Not that we didn’t know it was coming, but Amazon opened up their DRM-free music store to the public in beta today. The 2-million song catalog doesn’t rival other online stores in terms of breadth, but there’s none of that DRM stuff to deal with like there is in iTunes, Zune Marketplace and such. To be fair, iTunes does offer some DRM-free tunes but those can cost more. In contract, Amazon MP3 is selling the same quality (256 kbps) music without DRM for less: expect to pay 89- or 99-cents per tune with half of the catalog at the lower price. Anybody buying?
For consumers new to this DRM or Digital Rights Management world we live in: the Amazon music can be transferred and used on practically any digital audio or MP3 player. DRM-protected tunes typically are locked down to a device or set of devices, thus restricting your freedom to listen to purchased music on the device of your choice. Purchases from the Amazon music store can be played on an iPod, computer and in many cases, a phone.
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