Yahoo's online music download service has started to sell the Norah Jones song "Thinking About You" in MP3 format for $0.99 without any DRM (Digital Rights Management) applied to it.
This marks the second time Yahoo has done this, the first appeared in July (Jessica Simpsons "A Public Affair") for $1.99. They also made available an entire album by the artist Jesse McCartney in MP3 and WMA (with DRM) format but have not since released the sales figures for these.
This may mark an important turning point in the thinking of the record companies. If these tracks were successful, then more albums may be released DRM free.
The article also argues an interesting point. Having tracks that are DRM free for sale may not encourage more piracy at all. It's the general feeling that DRM only ever hurts the people who actually buy the music and not the pirates themselves. So this could potentially increase music download sales in the long run.
