Ah, you are correct. It is more correct to say that iTunes was a success despite DRM.
However, I did not mean to assert that DRM was iTunes's key to success, even if Jobs's actually wanted DRM. I'm only saying that significantly fewer people would pay 99 cents a song if sharing music was as easy as buying it off of a centralized source and sending it around by email.
DRM is a pain in the ass for all the honest people. But its role in making sharing less-than-frictionless for the average user probably pushed a good number of people to just sign up for an iTunes account to pay the measly $.99
Please be careful attributing the success of iTunes to DRM.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay:
- Steve Jobs said that Apple didn't want to use DRM but was forced to by the music labels, who wouldn't provide the music w/o DRM.
- Apple announced in Jan 2009 iTunes was moving to DRM-free music.