Thoughts on Steve's thoughts

There’s been much talk today about Steve Jobs just published thoughts on digital music and copyright.

Given his thoughts ran to over 1,800 words, perhaps thoughts isn’t quite the right word.

Having said that, he did make some very interesting points on who to blame for digital rights management.

What pricked my ears up though, was an intriguing fact buried within the body of the document about the sales figures of the iTunes store.

According to Jobs, Apple had sold 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store by the end of last year.

That averages out to around 22 iTunes store songs for every iPod sold.

It’s not much is it? In fact, tracks from the iTunes store account for less than 3% of the music on the average iPod.

That means 97% of the music most people listen to on their iPod has come from somewhere other than Apple.

Now that’s a bloody good sales opportunity if ever I saw one.

And perhaps that’s why Steve Jobs has suddenly started talking about removal of digital rights management.

Pic via Gizmodo