Yahoo! Music offers DRM-free MP3

In the battle for the dominance in the digital music industry Sony and Yahoo have made a daring step: they are now offering more expensive tracks, but with no DRM.

After sites like Movielink and Cinema Now, it’s now Yahoo! Music’s turn to sell off content on their site without DRM protection. Yahoo! Music will sell a Jessica Simpson single called ‘A Public Affair’ in open MP3 format, making it compatible with all music players. However, the song is priced at $1.99 as opposed to the regular 99-cent standard set by iTunes, thanks to the gimmick that “personalizes” the song by incorporating the downloader’s name into it.

The move to sell off content online without DRM protection is a first for Yahoo! Music. The site’s official blog calls this “experiment” a trend setter and foresees a future with many more unprotected MP3 releases by big music labels.

DRM-free tunes is not something very new and spectacular since eMusic is already offering more than a million songs in MP3 format, but most of them come from independent record companies.
One probable reason for which Sony BMG is implied in this project is to erase partially the negative image they have been fighting with since the scandal with the copy-protected CDs they sold to customers, which later turned out to be a perfect tool for a computer virus.