The short answer is yes. Unless your MP3 memory stick supports WMA,
none of the major legal music download sites sell music online in
formats without DRM protection.
For a slightly longer answer...
iTunes Music Store
The music that you download from the iTunes Music Store are in the AAC
format with the FairPlay DRM built in. The only MP3 player that
supports FairPlay is the iPod, so yes, it wont play on your MP3 stick.
Now, you can legally circumvent this by burning the tracks to CD and
re-encoding them into a DRM-less format. This will result in a
degradation of quality that may or may not be noticable.
Napster
The music you download from Napster is in the WMA format, and
depending on the type of MP3 player you have, the songs may or may not
work on your MP3 memory stick. Even though WMA has built in DRM,
Microsoft licenses out their DRM system to third party hardware
vendors so that there is a greater variety of players that support the
format (the iPod does not). Your devices manual or online product
information will probably tell you whether or not it supports the WMA
format. Just like the iTunes Music Store, you can burn to CD and
re-encode.
Sony Connect
The music you download from Sony Connect is in Sony's ATRAC format,
and will not work on your MP3 memory stick. Again, you can burn to CD
and re-encode but their appears to be a limit on the number of times
you can do this (10).
MusicMatch Store
The music you download from the MusicMatch Store also uses WMA, see Napster.
Rhapsody (Listen.com)
The music you download from Rhapsody is actually streamed to you (for
$4.95 a month), and the only way to keep the songs you get is to Burn
to CD. In order to burn to CD you have to get their Premium
subscription plan and pay $9.95 a month, with premium you can burn to
CD for $0.79 each.
BuyMusic
The music you download from the BuyMusic Store also uses WMA, see Napster. |
