Seeking Nerdvana

Music lovers are sick of being treated like criminals and told how they can use the music they've paid for. Finally the message seems to be getting through, with major recording label EMI the latest to start selling MP3s without Digital Rights Management.

It's only a toe in the water to gauge interest at this point, with Britain's EMI Music offering tracks from singer Norah Jones and rock band Relient K - via Yahoo!'s online music service. It's certainly not the first time straight MP3 have been sold online, but it's one of the first times a major label has put aside its piracy paranoia and given the punters what they want. Well at least I think it's what they want. To be honest I think your average, non-tech savvy consumer doesn't appreciate what this all means. They've been training to jump through the DRM hoops and don't realise things could be different. Hopefully EMI's experiment doesn't die just because people don't know what's good for them. The fact that Microsoft has abandoned its own PlaysForSure DRM format on its new Zune players - screwing over loyal customers - is going to burn a lot of people and should help to raise awareness of the issue.

Some people might say this is a threat to the copyright owners, but many observers see it as a major threat to Apple. Music sold with non-iTunes DRM, such as PlaysForSure or the new Zune format, can't be copied to an iPod unless you go to the trouble of stripping the DRM - which is generally illegal. An unprotected MP3 can be imported into iTunes and copied to an iPod, meaning Apple has some real competition in the music download market. I think most iPod owners would be into the whole Apple experience and would probably prefer to stick with iTunes, but competition usually drives innovation and it will be interesting to see how Apple responds.