Sony BMG have finally fallen; their music is available in a format which is not strangled by digital rights management, meaning that all of the major labels have now moved away from the previous "DRM is your destiny!!" attitude.

However, being Sony, they have come up with a slightly...crazy way of distributing the non DRMed downloads... by going to a store. Rather than signing up for a standard site and paying with a credit card or the like (this may be possible in the future, or even now, I'm not a US resident and thus cannot check), one must visit a store and buy a "Platinum MusicPass". This cleverly named Sony gimic is pretty much just a pin number that needs to be entered on a website to be able to download a copy of the album. Why go to the store to buy a digital download?

Of course, you might be able to justify it if you were charged less than a normal CD, but at $12.99, you can buy the physical CD in one of the cheaper retail outlets. It makes absolutely no sense, why would you buy some inferior quality digital files when you could have a lostless, physical product instead?

Madness.