Rhapsody New DRM free MP3 store available on Verizon phones

The music companies have been doing their best to protect the music for their artists and the record labels profit, DRM copy protection on digital music was meant to help this but today we see Rhapsody have launched a DRM-free MP3 store. To promote this new service, Rhapsody is giving the first 100,000 people to sign-up a free album until July 4th.

The stores MP3s cost $9.99 per album and $.99 per track, they are encoded in 256kpbs CBR and this is near CD quality. As this music is DRM free you are able to copy it to CDs, PCs, iPods and other media as many times as you like. Does this show that DRM copy protection on digital music is on its way out?

If you are with the Verizon Wireless service, then you can download the music to your phone thanks to versions of the Rhapsody store being on them phones. With Rhapsody following in Amazon’s footsteps, could we be that much closer to a DRM copy protection free future?

You cannot doubt that iTunes is still massive, but how long can Apple keep copy protection up when other big names are not. This should send thousands of music lovers away from iTunes, but in the real world could that really happen to the amount that makes iTunes go DRM free.

If you are a Verizon Wireless phone owner, will you download music DMR free and will iTunes users want DRM free music? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Visit rhapsody.com/mp3 to see what the new store looks like and to get some DMR free action.