IP Democracy: Amazon to Sell DRM-Free Music

DRM technology, the bane of online music buyers, is virtually a thing of the past. Steve Jobs made a case for selling DRM-free music, record label EMI has taken the DRM-free plunge on iTunes and now Amazon plans to launch a digital music store later this year that will offer millions of songs free of copy protection.

Although details are scant, it seems that EMI will be part of Amazon’s product mix. But it also seems likely that the online retail giant has recruited other record companies to participate as well.

Finally, it seems, record companies are getting wise to the ways of selling music online. It doesn’t hurt that their industry is on a severe downswing precisely because it took so long for record labels to understand they can’t fight unauthorized music sharing with customer-alienating security technology.

With one major competitor in the bustling online music business offering its wares free of the incredibly annoying technology, which cripples the ability to transfer music from PC to PC, MP3 player to MP3 player or even burn the songs to CD-ROMs, look for a rush of announcements by other major digital music providers that they too will go DRM-free.

Update: The WSJ has more details here. Amazon’s DRM-free music will be for MP3-only and the company claims it has made deals with more than 12,000 record labels (there are a lot of tiny labels out there, so it’s not clear if any of the other major labels aside from EMI have agreed to go DRM-free.)

Update: Amazon has officially announced the launch of its music service.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 16, 2007 9:53 AM to IP Democracy