The one thing that stopped me the most from joining the Apple Bandwagon was DRM on the MP3s, even after getting an iPod I kept buying my MP3s from Amazon when they first opened their MP3 store. Then Amazon went region specific so I couldn’t buy most of the songs because I was based out of the US. Luckily by then Apple switched to DRM free but it isn’t completely clean. To appease the music labels Apple went ahead with another type of scheme. Now all your music is watermarked with your personal information just as the image above. Your name and other details are attached to the songs information, you have to look for it to find it, and it seems hard to find unless you know what your looking for. To them its simple you have nothing to fear from the watermarking unless it gets onto P2P or BitTorrents, then the labels come for your heads. One way or another the labels want control over the music, they don’t want you to have full freedom no matter what. But others have still resisted this pressure and selling songs fine.

Dirty MP3s:

• iTunes
• Lala (Owned By Apple)
• Walmart

Clean MP3s:

• Amazon
• Napster
• The Rest of Them

Link: TechCrunch