> > if you don’t sell on Audible, you sacrifice about 95% of that income > Can we rephrase that as: > > if you don’t sell in the way that 95% of customers wan

> > if you don’t sell on Audible, you sacrifice about 95% of that income > Can we rephrase that as: > > if you don’t sell in the way that 95% of customers want to buy, you sacrifice about 95% of that income > Then it seems obvious what the problem is? Yes. The problem is that the distribution channel that owns 95% of the market (by most definitions a monopoly) is forcing publishers to use DRM even if they (or the authors) don't want it, locking in users to the distribution channel's platform. Now, sometimes lock-in is a side effect of some feature or attribute that is at least ostensibly user-focused (eg. network effects: you're locked into a social network because all your friends are there, and getting your personal data out doesn't help with that), but DRM doesn't fit into that bucket. All else being equal, no user actually prefers content that they can enjoy in limited ways, for less time, on fewer of their devices, with less forward compatibility and future-proofing, etc. During the '90s the cargo-cult argument that DRM was necessary to convince content owners worried about piracy to allow their albums/movies/books to be distributed in new digital formats and channels in the first place could still be made with a straight face, but that isn't really the case any longer.