Steve Jobs published a very interesting essay yesterday on the Apple website entitled "Thoughts on Music". However, it wasn't so much about music as it was about digital rights management (DRM).

The pundits have already begun weighing in, and one item that continually keeps popping up in the discussion is "why not allow the artists who want to opt out of DRM to do so?" The obvious reason is usability. Apple's focus, ultimately, has been on the user experience, as evidenced by the Mac philosophy of "it should just work", the new user interface for the forthcoming iPhone, the interface for the iPod, etc. If Apple were to allow consumers to download some songs with DRM and some without, the user experience goes to shit. People will become frustrated that they can email say, a song on Nettwerk Records to their friend and it works, but the latest pop hit on Universal won't work. You could try to make it explicit on the iTunes site about which songs have which playability rights, but no one wants to remember which songs have which rights attached to them. Apple has always tried to make the experience as transparent as possible for the end user. Ultimately, I don't think that the iTunes store will go DRM-free until the majority (probably 90%) of the songs can be sold without DRM.

Update: On further consideration, I'm not sure that this argument holds up either. You already have a mix of DRM and DRM-free songs - the ones that users rip for themselves - and people seem to be dealing with it just fine. So scratch that. The store would become more confusing, labeling DRM and non-DRM free songs, but I'm not sure how much more confusing it would be. There are some good comments about this over at The Macalope's site.