If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so.
I'll stick with the Amazon music store, which is not only cheaper, has no confusing DRM files to deal with, and is fully on the web, meaning I can link to music, buy it on any web-enabled computer, etc.
There are plenty of reasons to like Apple, but their music store seems backward and anti-competitive to me.
In Cringely's interview of Steve Jobs from "Revenge of the Nerds", Jobs says that he doesn't begrudge Microsoft their success. It just bothers him that they have absolutely no taste.
I agree that Apple (particularly under Jobs) is no better than Microsoft in terms of wanting to lock in all of their customers and extract as much money from them as humanly possible. However, I do think that Apple (particularly under Jobs) exhibits outstanding taste in software and hardware design. In particular, the combination of iTunes and iPod, while striving to lock customers in and not playing fairly with others, is far more usable and aesthetically pleasing than all of the sorry attempts by Microsoft to solve the same set of problems.
I think the fact that so many people LIKE Apple's products is part of the reason why not as many people get upset at Apple's anti-competitive behavior.
help me understand: how do I buy music for a Zune? I went to Zune.net, and this is what I found:
"For the full Zune Music experience, get the free Zune software. Browse over three million songs you can preview and download..."