It appears the times they are a changin! Major announcements and possible shadow motives are causing quite the buzz in the digital music industry. Announcements and grand standing and DRMs, oh my! EMI is reported (BugMeNot login info) to be making the move towards unrestricted digital music sales. That means good old fashioned MP3s with no DRM! So could this really be happening? A flag waving member of the RIAA opening the flood gates and setting the people free? The good news for consumers is that, as reported by Peter Csathy late last month, this could actually start to happen “within months”. I’ll simply ask the question for you our good readers to decide. Is this really good news for the world of digital media or the beginning of even more problems? Now without sounding biased either way I’ll just say this. I support the artists. Notice I said the artists not the industry. I believe that if you’re a good artist that puts out good music, appreciates your fans, and travels the globe putting on good shows, you deserve my money. But at the same time, as an advocate for the portable digital media industry, I am glad to see this happening. DRM has been stifling the growth and innovation of today’s media player scene and some would say single handedly stopped the Zune from becoming the “iPod killer” Microsoft had hoped it would be. Pirates are going to pirate (hence the name) whether you DRM it, encrypt it, or spit on it and yell coodies! But if freeing people to do what they want with the music they buy will help increase sales and get everyone excited about buying music again I’m all for it.

Could this be the true motivation behind Steve Jobs’ manifesto “Thoughts on Music” posted on the Apple website? In the writeup Steve goes on to virtually lay the smack down on DRM calling for an end to it. EMI is one of only 4 major record labels (Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, EMI, and Warner Music Group). So practically any major announcement by one can have a cascading affect across the entire music industry. Did Steve see the gatekeeper opening the gates as a threat to the iTunes empire? Remember it wasn’t long ago, before DRM, that file sharing software providers like Napster, Grokster, Limewire, and others were the ones grabbing headlines. The torrent community isn’t exactly dead either. Jobs knows that currently music sold on competing sites won’t play on any of the 90 million iPods that Apple has sold. But with open source music floating around, Apple’s new anti-DRM rhetoric may be just them trying to jump ahead of the tidal wave.

So things could be changing more rapidly in the coming months with more announcements than U.S. politicians announcing their candidacy for president. Personally I like it this way. Four major labels is not so many that it causes confusion and delays in adapting new policies and technologies. But it’s not so small as to easily cause a monopoly situation with enough players to spark heated competition producing lower prices for we the consumer. Then there’s the fact that it’s just a nice round number. Either way you can believe I’ll be all over this like white on iPods (gadget nerd humor) bringing you the latest news and announcements as they come in.