14 DAY TRIAL // Many of you will ask yourselves what does DRM mean? DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and it represents a technology that allows publishers or copyright owners to restrict access to specific audio files. Is it useful? Of course it is, especially if it's used for similar purposes as Yahoo's: sell audio tracks that will enable users run the song only for a limited number of times.
Although it can be very useful in some instances, DRM can be applied only on specific audio formats, including WMA, AAC and ATRAC. Many companies that are using DRM decided to apply some restrictions to the way files can be burned, so users are limited to the number of times they can burn media onto CD.
Yahoo is one of the companies that were selling audio content protected by DRM, every track having a protection that restricted customers' access to the downloaded tracks. Even if the protection was very useful and powerful, many experienced users said it can be cracked with ease because DRM does not support MP3 format.
Yahoo decided to sell the first MP3 without DRM in July when the company released Jessica Simpson - A Public Affair for $1.99, one month before they published the entire album of Jesse McCartney.
Today, Yahoo decided to release another track without DRM, representing an important challenge for the company because many rip-technologies were published since the July release. Yahoo sells "Norah Jones - Thinking about you" for $0.99 in its music store and of course in MP3 format.
Many companies said they had trouble with DRM, being forced to search for an alternative. Winamp is just one of the examples that encountered problems with the implementation of the DRM support, because the application contained a tool that helped users pass the protection system. At that time, Nullsoft decided to stop download for the specific version of Winamp, making it available just after the function was analyzed and improved.