Napster drops its DRMed all-you-can eat model for DRM-free 99 cent MP3s.
Look out, Amazon. Napster just launched the largest digital rights management-free music store in the world, with six million songs that can be loaded onto just about any digital audio player — a healthy advantage over the Amazon’s five-million-track MP3 store.
Apple also has cause for concern. Two of its most widely-known competitors now offer DRM-free music the majors won’t let Apple sell without DRM. Apple’s latest figures on the topic (released in October) indicated that it only had two million DRM-free tracks.
Napster will continue selling songs for 99 cents a piece and albums for $10, except that now every song in its six-million-track catalog will be available in the unprotected MP3 format instead of the Microsoft’s Playsforsure-protected format it had previously used to placate the record labels, before they became more afraid of Apple than they were of DRM-free music.
In other news, Jamendo still has DRM-free OGGs and MP3s for $0.00 each.