Yahoo! Music General Manager Ian Rogers recently gave a speech to some music executives about the future of the internet music business and promised his company will not be involved in Digital Rights Management anymore.

Why? Because Yahoo! customers hate it.

“I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap,” he said.  “If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out… The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web."
 

Holy crap! Is it my imagination or did someone in the music industry just demonstrate an intelligent train of thought that actually approaches the digital music issue with common sense rather than pushing the panic button, and treats the consumer with respect rather than continuing to find new ways to gouge and rip them off?

Naaaaaw, I musta misread his quote. I’m sure what he really said was, “Screw those stupid idiot consumers! We’ll keep scamming them ‘till their pants fall off…and then sell them more expensive pants….twice!”

Boingboing.net: Yahoo Music to record execs: No more DRM, ever