As much as some of you may hate the iPod’s lack of WMA support, this article by CNet’s John Borland makes it clear that the iPod may be the only thing holding back the record companies from adopting Microsoft’s DRM’d standard across the board. Borland quotes SunnComm’s head honcho as saying the majority of their customer service complaints from users who bought the recent Velvet Revolver CD have come from customers who haven’t been able to use the disc on their iPods. Now that’s not to say that Apple’s Fairplay DRM is any better, of course, but it does go to show how critical competition is in preventing monopoly, although two competing DRM systems are only marginally better than one.
