you all seem to be worried about the quality of these songs. let me point out that because you are buying these songs LEGALLY, you are paying not only for the song itself, but also for the licence to listen to it. it is very likely that apple will keep a record of which songs you have purchased. they will then allow you to download the same song more than once, at a variety of qualities if you want to, probably all the way up to 320kb quality.
also, there is nothing stopping apple from letting you listen to the song DIRECTLY OFF THEIR SERVERS (ie streaming) at any quality, any time. also, because the music is on the server, apple may let you preview a song at low quality, say, 3 times per song. because the previews are low quality and the song is streamed (ie the user never stores it on their own computer), the record companies won't get pissed off. but of course you can download the files you buy, and do whatever you want with them. there might be an option to download a type of DRM file where the files will only play in itunes and the ipod (ie unburnable), but this will be an option for the buyer - there might be a discount for these types of files.
i think this service would be good because there may be a 'new release' section in each genre, with the ability to preview each new release (at low bitrate) several times, and the ability to see how other users have rated a particular song. this will mean that unknown artists without a major label could get as much exposure as any of the major artists (ie quality of music, not quality of advertising, will decide which songs are hits). so its good for the artist (small artists get more exposure), good for the consumer (more music, less hassle with mistaken/unavailable downloads and internet costs than limewire etc) and its good for the record companies (because there will be less piracy). the only people who lose out will be internet service providers, because people will be making fewer downloads and have less reason to upgrade their internet service (i mean the 10 bad files you go through to find the one you want, using limewire etc).
when internet speeds generally improve a bit, apple may start offering a similar service for movies (ie you can buy/rent movies online, cheaply - people will still buy DVDs, this service just is a cheaper alternative).
all of this has only one real purpose: to utterly destroy mirosoft's Palladium DRM technology. because even if apple DOES offer some DRM files for a discount price, the key point is that they will give the user a reasonable choice, either way.
by the way, Universal owns MP3.com and most of those sites anyway, so apple will probably just replace them all with one service.
sorry for my long post.
