I was surfing around the web this morning and I came across a few handy little “how to’s” for those of you looking to rid your music collection of digital rights management (DRM) by converting your iTunes files to mp3.  Check’em out.

Tech-FAQ.com’s “Convert Your iTunes to MP3 and Convert iTunes to MP3 Format (Ask Bob Rankin).

They look simple but maybe a tad bit time consuming. However, it could be a small price to pay if you are worried about losing your tunes or looking to standardize your collection.

I don’t think it will be long before most of the music download services go DRM free but these techniques look like they should get you by until.

Here is an article which discusses a few major artists who are leaving their record label. Also discussed is why those same artist are beginning to do away with charging for those tracks and DRM. Very interesting read. Go read about the record label defections now. Maybe some day you won’t feel so dirty when you download those illegal tunes.

Yesterday in my post about Amazon.com offering DRM free downloads I barely touched on the issues surrounding DRM. Today I want to give you a more in-depth look at how complex and polarizing this issue is.

A few months ago, before starting the Musicgoat, I tripped over a great post on a blog entitled “The Mighty Dacs.” This post posed the question which would you rather steal: music or computers?. The author of the blog, Dacs, shared a post from Charlie Gillingham from the Counting Crows. He made his statements on CountingCrows.com and he provides an in depth look at the issues concerning DRM and the music industry, from a professional musicians perspective. Good read and very enlightening.

If you didn’t catch it, my thoughts are summed up pretty well in the statement I made in the comments that day (I am ckay44);

Great post. Being a huge music fan since the 80′s I’ve watched this whole thing develop over the years.

As a fan (consumer) I think it’s great the way things are working. Since this wide array music became readily available, I have been able to enjoy many types of music I may never have listened to if I had to spend $15. That enriches my life, helps the artist gain another fan and pretty much keeps it real all around.

As an artist it seems to me that we live in a time where, with a little know-how, it is easier than ever to get your music into the hands of millions of people. The people decide, not some record exec or consumer budget.

Everything will be fine. We are all better off. Stay positive!

I must have been feelin’ it that day because I can’t say it any better than that today.

Thanks to Dacs for sharing and inspiring.

Amazon.com announced today that they were going to be offering DRM free music downloads by the end of the year. Here is their press release. This is great news for you if you like owning your downloaded music.

There are already a few other sites like eMusic out there that offer DRM free music but their catalogs are limited to smaller independent labels. It is great to see a major online distributer like Amazon provide this service because there is a chance the some of the bigger labels could open up their catalogs to DRM free providers. This could put pressure on some of the other services out there like iTunes and Rhapsody to go DRM free.

If you are not familiar with the term DRM here’s a quick explanation. In a nutshell, it stands for Digital Rights Management. This technology is a way for record companies to keep you from sharing music with your friends or anyone else.

Currently if you download a song with DRM from iTunes, you can only play it on your iPod and you can only burn it 5 times. If you where to decide to remove iTunes from your computer one day, all the music, that you paid your hard earned money for, goes with it. You don’t own the music like you did with CD or cassette, fopr the most part you are just renting the music. DRM free music can be played on anything that plays mp3 and burned multiple times.

If you want a more thorough explanation of DRM, you can check out wikipedia’s breakdown of DRM.