Below The Beltway

The Register reports that iTunes sales are “collapsing”:

The leading DRM digital download service, Apple’s iTunes, has experienced a collapse in sales revenues this year according to analyst company Forrester Research.

Secretive Apple doesn’t break out revenues from iTunes, but Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year’s numbers aren’t good.

While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring’s rebound wasn’t repeated this year.

And it isn’t just Apple’s problem. Nielsen Soundscan has grimmer news for prospective digital download services, indicating three consecutive quarters of flat or declining revenues for the sector as a whole.

There is some argument that this is an indication that consumers are turning off to the Digital Rights Management (DRM) model that iTunes represents:

Bernoff makes a fascinating comparison between the public’s appetite for buying CDs over the internet, and its lack of appetite for DRM songs. Online individuals (rather than households) bought 1.7 CDs over the internet per quarter.

“The comparatively modest iTunes numbers suggest that consumers are still spending the bulk of their music budget $14-at-a-time on shiny discs,” he writes.

“iTunes sales are not cutting into CD sales,” he elaborated to us, “they’re an incremental purchase at best.

“There’s a problem here. CD sales have fallen 20 per cent over five years. The message here is not that CD sales are coming back, the ability to obtain pirated music is now so widespread the DRM looks to consumers more like a problem than a benefit.”

So does this signal the death of DRM ? Some music analysts think so:

At the In The City music convention held in Manchester in October, Columbia UK boss Mike Smith predicted music would be DRM-free within 12 months. Sony BMG UK, which owns Columbia, has declined to elaborate on the comments - which were not widely reported at the time. Perhaps more significantly, recent personnel changes at Universal Music, the 800lb gorilla, also suggest a more pragmatic strategy.

So if not DRM, then what?

In the UK, the major labels, represented by the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), have joined discussions on a blanket license for digital downloads in the UK. Discussions are taking place under the Chatham House rule. Although much of the infrastructure for a blanket license has yet to fall into place - the counting mechanisms and collection agencies have yet to be agreed upon - the UK makes a potentially promising experiment for a digital music blanket model.

It would be ironic if, at the end of all this, we ended up something resembling Napster.

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