I'm curious what are those use-cases where you really need it? I have DRM disabled since forever and never experience any problems that I can relate to that.

Same here. For one interim pragmatic purpose, I do have a dedicated setup that has DRM, which I use only for that purpose. I hope to get rid of the nasty DRM altogether in the future.

(For the browser part of the DRM setup, I use Chrome/Chromium, the violate-me-all-the-ways browser. For all other browser purposes, I use both Firefox, the violate-me-fewer-ways browser, and Tor Browser, the draw-fire-of-state-actors-but-thwart-techbro-actors browser.)

> that's what VMs and VPNs are for

To get the content from a different source in a more user-friendly format, right?