Re:Viewing 2004: Digital music and DRM

From iTunes' UK launch and Napster's rebirth to the Creative Commons and piracy, Jo Best looks back at the highlights of 2004 for digital music - and predicts what'll be big in 2005.

While the internet has seen its fair share of bandwagon jumping in its time, it seems the tech and ecommerce behemoths smelled blood this year with the rise and rise of digital music.

With everyone from Oxfam to Microsoft and übergrocer Tesco throwing their hat into the ring, the boom in digital tunes was kick-started in the UK with the news that Apple's iTunes had finally made the transatlantic crossing and would initially debut in three European countries.

The granddaddy of the online song world, Napster, made like a juvenile offender, put on its best smart suit and re-emerged in the public eye, having gone straight. Launching in May, it later took a leaf or several out of the books of the bricks and mortar brigade, tapping up the Post Office, Dixons and The Sun, among others, to sell its vouchers.

Having given digital music an initial push when Napster - back in its illegal heyday - launched, creator Shawn Fanning still has his money on file-sharing, albeit legit this time.

Fanning also announced this year he'd be launching Snocap, a service for legal file-sharing and one of a spate of services hoping to exploit the P2P model to get teens to talk each other into spending pocket money on downloads. BT announced an upcoming service based on the same idea, as did some of the major record labels.

But not everyone had turned their back on the idea that music could be shared, cost nothing and not be shortly followed by a knock on the door from the fuzz. The Creative Commons licence also made its first appearance this year. It's a system of digital rights management that dictates when bands - or other types of creators - are happy for their songs - or other works - to be remixed, shared and generally messed about with, and when they're not.

Digital rights management - or DRM for short - has been rearing its head over the last 12 months. In digital music DRM essentially refers to the guidelines and technology governing what you can do with your music once you've bought it. It's what stops songs bought from iTunes being played on anything but an iPod and what restricts Microsoft format songs to being played only on Microsoft format digital music players, for instance.

Despite a few rumoured attempts by high profile players to seduce Apple into giving away its secrets, Cupertino has kept its DRM knickers on - and made sure that RealNetworks' attempts to get a finger in Apple's pie came to naught.

Earlier this year, RealNetworks cracked Apple's DRM, FairPlay, and started flogging its newly iPod-compatible tunes at bargain basement prices. The usually reticent folk at Apple took a strong dislike to such behaviour and began bandying words like "hacker" about.

It all came to a head when a petition started by Real's CEO Rob Glaser, asking Apple to open up its DRM to others, was hijacked by Apple acolytes who began posting insults to the Real boss.

Apple recently responded by blocking any Real-bought tracks from playing on its latest addition to the iPod family.

Love FairPlay or hate it, it's the key prop to the stellar success of the iPod, which has contributed in no small way to Apple's turnaround and, according to some research, could even be pushing up the Mac's market share in other areas.

2004 saw the arrival of the iPod mini, Photo iPod and the black edition iPod in the UK, which came with the seal of approval from godfathers of pomp rock, U2. And, the Apple rumour mill being as healthy as ever, next year could see two editions - a mini mini iPod and a maxi iPod with 80GB of storage.

All the more space to store your stolen music, then, if you believe Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the subject of music piracy. The Microsoft head honcho said: "The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'," during his flying visit to the UK.

As well as Ballmer's tongue-lashing, UK music pirates got a telling-off from the record industry trade body, the BPI. Its US counterpart, the RIAA, has been notoriously litigious with pirates for some time and 2004 was the year when the Brits joined in.

Twenty-eight of the most prolific uploaders in the UK were collared by the BPI in October.

As well as slapping the wrists of the pirates, the BPI also launched an official download chart, proclaiming the dawn of the new age of the bleeding edge digital revolution. It was promptly topped by a months-old piece of pop pap by aging teen favourites Westlife.

Still, 2004 saw the real proof that digital music was more than a hobbyist pursuit for technophile, bedroom-bound teenagers. The phenomenon made its way out of the file sharers' hands and into the mainstream and resuscitated the UK singles market - with legal digital music singles now selling more than tracks traditional 'hard' formats.

So what will 2005 bring? With the first 'phonecast' gig selling out; major 3G players touting video downloads, Apple teaming up with Motorola and pound signs flashing up in handset makers eyes when music smart phones are mentioned, digital tunes may have conquered the mainstream - but they're about to conquer the mobile.