Sony Drops DRM, Mostly

It's finally happened, the final piece of the DRM-free Music puzzle has fallen into place! Sony has dropped its customer-experience hampering DRM scheme for digital music, offering to sell it using MP3 of AAC format. This is the last of the Big 4 record companies to drop DRM from its money-grubbing line-up.

While not all of Sony's library will be un-DRMed, it is speculated that the majority of it's catalogue will be free of buggy DRM. According to Downloadsquads article, Sony will be participating in the Super-bowl promotion to give away 1 million non-DRM tracks!

While we are far from having a completely DRM-free environment in the entertainment industry, it's clear that market forces are starting to bully the old media companies into meeting customer demands (think Amazon's music service). It's unknown what role DRM will play in the future of music, but for now, I believe we are in the last throws of the DRM beast’s life cycle, at least in the music industry.