Another day, another DRM-free music store
Rhapsody, the joint venture by Real Networks and Viacom’s MTV Networks, is the latest digital music service to launch a DRM-free music download store. Although the company isn’t ditching Digital Rights Management software altogether – its music subscription service still relies heavily on copy-protection technology – the new Rhapsody MP3 Store is selling DRM-free MP3s priced at .99c per track or $9.99 for the complete album, which is pretty much inline with the rest of the industry.
Rhapsody MP3 Store will face stiff competition from a host of similar services, not least Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s own MP3 store. Along with other DRM-free competitors to iTunes, the store’s website is extremely keen to highlight that tracks are compatible with Apple’s iPod music players. “Fill your iPod or any other music player with the tunes you want”, reads the site’s About page.
Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith told Reuters: “We’re no longer competing with the iPod, we’re embracing it.”
Rhapsody also does a good job of explaining the broader benefits of a DRM-free service.
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This one is obvious but cool nonetheless.
In a classic DRM U-turn, customers of Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are being given at least three more years in which they can be sure that the music they’ve purchased will continue to play, even after an operating system re-install or upgrade, and when transfered to a compatible device. That’s because the company, having weathered a storm of negative PR and complaints from customers, has relented on its decision to shut down the service’s verification servers used to implement that store’s copy-protection technology. 
We’re big fans of Logitech’s 
It seems like a millennia ago when music fans huddled around the radio to listen to 
With the iPhone taking away the mind space of the iPod, the 
Imagine a world where your computer, cellphone, games console, storage devices, media streamers and other hardware all play nicely together, so that, for example, music, photos and video can reach the television or Hi-Fi no matter where in the home it originates.
As of today, all of Napsters’s 6 million tracks, comprising music from all four majors, are available to purchase as MP3s, playable on almost any digital music player including iPods. The company claims that it is now “the world’s largest and most comprehensive MP3 store”, beating both Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 in terms of the number of songs on sale without copy-protection. For the most part, pricing for downloads will remain at 99 cents for single MP3 tracks and $9.95 for albums, according to the press release.