Earlier this year, the last of the four major music labels offered its respective catalog for digital download to Amazon.com’s music service in the MP3 format with no digital copy protections, giving users the ability to freely transfer songs to any portable MP3 music player. Afterwards, commentators said that the music company’s decision was an attempt to diversify the music downloading market away from Apple’s iTunes. Also, it was said that DRM, or digital rights management, was dead in the music business.
This was echoed in September when the social network Web site MySpace launched MySpace Music, an advertising-supported service that offered free on-demand digital music streaming to users’ computers, as well as the ability to purchase DRM-free music downloads.
