DRM Who?

After the black eye Sony received a few years ago with their DRM rootkit fiasco, they seem to be headed in the right direction with their plans to provide some DRM-free music. It appears to be due to market forces, in trying to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it's encouraging nonetheless. We'll see how it actually ends up playing out.

For a lot of people, trying to get the music they paid for to work on the various devices they listen on is more difficult than it should be, so removal of DRM will be beneficial for many. It doesn't really affect me that much personally. I can load songs on my phone and listen to them through white headphones snaked up through my shirt so I don't have to hear people calling my name when I'm walking around campus, but I choose not to.

When I do listen to music, it's usually the Music Genome Project. You create free radio stations of songs that are similar to a certain song or an artist that you like. I've got an instrumental techno station I've created, because when I'm working on homework late at night I like having some music to keep me awake, but the lyrics distract me. One cool thing about it is that it plays music you might not have known about, but that is similar to stuff you like. You're not limited to what songs you've purchased, and you get to hear artists you might not have known about before.