Exciting news for iPod owners and thus iTunes users.
DRM went away on the biggest music store in America this week!

… and you get to pay more for it … yeah???  Well, this is all new for iTunes and may take a while to sort the pricing out, but DRM-free music and variable pricing will be a good thing in the long run for the consumer (and librarians and library patrons).  And should be a good thing for other online music stores too as consumers start to realize they can actually shop around for digital music before they buy.  There are already other digital music stores like eMusic and Amazon MP3 downloads that work with iPods (Windows or Mac) and it’s well worth a quick price comparison before you plunk down your 69¢ or $1.29.  And I just discovered a neat little add-on price-comparison called Advantageous mp3 for Mac OS X, FREE, but Mac only.  There are sure to be more nifty little price-comparison widgets and gadgets for all your digital music needs.

In the music world we’re seeing DRM fade away and some very interesting new models spring up from the artists themselves, three of the most famous examples are listed below:

• Radiohead offers their latest album, In Rainbows,  as a pay as much (or little) as you like with positive results.  Too late!  It’s only available as set price now.  I think I paid £3 UK, which translated to something like $37 US dollars once I got my Visa bill … no wonder they made money on this!
• Nine Inch Nails offers free albums, no strings attached and makes lots of money.
• Jonathan Coulton, the darling of geeky music lovers, has been at this successfully for quite a while, I first heard him via Indiefeed music podcasts.

So maybe this will lead to more vendor choices for libraries and in turn, easier access to digital media for patrons.  We’ve seen Overdrive offer MP3 versions of audiobooks which enables them to work on iPods and many other devices including cell phones.  So that’s a start!

Or maybe it’s not all such good news … see my next post.