services.”
The deal is a coup for PlayReady, which was unveiled earlier this year at 3GSM World Congress and allows users to share protected pieces of content between phones, PCs and other devices. Not only is Nokia the preeminent phone maker in the world, the company is readying to take a shot at iTunes with a digital music storefront for PCs and mobile phones. Nokia is expected to introduce its retail effort, which stems from last year’s $60 million acquisition of Loudeye Corp., in the next few weeks.
Fewer choices better
Perhaps more importantly for consumers, though, the pact may signal a desperately needed move toward consolidating the countless number of anti-piracy technologies in digital music. Analysts believe a lack of interoperability between “solutions” in wireless has shackled the mobile music market in its early days, making it difficult-and often impossible-for users to transfer tunes from phones to computers, or take songs with them when they switch carriers.
“If you talk to a number of consumers-and obviously it’s the consumers that bear the brunt of DRM-there’s an inability to transfer music that they assumed they’d pay to consume on various devices,” said Ken Hyers, an analyst with Technology Business Research Inc. “They object to it, obviously. And you have a lot of independent artists that also believe that music should not be DRM-protected. Obviously, these are people who don’t generally have a lot of weight.”
Music labels and distributors have struggled recently with ways to control piracy without angering consumers. EMI Music agreed to allow Apple Inc.’s iTunes offer DRM-free versions of its content for a 30% premium over iTunes $1-a-song model. And Amazon.com recently invested an undisclosed sum in Amiestreet.com, a storefront that couples social networking with a variable pricing model for songs with out DRM wrappers.
Carrier affection for DRM
Music lovers have hailed such efforts, of course, but onlookers don’t expect DRM-free music to move the needle anytime soon. And the prospects for unprotected content in mobile appear even dimmer, as some carriers see antipiracy software as a way to decrease churn, forcing users to lose their music libraries if they opt for another wireless service provider.
The wireless industry appeared close to adopting a standardized DRM platform two years ago, when the licensing clearinghouse MPEG LA proposed royalties for technology supported by the Open Mobile Alliance. But negotiations for the software led to protracted haggling while mobile content providers and carriers adopted a host of proprietary solutions.
While Nokia’s rumored effort to serve as a kind of off-deck digital music storefront is ambitious, the Finnish company has a dubious track record as a content distributor. The company was forced to shutter Club Nokia, its direct-to-consumer mobile content effort, after drawing the ire of carriers looking to keep consumers on the deck, and the success of the Nokia Content Discover client-which began shipping on Series 40 and Series 60 phones late last year-is unclear.
And the Nokia/Microsoft tieup may not have much immediate impact in the United States, where Nokia isn’t the dominant player. But the deal may be a first step toward winnowing the number of DRM platforms on the worldwide market down from dozens to a manageable handful. While that won’t be enough to satisfy most music lovers, it may help drive what has thus far been a disappointing market for mobile music.
“It does somewhat limit the marketplace,” Hyers said of the many technologies in use. “You’ve got this fragmented environment where you’ve got all these different standards that work with these specific devices, and there’s no way for people to consolidate. There are too many vested interests.”
