Either Steve Jobs is sneakier than most people realize, or he is unintentionally accomplishing his DRM-free music goal.
This month, Amazon.com is set to launch their own DRM-free music store and Walmart has already launched their own sans-DRM music store. This is great, however I doubt the executives at Amazon and Wal-Mart (and more importantly, the music labels) had any sort of digital-epiphany though. Think about it: according to Bloomberg, the iPod had a 72% market share earlier this year, and all of those millions of iPods sold only work with Apple’s own proprietary AAC-based DRM. To sell music in any volume, non-Apple retailers must sell music that can play on any mp3 player, including the all-important 72% market share iPod.
Basically, though Apple’s “iTunes Plus” sales of DRM-free music does matter, by far the bigger contribution Apple/Steve Jobs have made to DRM-free music sales is their refusal to license Apple’s own “Fairplay” AAC DRM.
[Sources (in order linked): Apple.com, NYPost.com, Gizmodo.com]