First Netflix fires a major shot over the bow of the Apple TV with their new Netflix Player set-top box, now Napster is going after iTunes with a new DRM-free music service. Apple can still claim to be the world’s largest digital music store, Napster just has more MP3s. Many songs currently being sold from the iTunes Music Store are encoded with Apple’s FairPlay DRM system and can only be played back on an iPod or iPhone authorized by the purchaser to do so. Of course, DRM can be stripped by burning FairPlay-encoded tracks to CD-ROM then re-ripping them in iTunes as unprotected MP3s but most people can’t be bothered with the hassle. Amazon MP3 became the first store to carry DRM-free music from all four major labels in January 2008 . Read more

[Tags]music, apple, napster, drmfree, amazon, drm, itunes[/Tags]

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