When EMI announced that they were going to be offering DRM-free tracks on iTMS in May, I was pretty psyched to see that a major label has finally stepped forward and admitted that DRM doesn’t work. However, the month of May passed slowly, and I was somewhat paranoid that EMI would back out on the deal.

Finally, on the last day of May, iTunes has been updated to version 7.2 along with the arrival of “iTunes Plus”. DRM-less, 256kbps AAC files at last. I was excited enough to hop on right away and purchase 2 albums that has been sitting in my Amazon shopping cart for months (in their CD form, no less).

I’ve always been a very discerning audiophile, which only recently finally succumbed to the fact that keeping all of my music in Apple Lossless is really just a waste of hard drive space for a small (although still perceivable) quality gain. I have over thousands of dollars invested in pretty good audio equipments, most of which I no longer listen to on even a monthly basis anymore.

My Super Audio CD player is completely useless, as the format has died a painful and slow death. Now it is nothing more than a glorified CD changer that I never, ever bother to change. I have racks of CD’s that I don’t really want to deal with on my next move, only half of which has been ripped into MP3’s.

Fact of the matter is, there are only so many hours of entertainment…

The industry trend to start selling DRM-less music seems to be growing. Independent artists & small labels were where I expected to see those changes taking place. However, it seems that even some major labels has throw themselves into the fray as well. VirginMega France will start selling MP3 files without DRM, and even encode them at higher than traditional bitrates.

Take a look at Engadget’s article for more information:
VirginMega France to sell DRM-free MP3s in March

A few, rather small & quiet, news items caught my attention shortly over the holiday season. During the season of CES & Macworld, or the blissful orgasmic gathering of tech geeks as I like to call it, it’s easy for other important news items to be drowned out. Small, minor movements in the industry seems insigificant next to the big boys announcing the next awesome hardware-soon-to-be-vaporware. The first is the announcement of a label completely going digital. The second is Jason Mraz releasing his latest EP.

To be honest, I think the Jason Mraz EP has been out for quite a while, I just haven’t checked his website recently. I’m also not up to date with the ongoings of the music industry, part of which I contribute to my age. As my parents used to hang on tightly to the music that they heard in their youth, I used to struggle with the notion that I may one day be out of touch with the current state of pop culture. Inevitably I’ve lost connection with what is hot and cool (all at the same time), and thus transitioning from MTV to VH1, and now really nothing at all.

What is exciting to me, is that Jason Mraz released his EP not in iTunes, not in WMA format with DRM, and most certainly not on the Zune marketplace (that wouldn’t have done him any good at all, would it?); but in pure, unadulterated MP3 file format. The audiophile in…