The #1 complaint people have with Podfitness is that their purchased music doesn’t mix with workouts. BusinessWeek has great news for Podfitness users.

The gist of the article is that all 4 of the major labels are now going DRM-free, which means most of the music you could ever want will be available digitally, without all the crazy restrictions of DRM, ready to be mixed with Podfitness workouts (and countless other uses).

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While it is technically possible to unlock iTunes purchased music to mix with workouts, it’s actually not legal for anyone to do so, because iTunes music is protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). Until very recently, music bought from any store online has been locked in this way. Why? Because the record companies assume that you are a criminal, and would immediately share your music with 10,000,000 of your closest friends.

Many people are starting to realize what a pain it is to have DRM in their music. DRM-protected music like Apple’s Fairplay (ha!) or Microsoft’s PlaysForSure (double ha!) locks down music tracks to a certain device, and prevents you from using your music where and how you want.

Now, the major labels realize that treating their paying customers like criminals hasn’t really been working, and Amazon is poised to become a very major player with their online MP3 download store. When you buy music from iTunes, it will most likely not work with your Podfitness workouts, it will most likely be low-quality, and restrict the way you use it (and if you lose your iTunes Store password, your tracks become unplayable).

Apple’s success in the past has been based on an “it just works” philosophy: you can buy their iPod, and be assured that it will simply work with iTunes, etc. But now, with DRM, some music works some of the time for some things, then suddenly won’t work for other things. Worst of all, when buying music, you don’t know beforehand whether you’re getting DRM music, or DRM-free music (but it’s safe to assume that most of the time it will be shackled by DRM). It seems designed to lock you permanently into the iPod/iTunes ecosystem, and it smacks of the kind of behavior that got Microsoft in trouble a decade ago.

So from now on, when you buy music from Amazon MP3 store, it’s like you ripped it from CD yourself (in super-high quality, no less). Do whatever you want with it: burn it to CD, mix it with your Podfitness workouts, or play it on any MP3-capable device. Plus, it’s less expensive than iTunes!

What’s the best way to get started? You can check out AmazonMP3 right now. Plus, as a Super Bowl promotion, they’re giving away millions of songs with Pepsi products, so my unholy Diet Mountain Dew addiction will finally be good for something other than making me anxious and irritable!

If you have any experiences with iTunes DRM or Amazon MP3, be sure to drop them in the comments.