Perhaps freeing the music is just the beginning.

Radiohead’s move to offer its latest album, “In Rainbows,” as a direct download — for a price set by the consumer — is a first among high-profile bands. It’s also a watershed moment in the music business, and one the game industry would be foolish not to pay attention to. The lesson is simple, really: Create a fair and consumer-friendly way to free the media.

Consumers Want Freedom

Consumers now want the freedom to use their media as they wish. When it comes to music, they want to listen to songs in their cars, on their PCs and on their living room stereos. They want to create mixes and playlists and share them with friends; to rip apart songs and create mashups. They want to customize their experience of music.

Part of the push is a backlash against harsh DRM technology. …

In gaming, region encoding is perhaps the worst offender — the consumer doesn’t want to have to buy a Japanese PlayStation just to play Japanese import games. Don’t make her do that.

Creators Want Control

The other side of the equation are the artists who, like Radiohead, have become fed up with having to funnel their product through the Byzantine process of publishing on a label, only to get, more often than not, royally screwed. Why would any artist choose to sign away their creativity like that? Because until recently, there was little choice. But then came the wave of independent labels and the rise of the indies, and concurrently (not coincidentally) the explosion of the digital download. Now artists can choose not to sign, even if they don’t have the draw of Radiohead. Independent musician Jonathan Coulton, for example, has been quietly building his one-man music business for two years.

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What Can Games Learn from Music’s Mistakes? « GigaOM

I’m not a gamer so regional encoding does not affect me.

But I have legal DVDs right now from New Zealand. And I have trouble playing them because of some copy protection scheme.

Lets get rid of that too. PLEASE.

The producer of those DVDs is stymied, by the way, under our current economic model. He cannot get distribution.