I have purchased some albums in the past on itunes and discovered with disgust that they had DRM. They were only playable on itunes. I returned them (a not very user-friendly process).

I have googled it a bit and it seems that DRM is not used any more on iTunes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#iTunes_Store_DRM_chan...

2009. That’s when the DRM was removed. 10 years ago.

A good lesson for anyone considering user unfriendly features.

Nobody "considered" them, it was what the music industry demanded at the time.

In fact, as far as major services (e.g. major distributor and not some niche music market with "indie" artists only) iTunes was the one that spearheaded the un-DRM of music (with Steve Jobs' call to end music DRM: https://betanews.com/2007/02/06/apple-s-steve-jobs-calls-for... ).

>In fact, as far as major services...

of which at that time there were only 2 or 3.

Why did Jobs do this?

Countries in the EU were demanding that he do so if he wanted to sell product there. Jobs was not interested in dropping DRM until the countries started bitching. Norway banned the iPod due to the iTunes walled garden creating captive audiences without opportunity for choice in media vendor (due to incompatibilities with competition services) and France started slinging similar threats.

It all seems so altruistic in hind-sight, but really he (Jobs) was being pressured by the nation-states, and he had the opportunity to look like a pioneer by dropping DRM (an endeavor that Apple felt pretty keen about with FairPlay) -- making the competition look petty and selfish for having DRM, while simultaneously satisfying the desires of the nations with markets that he wanted to compete within.

The whole story is in that link you included. I got a different vibe from the article than you did, I think.

The music industry considered them, then

Let's throw away marketing/PR part from what labels try to act and we'll see a simple fact: these parasites should be dead like 10 years ago. Almost all of the profits for musicians in digital era are made by concerts and merchandise, individuals could make some through direct sells and Patreon. Major labels charge 70-90% of the income and exclusive copyright for masters, which is a bit overpriced service.

Yes, an album with DRM is not a purchase, but a loan. The law should prohibit this term abuse in order to protect consumers.

It looks like itunes has changed its ways in that regard.

However m4a files are lossy and thus not desirable for me. If I purchase music I want it in flac/alac format because I can transcode it to say, m4a if I need to in the future, or any other format. You can't do that with m4a without a degradation in quality.

It's amazing to me that people still think iTunes music has DRM.

It makes sense to me. I evaluated it years ago (when it did have DRM), and simply moved onto different solutions. I never had a need to re-evaluate itunes because I haven't had any issue with the alternatives.