In the battle for the dominance in the digital music industry Sony and Yahoo have made a daring step: they are now offering more expensive tracks, but with no DRM.

The first MP3 that can be downloaded from Yahoo Music is Jessica Simpson's A Public Affair. The implication of being DRM-free is that the tune can be played on any MP3 player, no matter the brand (iPod from Apple, Zen from Creative, Sansa from SanDisk, etc.). Other famous sites that allow music downloads only offer tunes with DRM, which makes them incompatible with some MP3 players (it is the case for Apple's iTunes, Napster or Rhapsody).

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Free? For a price? If it's for a price it isn't free.


No wonder it's free. It'd get more hits that way than any other way.

Overall that would cost more than it would if you bought the CD!

I can't stand the way downloading music is being done right now.

1.Songs can expire. WTF if I pay for the songs then they are mine to put on my mp3 player/stereo/cds as long as I want. This is absolutely crazy.

2. Most sites offer only really really low quality formats. I want full size WAV files or at least lossless codecs. I dont want a 128kb mp3 that sound like crap when I burn it to a cd to listen to on my surround system.

Their is absolutely no way in hell I will ever download music from any site ever again. I will always go to the store and buy the CD, even if they put DRM on those too at least it won't expire and its decent quality audio.



Um.. I dont think you read it right. Its DRM free, but you have to pay more to not get the DRM. The music itself isn't free.

Ah, the title was poorly worded. RIAA has screwed music forever.

Ya, he meant "DRM-free", as in the absence of DRM.

Ya, RIAA has screwed over forever...

It is good that they finally, sell music for download without DRM, something that I honestly thought they would never do. But still, it costs more than a CD, heh.

There is this Russian site, I never used it, but I heard it offer full-quality DRM-free music (for pay), such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, etc... maybe had other format too...

Pretty much my same thoughts, however I refuse to ever buy a copy-protected/copy-damaged CD and if I ever accidentally do I'll demand a refund - even to the point of getting my lawyer involved if a record store refuses to refund such as CD.

Yeah, its too expensive, but still... I thought that hell would freeze over before they ever put non-DRM crippled music for download.