Finally! An Online Music Service I Might Actually Use!

Exciting news! For all those digital music lovers despairing because they can't load their Apple Itunes Music Store DRM infested files onto portable devices they actually use, THERE IS A LIGHT!

Finally, after much ado involving the Steve Jobs comments about DRM (Digital Rights Management), EMI have finally agreed to release DRM free tracks through itms. Not only that, but they will be encoded at a massive 256KBPS, DOUBLE that of the current 128kbps offerings. For those of you not in the know, this means that they will have twice the quality, at which I find almost indestinguishable from the CD version.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Almost reminiscent of those bad daytime infomercials, they will be offering all current owners of EMI's DRM material a 30c upgrade per track for the useful version.

Anyway, they only downside is that it uses apple's propprietary AAC format, which some older devices still don't conform to.

This announcement acually makes me consider whether the slightly higher quality CD is worth it over itunes music. I guess the price will make that decision for me. This will probably kill microsoft's online services with the Zune, as itms has a greater range of music, and now it's (partially) DRM free!

All we need now is the other distributers to jump on board.