Steve Jobs wants what I want.

Steve Jobs wants DRM-free music. Me too. The Big Four won't let him sell music without DRM on the iTunes Music Store. Here are some excerpts from a recent open letter.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

More on this stuff from Xeni at BoingBoing and Macworld.