NEAR THE START OF THE NEW YEAR, Apple revealed that it would begin selling all of its music on iTunes without copyright software. The move was welcomed by many as the introduction of a new era. But where does the move actually take music?

By shedding the software, listeners have many more options about what they do with the music they buy. But there are hurdles on this path towards freedom of use, including new privacy issues and inflexibility in upgrading collections previously bought at the iTunes store. Furthermore, new copyright software – often called DRM, which is shorthand for digital rights management – is popping up at Apple and iTunes for other forms of digital culture.

Apple began selling 80 percent of its catalog without the copyright software immediately after its announcement at the Macworld expo on Jan. 6. The rest is expected to become available by the end of March. This means that users can now listen to their songs on a range of devices, and no longer just an iPod. They can also download them to as many computers as they like, whereas they could only do so five times previously. The songs will now also become compatible with many different kinds of software, so listeners could use an editing program, for example, to cut the intro out of a song if they wanted to.

FOR 30 CENTS A SONG, users can upgrade their entire collection to the new format. But this is where the issues begin. One has to upgrade their entire collection, and cannot upgrade song by song.

And the songs are not entirely free of copyright software. The digital music files now include the email address of the purchaser, in order to track where the songs go once purchased. (Click here for a screenshot of how visible your address is on iTunes.) Your email is included on a text file downloaded to your computer along with the iTunes file. It is easily alterable, if you were so inclined to get rid of it. But DailyTech wonders if the email is also included in the file elsewhere.

iTunes is not the only one to do this, however. Dance music digital retailer Juno Download also includes a watermark on songs purchased from them. Amazon MP3 does as well, although it is anonymous and simply tracks where the song was bought, not who purchased it. (Amazon began selling such DRM-free digital music lasy year.)

ALTHOUGH APPLE IS DITCHING DRM for iTunes music, they continue to use it for hardware and other forms of digital entertainment purchased at their store.

Accessory makers must now purchase a license to make their products compatible with the newer iPods. But the authentication chips on the new iPods do not work with older, properly licensed speaker systems, writes Twice.

Furthermore, new Macbooks can only be hooked up to external monitors that conform to copyright protection standards, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The advocacy group also points out that movies, TV shows, and audiobooks purchased at the iTunes store are still DRM-laden.

COPYRIGHT SOFTWARE MADE ITUNES songs compatible only with the wildly popular iPod. Apple argued that this was the only way to make the software effective. But by tying the two together, the move undeniably helped make the iTunes store the largest music retailer in the world, surpassing Walmart as title-holder last year.

But DRM software has proven very ineffective. Even with the prominence of iTunes and the growing popularity of buying digital music, illegal downloading of music is still rampant. Digital music sales grew by a quarter worldwide last year, and accounted for 20 percent of the music market. Illegal downloads, however, still account for 95 percent of all music online, according to a new report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

The music industry seems to be coming to grips with the fact that copyright software doesn’t tamp illegal downloading. It didn’t help record labels or artists. But it did benefit Apple, so good thing for them that the TV and movie industry seem to be making similar mistakes.

The study did note, however, that music heads and the "Internet cognoscenti", as the report called the web savvy, search for music in a different manner.

And a couple of new studies might help to shed a little light on this part of the population.

A recent non-scientific survey of users of the blog aggregator Hype Machine found that, like the first report, friends still played a large role in discovering music for Hype Machine users. But friends were only the runner up as a source of music, not the prime source. Online editorials were the go-to place for Hype Machine users.

But one of the readers was a little peturbed that the study didn’t include radio as one of the multiple choice options for sources of new music. A total of 7.6 users wrote this alternative into the "other" category.

Entertainment Media Research also just recently published(pdf) a study of digital music consumption in the UK. (Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll caught this one.)

In this online study of 1,700 people, MySpace ranks as the most important web site for music, with YouTube coming in second. More importantly, perhaps, is that 10 percent of respondents said the social networking sites have led to purchases. This is surely to increase now that musicians are able to sell MP3′s directly through their MySpace profiles. And it’s just in time: nearly half said it needs to be easier to buy music from the sites.

Regardless of their popularity, two-fifths agree with the statement that the networking sites "are full of idiots nowadays". Yes, they really asked that question. So scientific.

Homeboy’s album, Romantics of the Rhino, is probably equal to the overall body of work by RJD2, Shadow, or Prefuse – if not better. Problem is, it lacks any of the obvious hits or standout tracks that attributed to those artists. Not to be misunderstood: this album hits the spot, and I love to listen to it while I work. But it just never reaches that level of intricacy which would merit a long sit down where listening is the main activity.

Still, in a world where anybody can distribute their shit, and we’re not dependent on huge distribution systems, my man’s work should shine a little. When the dust from the digital revolution settles (as geeky as that sounds), hopefully dudes like this will be able to afford the entire alphabet for their soup. And maybe billion dollar, blockbusting, baby dropping Britneys wont exist either.

Anyway, I got a couple MP3′s here. These are two of the best songs off the Rhino joint.

It just so happens that the mashup artist Girl Talk lives in the district of a congressman who sits on the Committee that deals with the issues surrounding music copyright. The politico has been using Girl Talk’s music as an example of why using other people’s music to create your own should be considered a valid form of art in the eyes of the law.

Newsweek recently had the Congressman, Mike Doyle, sit down over lunch with the man who is Girl Talk, Gregg Gillis, and talk about what kind of laws could be passed that would allow artists like him to thrive. (Girl Talk’s music has been pulled from eMusic and iTunes over legal concerns.)

A Mash-Up Relief bill… classic.

When anybody with basic computer skills can download music, buying it online has almost become an altruistic act. If it’s free, why pay for it other than to support the artists they enjoy? (Well, there is the remote chance they are scared of getting sued.)

Some internet companies are taking a "glass is half full" approach to this situation. They are banking on the goodwill of people who already buy online, and hoping they would be willing to pay more for music if it were to benefit the artist.

The older of the two companies out there – that I know of, at least – is MagnaTune. The site allows listeners to hear the site’s catalog of artists for free. But to download songs, users have to pay. The site has a base charge, but a buyer can choose to pay more for a song if they like. All money is split with the artists 50/50.

And the new cat on the block is SongSlide. They start songs off at 59 cents, and allow buyers to slide a bar up to donate more money, with all of the extra profits going to the artist.

The catalog of these sites is very limited and makes them more of an interesting experiment with a good faith business model.

But can it pay off? The co-founder of SongSlide, Devin Brewer, tells Freakonomics that the average song sells for $2.08. But this may be due to the novelty of the site, and its limited audience. More telling may be the sale prices at the older MagnaTune. While the site doesn’t provide average sales data on their statistics page, their albums with the highest average sales prices are not that encouraging. Few sell for much more than the base rate of $8.00.

"Music Burgler"

Another telling anecdote may be the experience of Jane Siberry. At first, she allowed listeners to download her music free, but gave them the option to pay. The model was successful… only until she got some media coverage. She then got a swarm of new listeners – who decided to download and never pay.

Take from this what you will, but buy music. (How much have you spent on alcohol this month, hm?) 

(In order to compare iTunes to the more traditional outlets, NPD counted each 12 tracks sold on iTunes as the equivalent of an album sold elsewhere.)

With iTunes commanding so many sales, it may put more pressure on Apple to allow those songs to be played with competing technologies. European regulators are already trying to force the company to do so. The vast majority of iTunes music can only be played on the iPod or on iTunes. But Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, recently blamed this on the technical difficulties of adding copyright protections to those songs, which most of the music labels demand.