The net is abuzz with talk today about Qtrax, another service that promises free ad-supported music. The Qtrax service offers to let you use an ad-supported program to search for and download DRM’d music that you can play on a PC and on some media players. Unfortunately, it looks like Qtrax will be as dead [...]

Amazon.com has announced plans for an international rollout of Amazon MP3, a DRM-free MP3 digital music store, in 2008. Amazon MP3 is currently the only retailer that the four major labels are allowing to offer customers DRM-free MP3s. As a result, it can offer over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists in DRM-free [...]

For a long time, people have thought that getting the music industry to switch to DRM-free MP3s for music downloads would open the doors to a consumer-friendly world of digital music competition. Now it’s starting to look like the music industry wil use DRM-free MP3s to enforce their traditional monopoly on what you hear, what [...]

CNet has an interesting interview with Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor on his recent experiment with Saul Williams’ debut CD, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. Reznor and Williams made NiggyTardust available as a free download, but also let you purchase a higher-quality version for a nominal fee. In the interview, Reznor talks about [...]

Napster has joined the ranks of companies trying to compete with Apple’s iTunes by offering MP3 music downloads. The file format change will apply only to single tracks and album purchases, according tothe company. Tracks downloaded as part of the company’s music subscription service will continue to be DRM’d. “The ubiquity and cross-platform compatibility of [...]

Simon Iddol has put together a free download of the best mashups of the year. The 19 track collection includes Billy Idol vs Pink on Pink Wedding, Eric Clapton vs Depeche Mode on Strange Love Cocaine and Christina Aguilera vs Lionel Richie on Easy Hurt. It’s available as a .zip download from the site. Here [...]

Deutsche Grammophon, the world’s leading classical music record label, has launched the DG Web Shop, a digital music store that offers the majority of the label’s recordings as MP3 downloads. Almost 2,500 DG albums will be available for download at a transfer bit-rate of 320 kilobits per second (kbps). The label will be available in [...]

After years of attack from everyone from privacy advocates to consumer rights groups to so-called “freetards”, it looks like DRM’d music may finally get killed off by Wal-Mart & Pepsi. And it’s not because they care about your rights as a consumer. It’s because they want onto your iPod. According to an article in Billboard, [...]

The December issue of Wired has a profile of Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris that reveals why Universal has seemed to be aimless in its reaction to the growth of Internet music. “There’s no one in the record industry that’s a technologist,” Morris explains. “That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the [...]

Need something interesting to refill and refresh your iPod/Zune/portable media player. DJ Spooky has posted an very cool, socially conscious mix tape, Ghost World, that explores the idea of a digital Africa. You can preview it below and get the full scoop at Spooky‚Äôs site. Here’s what DJ Spooky has to say about the mix [...]