EMI says DRM-free music is selling well:

If EMI manages to maintain increased sales in its post-DRM world, though, Universal and Warner may in fact be tempted to drop the DRM sooner than later.


I think the title of the post says it all, if slightly inaccurately. If the cost of using DRM is greater than the gains DRM provides by making piracy more difficult, welp, it's gone. I think most of us short of the music labels understood that pretty quickly, saying DRM wasn't very effective long-term. Now they've had a go and are slowly realizing playing DRM leapfrog with DRM crackers isn't worth the extra cash.

As I've said, the iTunes Music Store makes it at least a dollar easier to find a song I want than, say, Limewire. I'll pay you a dollar to find a good, clean, non-virused copy for me, now 89ยข with Amazon's mp3 service. The big difference between me and others? I won't illegally share it. With the availability of DRM hacks, there really wasn't a method of keeping hard-core online traders from trading anyhow.

I take that back. There is one more effective way, and that's to sue the creeee-ap out of people you bust, usually settling for tons out of court. I'm not sure how I feel about universities, since they are the best playground for these "traders" with lots of music consumers with tons of extra bandwidth, cooperating so fully with this new means of generating revenue/discouraging online trading. It's not a coincidence to me, however, that the big suits are going on at the same time that DRM-less distribution is picking up.