The iTunes Music Store is launching with a library of 200,000 tracks, with participation from all five of the major record labels. In addition, the store will list exclusive tracks from 20 artists, including Bob Dylan and U2.
The songs cost 99 cents each to download, with no subscription fee, and include the most liberal copying rights of any online service to date. Jobs has been an outspoken opponent of so-called digital rights management (DRM) in the past, arguing that limitations on digital music will undermine the market for legitimate content.
Apple released it's much anticipated "iTunes Music Store" today. I've thought for a long time the record companies should be actively trying to sell music online. There's lots of music out there I'm willing to pay for, but I'm not a fan of paying $13-20 for one song on a CD. However, I'm more than willing to pay $1-3 for a song really like (depending on the length of the song.)
While I've yet to had a chance to check out the Music Store (as I don't have a Mac—which is required to run iTunes,) all the reviews have been very postive. It seems like the model is fairly decent and even with the DRM attached to the file, the restrictions on what you can do with the files are fairly loose (3 PCs, unlimited burns, max of 10 burns per playlist.) Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how well this works out. Hopefully the PC version will be coming before December—the projected release date—because the majority of people out there have PCs, so they're limited their target audience at the moment.
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