UK: This week, online music retailer Rhapsody has launched a new DRM-free music store in the US, allowing users to download unprotected 256kbps MP3 files for $0.99 per track (or $9.99 per album).

While Rhapsody is just the latest in a string of online music stores to offer DRM-free music (including Amazon's MP3 store and Apple's iTunes Plus), it bangs another nail in the coffin of DRM in the online music business.

We think the move away from DRM will benefit consumers, device vendors and online music retailers, by removing one of the biggest barriers to consumer acceptance of digital music sales.

The legal downloading industry has taken far too long to realise the futility of restricting fair use of content, and steps towards removing DRM can potentially benefit innovative online retailers and device vendors as well as consumers. In particular, DRM-free content eases the implementation of concepts that are hugely important in the digital content age:

* Content portability: Users expect to be able to use purchased content on a variety of devices, and move it seamlessly between devices.
* Content persistence: Purchased content should be future-proof (within limits), and should play on media devices the customer purchases in the future. This frees up consumers' purchasing decisions when purchasing both content and devices.
* Device interoperability: Restrictive DRM is a hindrance to the interoperability of consumer electronic devices, as by its nature it restricts the sharing of content across multiple devices (in the connected home or on mobile devices).

Rhapsody's decision to drop its DRM seems partly motivated by a desire to draw customers away from Apple's 1,000lb music gorilla, the iTunes music store, by selling music that will actually play on iPod devices. The wider consequence is that the music it sells is now far more accessible, portable and persistent, and much more useful to all of its customers.

By kicking the DRM habit, Rhapsody (and others) opens up its addressable market exponentially, by increasing the number of devices capable of playing its content to include not just iPods but also MP3 players from other manufacturers, mobile phones, PMPs, PCs, in short any device that is capable in any way of playing back digital music, rather than a limited subset of the MP3 player market.

This all benefits consumers who, when not locked into a single DRM scheme, have a wider choice of retailers and can shop for online music based on the quality of the service (audio file quality, breadth of catalogue, site user-friendliness) rather than simply the DRM scheme used. Consumers can now feel comfortable purchasing music legally without worrying about which of their devices can or cannot play the files. From the device vendor point of view, it saves them having to support complicated DRM schemes which ultimately limit the utility of their devices.

Locking customers in to your own store and devices may initially seem attractive to an online music retailer, but from a consumer's point of view it is a confusing nightmare, by creating artificial restrictions on where and how people use purchased content, DRM penalises the well-intentioned people who have paid for music and creates incentives for them to download music illegally. Fortunately, it appears that commonsense is finally overcoming the music industry's paranoia about illegal copying of its content.

Rhapsody will need to do more than simply offer DRM-free MP3 downloads if it is to attract a significant audience and differentiate itself from strong competing offerings, but for the wider industry it is more important that DRM-free music services in general succeed. Nevertheless, the appearance of Rhapsody's MP3 store is another sign that the future of DRM, at least in the online music industry, is getting shorter by the day.