BUT UNRESTRICTED MUSIC IS COMING

Apple just introduced its iTunes Plus service, which is DRM-free and promises higher-quality audio. So far, you can only get music owned by EMI (about 20% of the market). And each song costs $1.29 instead of 99 cents.

EMusic doles out DRM-free MP3s for about 33 cents per song -- if you sign up for a 30-song, $9.99-a-month subscription -- but its songs are mainly from independent labels. Amazon is cooking up a DRM-free service, too, but it's still scrambling to get labels to sign up.

Phil Leigh, president of the market-research firm Inside Digital Media, predicts wholesale DRM-free downloads within a year or two. "Mainstream consumers will not pay to complicate their lives," he says.

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