Amazon.com has reached an agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment to provide the music label’s content in DRM-free MP3 format. Amazon says its MP3 online music store will be the first to offer songs and albums from the top four music labels that will play on most digital music players.
The music downloads will be free of digital rights management, or DRM, software, meaning music won’t be limited to specific devices and governed by restrictive copying rules. Amazon’s music will be downloadable to virtually any digital music device, including PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, iPhones, RAZRs and BlackBerries.
When the Sony BMG music catalog is added later this month, Amazon says, its MP3 store will be the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels. The other three are Warner Music Group, EMI Group and Universal Music Group. Amazon also offers tunes from more than 33,000 independent labels.
Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, launched its MP3 store in September 2007 as an alternative to Apple Inc.’s iTunes. The launch featured music from EMI and Universal, while Warner was added in December. Apple is No. 15 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Amazon MP3 boasts more than 3.1 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. All downloads are available exclusively in the MP3 format without DRM restrictions. In addition to playing downloaded music on most digital music devices, consumers can organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player, and burn songs to CDs for personal use.
Most songs available on Amazon MP3 are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million priced at 89 cents. ITunes charges 99 cents for individual songs.
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