First there was iTunes selling single tunes at 99 cents a pop; then you could rent digital songs for a monthly subscription; now there’s the way of MySpace, with free tunes “brought to you by….” (right, advertising). The new MySpace Music just launched . With it, the Washington Post reports, the free tunes “can be played only on personal computers connected to the Internet…. Anyone who wants to transfer a song to a portable device like Apple Inc.’s iPod will have to buy the music through Amazon.com Inc.’s year-old downloading service, which sells songs for as little as 79 cents apiece.” The music sold via MySpace won’t contain DRM-style copy protection, which makes it more share-able – as MySpace leverages what the social Web is all about: sharing stuff with your friends. The site lets its users create “an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece, a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm,” the Post reports. Warner Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and EMI Music are all participating, as are Sony ATV/Music Publishing and The Orchard. Independent labels (representing about 9% of the US digital-recorded music market) want in too, apparently. The Financial Times reports.
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