Apple Teams with Pepsi to Create Sweet DRM Carrot for Downloads
If legal downloads are to succeed, the Digital Rights Management capabilities that protect the interests of publishers will need to be ubiquitous and unburdensome in the eyes of consumers. As related by The Globe and Mail and other major outlets, Apple has taken an aggressive stance to make their brand of downloads ubiquitious by teaming with Pepsi as a sponsor for free downloads from its catalog of 99-cent songs and spoken word tracks through March 2004. On the spoken word side, bestselling books, magazines, radio programs and original shows will be available along with 100 million song downloads. Combined with Apple's earlier announcement of iTunes downloads compatible with Microsoft Windows, Apple is laying down a blitzkrieg strategy to become the de facto source for rights-protected, platform-independent audio content. Success in the Web era tends to go to those who give people what they want first, as opposed to those who try to give people what they want them to want when it suits them.