What did I just buy, exactly?

Here's some food for thought: what exactly are you buying when you "purchase" a song from iTunes, Rhapsody or another music application or website? Those of you who are more tech/Internet-savvy than I am may have known about the vagaries of DRM (Digital Rights Management) for years, but I didn't hear about it - or didn't pay much attention to it - until a few months ago, and I still didn't know anything about it other than that it was basically a service agreement with iTunes.

I first stumbled onto the fact that "my" music, purchased from the iTunes store, wasn't limitlessly mine when I got a new computer at the end of October. I had transferred all of my files, and went to play a song I had downloaded through iTunes, but had to enter my account password before the system would let me play it. iTunes then warned me that I was assigning this computer as one of the five my purchased music could be played on. Five? Why would there be a limit on it? I bought the song, just like I used to buy CDs!

Chris Pirillo, CNN's new tech expert and a self-proclaimed "Geek, Internet Entrepreneur and Shameless Self-Promoter" (among many others), talks about what DRM really is and what he thinks about it with far more humor - and knowledge! - than I'm capable of on techie issues in today's "Digital-music buyer, don't be a fool," which I highly recommend reading.

What got me thinking about the digital music scene today was a co-worker's mention this morning of a new site called Lala - it's a legal(!), internet-based application that allows you to upload apparently limitless quantities of your own music through a free program called Music Mover, and then listen to it from any computer with an internet connection. You can purchase web songs, which are song files that live only on the web, for 10 cents each, and MP3 files (which you can download into the same Music Mover software) for about 89 cents each. If you buy a web song and later go back and buy an MP3 of the same song, the 10 cents you paid for the web song is credited toward the purchase price of the MP3.

You can explore other users' collections and listen to any song once for free before you need to "add" it, which means buying the web song. And you get 50 web song credits ($5.00 worth of music) when you sign up for an account - also free, no subscription necessary.

The best part (as if that weren't enough already!)? Lala.com is DRM-free. So any MP3 you purchase and download is yours forever, and any web song you purchase is yours as long as Lala exists.

I'm still a Lala newbie, but so far, I'm completely sold - what a great idea!