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Developing user-friendly DRM
http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2452/new1011653160573/index.html
by Margaret Berry
March 2002
With nearly $40 billion per year in revenue, the music industry has much at stake in the growing market for digital rights management (DRM) systems. That the industry itself finally understands this is a bittersweet achievement. Its reaction to the sudden demand for digital music has followed the standard pattern of corporate change. From anger, to disorganization, to reluctant acceptance, the RIAA has done quite a bit of self education in the past two years.
The recording industry is now betting a share of its future on the hope that people will prefer paying for music to stealing it. Several subscription-based music services have launched in the last few months: Pressplay, RealOne, Rhapsody, and FullAudio. All of them rely on DRM technologies to charge users for downloads.
These new services offer better music quality and more reliable downloads than solutions like Morpheus or Gnutella. Full tracks recorded at consistent bit rates and volume levels will be a luxury for Napster devotees. The new services are far from the perfect solutions though. Many DRM systems offer "features" that are still at odds with what consumers really want. For DRM to succeed in a B2C environment, implementations will need to focus more on usability and on offering services that are customer centric. Although music services are starting to come around, they still have some evolution ahead before they gain mainstream acceptance.
It's not that industry executives don't know what customers want. Music listeners want the same things as any other group of consumers. First, they expect a good value. That means a large selection of music, and flexible permissions at reasonable prices. And yes, many of them are willing to pay. Research firm Jupiter Media Metrix found that 80 percent of people who used Napster for more than a year would pay $10 per month for online music. Users also want convenience, which means portability, reliability, and ease of use.
But some items on user wishlists are incompatible with current DRM technologies, and traditional industry infrastructure. Industry execs have been preoccupied. Protecting intellectual property has overshadowed user's needs, and DRM has become an obstacle to customer service.
portability
Until now, users have done whatever they wanted with their music files—burned compilation CDs, transferred them to alternate computers, and popped them into portable players. In fact, the Jupiter survey indicated that portability is a top priority for users, outranking sound quality, high-speed transfer, and virus protection.
Current DRM technologies sharply limit this flexibility. Most services don't distribute files in a standard MP3 format. Of five paid services—RealOne, Pressplay, EMusic, Rhapsody, and FullAudio—only EMusic lets customers use music in whatever format and on whatever device they choose.
Though most services offer limited CD burning capabilities, the cost and user restrictions involved are prohibitive. Aside from EMusic, Pressplay is the only other service that gives users the option to burn CDs as part of its standard package. Users can burn 10 to 20 tracks per month, depending on the price structure they've chosen.
Pressplay also lets subscribers listen to music from more than one computer without additional charges. Other services are less generous. For example, if RealOne subscribers want to hear the same song on another computer, they must subtract another file from their monthly ration.
Among the least portable services is Rhapsody, which offers mostly independent label music, and is streaming only. This is unfortunate considering Gartner's report that 55 percent of all people online will still be using dial-up connections until at least 2004. This means poor streaming music quality and a limited market. Another consideration is that many users aren't attracted to immobile services.
Witness a post from a recent MetaFilter (www.MetaFilter.com) thread. "I continue to laugh at how the music industries are trying to develop the online market on their terms," writes Jeremy Osborn. "They just don't get it. People don't want to subscribe to music in their own homes. In the car maybe, but not at home."
Andy James, another community member, agrees. "No one will ever pay for music that imprisons you at your computer," James writes. "Sitting at your computer and listening to the music coming out of it is, for reasons I can't define, among the world's least lively experiences."
Others argue that limiting use of a product that a user has already purchased is an unfair practice. Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig recently discussed the subject of fair use with American Prospect magazine. He noted that the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) gives DRM coders new rights to infringe upon traditional principles of fair use upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court:
"Copyright owners sold books, movies, and music to people, and the law protected copyright holders' rights and also protected individuals' rights," Lessig says. "Individuals had a right to fair use to material—even if they hadn't purchased it—and they could make copies and reproduce the material if they wanted, independent of copyright owners' rights."
"Now, what cyberspace has done is create the possibility for owners of copyrighted material to control perfectly the use of their copyrighted material," he continues. "The fact that technology is giving them more power than they had before should raise a question in anybody's mind who's concerned about balance in copyright law and whether holders are getting too much power."
Too much copyright power for record companies makes for dissatisfied paid-service customers. It may be in the music industry's best interest to bend a little, before consumers look to other sources.
usability
A good DRM technology carefully balances security and usability, but many of today's systems are more cautious than welcoming. DRM presents some usability obstacles, notably platform restrictions on usage and plug-in requirements for users. What's more, the numerous DRM systems mean that users who are looking for music through multiple services encounter a new set of requirements with each.
An ideal interface must be intuitive. Contenders could learn a lot from Rhapsody, which lets users drag and drop songs or albums from the listings into a personal collection. RealOne has a fairly simple process for combining personal music collections with downloaded songs. It lets users compile playlists that include all the music they own—a boon for those with pre-existing digital music collections.
Several subscription services are betting on the comfort of familiarity by mimicking Napster's pared-down interface. Pressplay is designed to look a lot like Napster, as is Rhapsody. RealOne opted for a hip, youthful interface that's also a good fit for a popular-music audience.
But some aspects of current DRM interfaces simply annoy users, and keep them from reaching their site goals. In many cases, subscribing to a service is one of the most universally challenging aspects of accessing DRM-protected content. Downloading proprietary software to unlock protected content can often leave users frustrated. Combine this with the standard usability glitches, and the hassles of rights management can be enough to dissuade some from using a service altogether.
The signup process for an introductory RealOne membership is a case-study in poor usability. First, users subscribe to the service—a seven-screen process that includes a registration form. During this process, they must de-select small checkboxes that indicate interest in the RealArcade Games CD, and the Power Pack. Should users fail to notice that there is a charge for these pre-selected items, they'll find approximately $40 added to the bill a few screens later, and have to backtrack to figure out what happened.
Once a credit card is approved, the service then prompts users to download and install the RealOne Player. After installation, there's no indication that any further action is needed. But if users try to download music at this point, an alert box indicates that they must first install RealOne Music extensions. Approximately 20 minutes after a customer has arrived at the site, they're ready for action.
DRM must be straightforward and easy to use. At the very least, signing up for a service shouldn't be the most daunting interaction users have with the site. Equally important, a good DRM system is programmed to hide the cumbersome and ever-updating delivery technologies and models.
flexibility
Once users are signed up, many subscription services seem needlessly restrictive of actions that may otherwise seem legitimate. A look at the Pressplay user forum reveals that even users who pay their dues and play by the rules run into unexpected obstacles.
"I didn't realize the limit of burning only two songs by one artist in a billing period," one user writes. "I'd have to do some serious juggling if I wanted to download and burn a bunch of songs by the same artist or even burn an album, any album. It would take six months or so and loads of extra CDs. I don't think I'm alone here. I think most people are probably into a few artists and want to download or burn all or most of their songs."
Fortunately, Pressplay does let subscribers build their download collections from month to month. Songs don't disappear unless users cancel their subscriptions.
By contrast, RealOne reclaims downloads at the end of each payment period. A user can listen to a song repeatedly until the end of the month. After that, he or she has to reselect it, using one of the downloads for the new month.
On the bright side, at least two services let users listen to a streamed version of a song before they download it. RealOne allows this, while Pressplay gives users 30 seconds of listening before a song registers on their ledger. This is helpful if for users who are unsure of the song version, or are forgetful about song titles.
selection
Large music companies can choose among many rights management platforms, from vendors like Microsoft, IBM, Lucent, and others. Sony and Bertelsmann have even developed their own proprietary system, key2audio, and other labels may follow suit. Unfortunately, this poses a problem for end users.
Despite the Secure Digital Music Initiative's attempts to set standards for the industry, music consumers are already facing myriad formats, each with different codecs and DRM systems. As Chris Smith, portable audio program manager at Creative Labs, explained to Wired News, "It's not going to be a good experience if Universal, Warner, Sony, EMI, and BMG all decide on different DRM systems and codecs and file formats. It will be bedlam."
But while the choices of DRM are broad, the selection for consumers has been less than stellar.
No single service has a catalog of music from all of the major record labels. Until there is DRM standardization and a sea change in industry attitudes, users will have to patronize more than one service to get an unabridged selection of artists. That means consumers are asked to pay for a service that might carry only half of their favorite artists, or to pay several monthly bills just to have access to the musicians they like. Not surprisingly, many users are unwilling.
A post at the Pressplay User Forum expressed the growing disillusionment with limited tracks offered by current digital distribution services, "If you had told me that I could search a body of music for three hours and come up with absolutely nothing that made me smile, made me feel like I found an old friend, or made me feel good about anything, I'd have thought you insane," a user writes.
Both Pressplay and MusicNet—the distribution service that provides music to RealOne—boast popular artists, but you can't search either for long without missing a favorite like James Taylor or The Beatles. By comparison, Rhapsody and EMusic don't currently have content rights for any of the big-five record labels, instead catering to independent music enthusiasts.
taking risks
One way for content providers to avoid getting caught up in the DRM current is to forget about marketing any specific platform or medium, and instead license their properties as B2B services.
EMI, one of the world's largest record labels, appears to be following this strategy. The company has licensed its music to Pressplay, RealOne, and FullAudio—in other words, any viable outlet that's made the request.
On a side note, one area where EMI is testing out its own DRM-based technology is as a means of safeguarding advance releases for journalists and radio program managers.
audience
Though its content lacked quality control, the free version of Napster offered usability, selection, and (ahem) a price point that its paid-service cousins have yet to approximate. Statistics from a recent Pew Internet Project Report indicate that if customers are savvy enough to access DRM-based services, they should also be able to find the music they want elsewhere, free of charge.
According to Pew, in the last year, of the users who were asked to pay for something that used to be free online, 50 percent found free online alternatives. Thirty six percent stopped getting the service online, and only 12 percent paid for it. Subscription service providers need more. They must offer a unique value proposition to keep their audiences from walking out.
Until services like Morpheus, Audiogalaxy, and Gnutella close their doors, paid options will have difficulty competing. The announcement of Napster's transition to a paid service provoked skepticism from MetaFilter denizens.
"I can't imagine many people would [pay]," one user wrote about Napster's proposed service. "I would say people who don't know much about computers may, but then, do people who don't know much about computers want to trade MP3s?"
The EMusic service, though not in partnership with any larger labels, has carved a solid niche for itself by charging users a fair price while rejecting DRM technologies. The company went public in 1999, and today offers subscriptions starting around $15 per month. That fee lets users download as much music as they want from a 200,000-track catalog.
All music on the site has been licensed from established record labels, and the service pays artists a small fee when their song is downloaded. Files are all MP3, which gives users the ability to transfer tracks to portable players or burn them to CD. The EMusic site explains how EMusic protects against piracy, "Very simple—we trust our customers. We believe that if downloadable music is presented in an inexpensive and flexible way, most consumers will do the right thing."
This philosophy seems to have worked for users and the company. The same laissez-faire formula wouldn't function as well for larger labels with more on the line, but EMusic is a good case study. Perhaps a slight relaxation of the DRM grip on user actions wouldn't mean anarchy.
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Margaret Berry is managing editor of New Architect.
p2p lessons
by Ajay Sukhadia
Most music distribution services entering the market today rely on central infrastructure, but who could forget that Napster brought peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing into the limelight? Although not a pure example of P2P networking, Napster took media beyond its normal reach by letting users trade files via a simple interface. Given its popularity, P2P file distribution offers many lessons for content owners looking to deploy digital rights management systems.
One of the less tangible reasons for Napster's success is that it gave users a sense of control over the media they had acquired. In his keynote at the 2001 O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer Conference, author Clay Shirky attributed this sense of control to the subversive nature of P2P networks. While users may not actually be doing anything subversive at all, they're bypassing a middleman. P2P is often referred to as a movement, which attests to the fact that, like the open source movement, people are attracted to it for more than just the technology. Users are looking for the technologies that give them the perception of being in charge.
P2P networks are also able to scale to large numbers of users. For customers, this means faster access times because they don't have to try connecting to overloaded servers. For developers and the organizations they work for, this means lower capital expenses and maintenance fees. Critics point out that despite these advantages, Napster still had quality of service problems. For instance, users on slow connections made some file transfer times unbearable. Problems like this can be alleviated, though, by providing different levels of networks. One scenario is to have customers sign up for a "DSL club," in which all of the users are guaranteed to have high-speed connections.
Companies that rush to create P2P networks for their customers or employees should move cautiously, though. The field is young and standards are still being formed. As with the current instant messaging clients like AIM and MSN Messenger, P2P clients are in danger of Balkanization. If too many different clients compete without agreeing on a standard protocol or interface, the service will have limited success. It will be difficult to transfer files across systems, users will quickly grow frustrated that they must install and learn multiple clients, and merging or upgrading networks could become a costly IT expense.
Fortunately, vendors and community leaders have realized the dangers of fragmentation and are working to set standards for P2P development. Sun's JXTA Project, led by Bill Joy and Mike Clary, provides developers with a set of six protocols for building P2P applications. Among the specifications are rules for node discovery, pipe binding, and route calculation—all items that developers would otherwise have to define from scratch.
Before launching into an initiative to manage and distribute digital media, organizations should consider the advantages of P2P networks over their centralized counterparts. At a time when consumers are increasingly wary of being uniquely identified online and of having their personal and financial information stored on corporate servers, giving customers the perception of control will be an important factor in DRM system survival.
Marc Freedman
CEO
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate
(1856-1950)
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