As you know, Apple’s iTunes Store has become the most popular place to purchase digital music. Yet, everyday iTunes users are dismayed when they find that because of copy protection, they can only make a certain number of copies of their music and they can’t play the music they purchased from iTunes on a digital music player from Sansa, Microsoft, or any other non-Apple entity.

Last year, the music industry woke up to the needs and wants of consumers and began offering some non-copy protected music. The iTunes music store started selling non-copy protected music last year. They originally sold each DRM-free song for a premium, $1.29, compared with 99 cents for a song with copy protection. But six months ago, Apple was forced to lower the price to 99 cents when Amazon launched its MP3 download store with a price of 99 cents per track.

Since then, the Amazon MP3 store has become the place to go for DRM-free music. While Apple now offers 2 million of its 6 million song catalog without DRM, Amazon, with support from several major song labels, has more than 4.5 million DRM-free songs.

Amazon also makes it easier to find and use DRM-free songs. iTunes has created a special label for DRM-free songs called “iTunes Plus”. While these songs are available, you must recognize this special iTunes terminology and search for this area to find the DRM-free music. At Amazon, everything is DRM-free, so you don’t have to search for a special designation and wonder if you are getting the right thing.

The quality of the DRM-free music is similar at both the Apple and Amazon music stores. Both provide music at 256 kbps bit rate, which is higher quality than the iTunes DRM-protected music, which is encoded at only 128 kbps bit rate. The biggest difference is the format of the music. Apple uses the AAC format, while Amazon uses the MP3 format. While some say the AAC format produced slightly better quality, at 256 kbps, most untrained ears will notice little difference. The biggest difference is that Apple’s AAC format is simply not as widely used. While you can play an MP3 formatted music file on any device, some digital music players will not support the AAC format. This means that you may have to change the format of the music you just bought, so it will play on your device.

The Apple iTunes store became popular because it was easy to use, but the Amazon store has also made it easy to purchase digital music. When you purchase a song or album at Amazon, you are instructed to download a small program called the Amazon MP3 Downloader. This handles all the detail of the music download. By default, the music files are stored in an Amazon MP3 folder in the My Music folder in the My Documents folder. After you download the music, it is immediately imported into either iTunes or Windows Media Player, which ever you have set as your default music player. Not only is the download seamless, but the help files on the Amazon website are much clearer than iTunes help.

DRM-free music has finally become commonplace. The Amazon MP3 store has already become a strong competitor to the Apple iTunes store as more and more previous iTunes users are drawn to its large DRM-free catalog and ease of use. Other online retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, eMusic, and mp3.com all offer a good selection of DRM-free music. Whether you use Amazon, iTunes, or another online music distributor, DRM-free music is a smart choice.

Since the DRM-free music offered by Apple, Amazon, and several others is the same price as copy protected music, but is a higher quality, the only reason left to purchase DRM-protected music is if it is not offered in the DRM-free format. This is where the end-users have a voice. If it’s not available in DRM-free format, don’t buy it. If we only purchase DRM-free music, copy protected music will become obsolete……a boon to all music and freedom lovers. At last we can easily join the revolution to free digital music from the shackles of copy protection.

Here's a taste of the millions of DRM-free songs available on Amazon: