Is the Entertainment Industry back to embracing Apple?

Warner Music boss Edgar Bronfman spoke at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau yesterday. What he said wasn't the same "blame Apple for this situation we're in" or "Apple is taking our revenue" that we've been hearing for the past few months from Entrtainment Industry executives.

Instead, Bronfman praised Apple for making the consumer experience pleasurable and the buying experience quick and easy. After picking your jaw up off the floor you might be wondering what possesed him to say such things.

Simon Aughton from MacUser got these quotes from Bronfman:

"For years now, Warner Music has been offering a choice to consumers at Apple's iTunes store the option to purchase something more than just single tracks, which constitute the mainstay of that store's sales. By packaging a full album into a bundle of music with ringtones, videos and other combinations and variation we found products that consumers demonstrably valued and were willing to purchase at premium prices. And guess what? We've sold tons of them. And with Apple's co-operation to make discovering, accessing and purchasing these products even more seamless and intuitive, we'll be offering many, many more of these products going forward.

You need to look no further than Apple's iPhone to see how fast brilliantly written software presented on a beautifully designed device with a spectacular user interface will throw all the accepted notions about pricing, billing platforms and brand loyalty right out the window. And let me remind you, the genesis of the iPhone is the iPod and iTunes - a music device and music service that consumers love."

This is all high praise from the guy who, recently was insisting on price hikes for iTunes songs, deriding Apple's request for DRM Free Music (Warner is now offering its Classics and Jazz Collection DRM free) and demanding a share of Apple's iPod revenues.

Are the entertainment industry executives finally getting it?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. They haven't replaced their Martini lunches with emerging technology seminars. They also have yet to come up with a solution that is completely fair to consumers. You can't take your DRM'ed music everywhere you want to go - and copying purchased music for personal backup is still a legal gray area as far as they are concerned.

The good news is that they (at least Warner) are starting to see what is working elsewhere. As Bronfman suggests, the music industry can offer much more appealing packages to fans who have already demonstrated a desire to purchase online when given the (easy) choice to do so.

More importantly, the consumer backlash of their current policies is making it through the army of yes-men that they typically surround themselves with. Hurting their own (prospective) customers with threats of legal action isn't helping the bottom line.

So is the tide turning in the entertainment industry? It is probably too early to tell. We still haven't seen iTunes Movie rentals and DRM free music is the exception rather than the standard.

For more on the the Record Industry, check out Ian Lamont's post on scaled pricing today.

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