MusicNet and EMI to offer 1 million DRM-free tunes

Hot on the heels of EMI / Apple's iTunes Plus offerings, and Amazon's DRM-free music store, comes news that the industry media-providing MusicNet service will be making a 1-million-song outlay of EMI and indie tracks to its waiting corporate partners, sans DRM. So what does this mean for us? Well, clearly the DRM-bucking trends that have been put into play are causing some serious ripple effects throughout the industry, and since MusicNet provides content to places like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, HMV Digital, and URGE -- not exactly small potatoes -- it's likely we'll start seeing free-er music popping up all over the place. Don't get too comfortable though, the RIAA will still find ways to make your life hell.

[Via TG Daily]

[AKBlade13 @ Jul 25th 2007 7:40AM]

Awesome...now if only Universal will adopt that mentallity and the RIAA stops trying to DRM everything.

AKBlade13

[t-bone @ Jul 25th 2007 7:46AM]

I wouldn't exactly call it a trend until a major company other that EMI starts selling DRM-free songs, too.

[Mark @ Jul 25th 2007 9:39AM]

Won't it be cool if all the major record labels team up and offer DRM-free mp3 for sale? In a event RIAA sues all of them, at least they are like 5 times bigger than the RIAA :)

[t-bone @ Jul 25th 2007 8:49PM]

Only one problem, RIAA IS the major record labels.

[Froggy @ Jul 25th 2007 1:13PM]

as long as Steve Jobs doesn't take credit for this a la Al Gore and the internet we're cool. I don't think I could stand more Stev-O righteousness.

[dan @ Jul 25th 2007 2:53PM]

I believe MusicNet provides songs to Zune Marketplace as well, which would mean Microsoft having the DRM-free tracks too?