Mike at TechDirt points to a post I missed a couple of days ago over at CNet, apparently  Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg said at an event this week called Music 2.0 that online services should consider selling music without layers of copyright protection baked in to the files. (DRM= digital rights management) Incredible!  Goldberg, who had top billing amongst keynote speakers at the event, pointed to eMusic as an example of a service that could succeed selling music online without limiting what users can do with the files after they purchase them.

This sounds very cool.  For now services like eMusic probably have an edge by offering music files more valuable than the locked down files that other services sell.  One way or the other, media is no longer an economy based on scarcity and attempts to create scarcity through technologies like DRM or heavy handed lawsuits seem destined to fail to me.   There has to be some value proposition other than scarcity - it's really kind of exciting to think about.  What can vendors offer that impels customers to buy from them when the "products" are available, even free, elsewhere?  The possibilities are endless, tying music downloads to concert promotion/tickets is the most widely discussed example.  "Liner notes," other branded multi-media beyond the music file itself, superior quality to files found in the wild.  There are lots of possibilities.