I'm the 1-person IT support for a music-biz pro in Ontario.
For at least 18 months now this person has been signed to an industry-serving site whereby they get emails notifying them of available new music downloads available. All the current stuff, pre-release (review-ready), radio edits, etc... .WAV format no less. Digitally watermarked (»
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di ··· atermark )? I'd be surprised if not.
But the biz is already doing it inhouse to the industry so some experience in non-DRM encumbered logistics is being presently gained.
In terms of polycarbonate DRM - it's a joke. I routinely am handed CD's labelled as having DRM, or even "WILL NOT PLAY IN COMPUTER CD DRIVES" and rip the audio using kindergarten tools. I dunno why they even bother with this DRM... (AIUI any CD that can be played in an audio CD player - Red Book standard - is ripable). So any implementation was bound to be a failure? A waste of money?
I don't have any experience with online DRM because my client is 'old school' and like the physical, hard copy so often buys them at the local store.
I wonder if one day DRM-free will prevail and shareholders may hold the idiot lawyers & DRM-purveyors to account for this debacle. The ill will generated by infringing upon the rights that users feel entitled to (easy interop of music between devices), busting grandma/grandchild for downloading MP3's, poor implementations (think Sony rootkit) etc - well, you just can't buy that kind of negative public perception.
And to the foolishness of DRM at all - even if DRM could have been implemented successfully the analog hole (»
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An ··· log_hole ), as mentioned by dvd536, always existed.
{{ignore this dupe-post evader line}}