it’s true. I forgot about eMusic and I’m sure there are lots of others great DRM-less music companies online.

I don’t really see a problem with Fraunhoffer getting royalties on encoder software. They own a patent on an algorithm which does a very good job for what it is. True, that means the end-user has to cough-up a little cash for the encoders (unless it’s bundled-in and given away for “free” by a big software company) but I don’t have a problem paying for software that does what I want it to and does it well. Then again, there’s always the LAME encoder which makes some excellent encodings. I’m one of those suckers that actually pays for QT “pro” so I can make encodes with it and it works very well. It also gets rid of that annoying nag screen.

But Free is nice, and I’m all about Open Source solutions when available. In retrospect, it would actually be nice if my iPod could play OGGs and FLACs without having to first transcode them, possibly introducing loss as a result.

http://www.emusic.com/

The drag with MP3 is that it’s not a free format. Kickbacks must be paid to the Fraunhofer Society.