While iTunes long has the market lead of 88% when it comes to music downloads, when it comes to alternative music services, eMusic, a legal music download service which only delivers music in the DRM free format is getting ready to celebrate its 100 millionth MP3 download, according to Digit news. The website, which launched in November 2003, specialises in independent music and currently has a library of about 1.8 million tracks, covering over 9,800 independent labels.
Interestingly, the service has managed to keep its 2nd position in the market, ahead of other DRM based providers such as Napster and Yahoo, which both offer unlimited download subscription services. It is quite clear at this stage that Microsoft's aim to help music download services beat Apple with DRM technology to allow unlimited downloads based on a subscription has failed. This is likely why Microsoft decided to try its own closed system with the new Zune service.
