Charley Pride (1934-2020)
Early DRM artist recently passed away.
Charley Pride has passed away of complications of Covid-19. I knew of his work because one of his albums, A Tribute to Jim Reeves, was initially sold with digital rights management. I bought a copy to explore the DRM before news came out that you could just take a sharpie and draw over the bits that made it into a CD-ROM. The CD would then play, or rip, just fine. Of course, because the internet has a strange recency bias, finding pictures of that is hard.
He had an undeniably great voice, even if his style wasn't what I usually listen to.
I think the DRM'd edition of the album is the one that now sells for $985, with his name in green on the top left. Of course, there's also an edition for $12.97 - A strange footnote to his legacy.