Amazon opens DRM-free music store
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Almost music-free, too Amazon.com has opened its DRM-free music store for business. Songs are available for $0.89 per song, or $6 to $10 for an album.â¦
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Online retailer Amazon.com Inc   said on Sunday it will begin an international roll-out  this year of its digital music store that offers songs without  copy-protection technology known as digital rights management.
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Amazon.com has added songs from Warner Music Group to the range it sells as MP3 files without DRM (digital rights management), the companies said Friday.
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Quality DRM-free tunes sell well, says 7digital, which plans to drop copy-protection this year.
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Amazon.com has signed on Warner Music Group to its music download service, which aims to compete with Appleâs industry-dominating iTunes online store.
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EMI has confirmed significant success with the company's move to sell DRM-free tracks through iTunes.
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PayPlay.FM is offering its 1.3 million indie songs in DRM-free MP3 format for $0.88 each.
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The popular site is aiming to beat Amazon online with a selection of unrestricted MP3 downloads.
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Retailer Play.com is planning to open its own digital music store which will sell DRM-free tracks for between 65 and 70 pence.
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Online retailer Amazon.com Inc has signed on Warner Music Group Corp to its music download service, the latest major record label to join the competitor to Apple Inc's industry-leading iTunes store.
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Apple has announced that it will drop prices on its DRM-free AAC downloads to $0.99, the same price as all other single-song downloads. Amazon responded by giving its affiliates a 20% cut of all sales.
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Online retailer Amazon.com Inc   said on Thursday its digital music store will now  offer songs by artists on the roster of Sony BMG Music  Entertainment without copy-protection technology, known as  digital rights management.
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Amazon.com Inc  launched an  early version of its highly anticipated digital music download  store, which is seen as a potential rival to Apple Inc's   dominant iTunes system.
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Amazon.com has begun a new chapter in its battle for customers&#39; ears: it has agreed to pay $300 million for Audible, a seller of audio books that has a close relationship with Apple.Ten-year-old Audible sells spoken-word content such as audio books, magazines, and radio programs through a number of channels, including its Web sites in the U.S. and U.K. It has 80,000 titles in its catalog, and a further 20,000 through partner sites in France and Germany.Amazon began reselling Audible&#39;s content in 2000, and since 2002, Audible has also distributed audio books through Apple&#39;s iTunes Store, when it became Apple&#39;s exclusive supplier of spoken-word content. Apple modified the software in its iPods to allow &quot;bookmarking&quot; of Audible audio files.This chapter in the battle for listeners may yet have a happy ending for Apple, as the Audible team plans to continue and grow its relationship with the iTunes Store, according to Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener. But that goes for Audible&#39;s many other channel partnerships too: &quot;We plan to continue and grow all these relationships,&quot; Herdener said.Apple declined to comment on the deal.The main battle front between Apple and Amazon remains the sale of digital music free of the restrictions imposed by DRM (digital rights management) systems, where Amazon has been competing with Apple in the U.S. since September.When Apple opened its iTunes Store, the music it sold was wrapped in a layer of DRM to prevent copying, which incidentally tied the music to Apple&#39;s iPod players and iTunes software.Some record companies were unhappy that Apple limited the sales to its players in this way, and last May&#160;Apple began offering tracks from EMI without DRM&#160;for a small premium, later bringing the price down to the same $0.99 it charges for other tracks with DRM.&#160;Amazon joined the fray&#160;in September, selling music from EMI and Universal in MP3 format, without DRM,&#160;adding tracks from Warner to its catalog&#160;in December. It now offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks, compared to 2 million DRM-free tracks in Apple&#39;s iTunes Store. Apple offers millions more tracks with DRM.Audible&#39;s audio books are wrapped in a layer of DRM, which Amazon does not plan to remove unless customers start to complain, Herdener said.&quot;Each media marketplace has its own business dynamics,&quot; he said.Amazon recently moved into the electronic book market with the launch of its Kindle e-reader, a device for downloading and displaying electronic books. Kindle also plays audio files, including those sold by Audible, making it a (much bulkier) competitor to the iPod.The $300 million price tag for Audible includes the assumption of outstanding stock option obligations. The companies expect to close the deal by April.
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Amazon.com will start selling MP3 music files through its international Web sites this year, the company said Sunday. But details of the company&#39;s plans to expand its&#160;digital music service&#160;remain scarce.
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Virgin is the first major music retailer to enter the download market in introducing a music store to sell music as streams of bits to be downloaded from the Internet.
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Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched its much-anticipated digital music store Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying