Digital Home Thoughts: Michael Robertson: Diet Soda and Your Music Going Flat

"My wife got me hooked on diet soda. Each morning I'll grab a Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Pepsi or Diet Vanilla Coke. They stopped making Diet Vanilla Coke which was my favorite so I bought a big stockpile when I heard the announcement. Unfortunately, I learned that diet drinks go bad fairly quickly. Unlike their sugar laden counterparts which last a long time, the Aspartame in modern diet sodas has a short shelf life. I learned to look at the date on the bottom of the can to avoid a mouthful of brown soda water. Unfortunately, for some music lovers their music library could go flat as quickly as a soda. In 2004, Coke launched an online music store called mycokemusic. They quickly became the #1 online music store in the UK. Well, a lot changes in a couple of years on the net and what was once a shining success is now a distant player behind iTunes UK. So, Coke has decided to shutter the service by the end of July."

This article is a few months old, but it resonated with me: this is the singular fear I have with DRM, and why I have absolutely no trust in it. What's interesting is that subscription music models are a great solution to this: there's no illusion of ownership, you understand that you're renting your music just like you rent your cable service. Has anyone been burnt like this? Invested in DRM'd music and had it "go flat"? I think we'll see much more of this in the next five years.