We’re all criminals. That’s how the music industry thinks of us. Us, their loyal and paying customers! Guilty until…well, we’re always guilty.

Instead of giving us more choices and competitively priced music, the fat cats in the music industry are trying to give us less choices while still keeping their never ending revenue stream coming.

In the beginning (of online music stores), there was iTunes and it was good, but iTunes has a little gremlin in it. Come on say it with me, it’s the three letters that I love to hate; DRM.

As someone that is staunchly opposed to DRM the inclusion of it in iTunes music files bugs me to no end. I like iTunes, I really do, but is there a better way?

Yes. The model that AllofMP3 has created. After reading a post on Techcrunch about them releasing a music store applications, titled AllTunes, I decided to take a look at their website. I was floored (in a good way) by what I found.

The online music retailer, which is headquarted in Russia, claims to be able to distribute music legally because a loophole in Russian law concerning copyrighted materials.

Not only do they distribute music online but they completely undercut iTunes or any other online store out there. The songs on there vary, but they usually range for 9-15 cents per song. An entire album can cost about a buck thirty.

What’s probably the most innovative thing about their model is consumer choice without DRM. You pick a song that you want to download, pay for it and then choose what encoding you want (sound quality; low, medium and high) and what type of file that you want to download (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, FLAC, etc.)

This is the way it should be! Give customers choice and don’t treat them like criminals by lacing the files with DRM.

Even if their pricing model does seem a bit extreme, I would glady and gleefully pay a higher price (let’s say iTunes’ 99 cents fee) for the flexibility to download in whatever format I want without DRM.

This next piece doesn’t have to do with music, but it’s related to DRM, so I wanted to throw it up here. It’s a blog post on Bink.nu’s site titled Microsoft Announces Investments in DRM to Drive New Multimedia Commerce Solutions for the Wireless Industry.

There is a quote from Kevin Johnson, co-presidenct of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft that makes me want to scream:

We want to give consumers what they want seamless experiences with premium content on a wide range of mobile devices.

Um…people please be honest with yourselves and with us. Consumers DON’T want DRM, you do.

Enough consumer advocacy for the night, I’m gonna get some shut eye.