Geez, lets sell consumers stuff ... and then let them choose what to do with it! What will they think of next, producing good music instead of pushing c*** down our throats.

They did this last year for a few songs but the asking price was $2,99 also a lot of the music can't be 'Zuned' over Zune-wifi now and want to DRM radio and podcasts. They clearly don't know what to do.

"and then let them choose what to do with it!"

The trouble is guys like you will make 10,000 copies of your "stuff" and either sell it or give it away to your friends and then try to justify theft as "personal use". That's why we have DRM in the first place. It's difficult to make high quality copies of vinyl LPs or cassette tapes but a copy of an mp3 file is identical to the original in every respect. Maybe the record labels should start putting watermarks in the mp3 files when you download them instead of DRM. Then when your "stuff" starts showing up on p2p networks the cops can ask you how it got there. How would that be? There would be absolutely no reason for a legitimate user to remove the watermark from their mp3 files since it wouldn't affect how they are used or backed up for "personal" use.

eMusic is the only place I buy music online because it has no DRM. Vote with your money.

Most people DID vote with their money but big biz doesn't like the outcome: Apple is leading the way.

To lkrupp: Problem with DRM is that it only hurts the non-pirating consumer, which is a majority of folks who just want to play their music without hassles.

Pirates are already pirating music and no DRM will stop them. Bypassing it is easy. Just do a search on any torrent site and you'll find all the popular music that is sold on iTunes being traded freely.

So if DRM doesn't hurt pirates, but creates problems for honest consumers and costs millions to develop, it seems like a sound business decision to stop using it.

While DRM isn't inherently closed to cross-platform support, it doesn't help, in that the 'standards' for DRM are controlled by Microsoft and Apple, who both have their own (different agendas). Of course a standard controlled by the media industry would also have it's own agenda.

I quite like Sun's idea (the gist of which was using a device like your mobile as a key to playing content on any device - thus you buy the rights to a movie and you can watch half of it on your iPod, then as you come in, watch the other half on a HDTV). Their agenda is basically flogging the server half of the equation, rather than locking in the client, which is the most consumer friendly. But I don't expect business (which sees money in repeatedly selling same content in different forms) to go for it.

And yeah, I mostly use emusic too. But then the music on emusic appeals to people who spend money on music.

...and I'd start buying...

Wow what a concept! Sell music like it used to be so it will play on anything and not to be accused of being a pirate even though I purchased the darn thing. Imagine that? We'll see. There are those in the business that are still dead set against it and accuse everyone of being a pirate!

Wouldn't it be hilarious if your completely ill conceived of idea came to light, then your computer or ipod got ripped off and all of YOUR legally purchased music started showing up online!

And in this world of yours that you live in, do you really think people are selling mp3's they download to others?

PS. This is the best idea I've ever heard the record labels utter. I hope it comes to pass.