Digital music still has a ways to go

More choices are better for consumers, but enough with the scavenger hunts. Wall Street Journal Last week Rhapsody expanded its subscription-music service to include downloads (as DRM-free, 256-Kbps MP3s), the ability to preview 25 full tracks per month, and tie-ins with the likes of Yahoo, corporate co-parent MTV Networks, Verizon Wireless and iLike. By selling DRM-free MP3s, Rhapsody (a joint venture of 's iTunes, though today the 800-pound gorilla of online music can only sell DRM-free songs from EMI -- the other three major labels have so far frozen out Apple when it comes to unfettered music, an attempt to beef up Apple's rivals and thereby improve the labels' bargaining power. That's the latest chapter in a soap opera whose storylines of bitterness and attempted betrayal are positively Gothic, but at least this time... [read full story]