Secure Digital Music Initiative

Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) was a forum formed in late 1998,^[1] composed of more than 200 IT, consumer electronics, security technology, ISP and recording industry companies, as well as authors, composers and publishing rightsholders (represented by CISAC and BIEM representatives, mainly from SGAE/SDAE (Gonzalo Mora Velarde and José Manuel Macarro), GEMA (Alexander Wolf und Thomas Kummer-Hardt), SACEM/SDRM (Aline Jelen, Catherine Champarnaud, Laurent Lemasson), MCPS/PRS (Mark Isherwood), ASCAP, BMI (Edward Oshanani), and SODRAC), ostensibly with the purpose of developing technology and rights management systems specifications that will protect once developed and installed, the playing, storing, distributing and performing of digital music.

Specifically, the goals of the SDMI were to provide consumers with convenient access to music online and in new digital distribution systems, to apply digital rights management restrictions to the work of artists, and to promote the development of new music-related business and technologies. SDMI was a direct response to the widespread success of the MP3 file format.^[1]

According to their web site, SDMI existed to develop “technology specifications that protect the playing, storing, and distributing of digital music such that a new market for digital music may emerge.” It would have been used by DataPlay, an optical disc format that at the time was cheaper and had higher capacity than memory cards, and by SD cards.