Citing the popularity of iTunes Plus, in October Apple slashed the price of DRM-free tracks offered on iTunes, and early reports suggest that Amazon MP3 has also been a huge success (making it the number three digital music store in just one month). It therefore appears that ditching DRM has to some degree achieved the dual aims of invigorating the marketplace for digital music and creating a serious competitor to iTunes. As a result, many are predicting that 2008 will be the year that DRM is ditched completely, as all the major labels come on board, and I think this will be true for traditional music downloads.

However, in another context, DRM’d music looks like it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future at least. Subscription-based services still require the use of DRM and may become more acceptable to consumers as broadband becomes ubiquitous, enabling our music collection to “live in the cloud”, accessible anywhere and anytime.

Check out the full post for more; including details on mobile music stores and services, Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want experiment and other alternative models. You can also digg the post here.