Amazon to begin international roll-out of MP3 store
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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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The company will begin selling music downloads in the MP3 format, at least in North America. Sony says it has no plans to drop copy protection elsewhere.
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Amazon MP3 joins the lineup of digital music stores, selling tunes unencumbered by copy protection technology. Of course, that means some artists are simply unavailable.
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Napster Inc, one of the largest  digital music retailers, said on Monday it would start selling  downloads in the MP3 format from the second quarter of this  year in the latest blow to copy protection for songs bought  online.
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The move is the first major effort by Amazon to sell downloadable entertainment to compete with an array of other online video retailers.
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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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Online retailer Amazon.com Inc   said on Thursday its digital music store will now  offer songs from Sony BMG Music Entertainment without  copy-protection technology, or digital rights management.
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Web retailer Amazon.com launched its much-anticipated digital music store with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.
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Amazon.com and Pepsi toay announced a new promotion where consumers buying Pepsi products will be able to download DRM-free digital music from Amazon MP3.
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The e-tailer gears up to launch its MP3 music store.
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Apple and online retailer Amazon are about to launch music download services, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
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Amazon MP3, which only sells music without digital rights management copy protection, now has licensing deals with all four major music labels. Watch out, iTunes.
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Come Super Bowl Sunday, Amazon.com will get a leg up in the digital music race it's running against Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. And not just any leg: Justin Timberlake's leg.
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DRM-free service to roll out this year Presenting possibly the biggest threat to the dominance of iTunes so far, Amazon.com has announced it will commence an international roll-out of Amazon MP3, it's DRM-free digital music store, this year.â¦
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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.The online retailer&#160;launched its music download service&#160;in September and now offers 2.9 million songs without copy prevention technology, including tracks from Warner, EMI, Universal, and 33,000 independent record labels -- although it has still not won over Sony BMG, the only one of the music majors still insisting on the use of DRM.Warner said it also planned to offer album bundles including exclusive tracks through the Amazon service.The move is a blow to Apple&#39;s iTunes Store, which has only persuaded EMI and a handful of independent labels to let it offer their tracks in the&#160;DRM-free iTunes Plus format it launched in May. The rest of the songs available through iTunes come with digital limitations on where they can be played, or how many times they can be burned to a CD.Three formats dominate the market for online music sales: MP3 and AAC, which are both open formats, and WMA, a proprietary format owned by Microsoft.MP3 files do not include provision for DRM: music recorded in that format will play on most digital music players, many mobile phones, and in software readily available for all the major operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, opening up a huge potential market to Amazon and to other online music stores such as eMusic dealing in unprotected MP3 files.AAC is the format Apple chose for its iTunes Store. Most of the 6 million tracks in its catalog come wrapped in a proprietary DRM layer called FairPlay, although EMI and independents such as Sub Pop, Nettwerk, IODA and The Orchard also allow it to offer higher quality AAC recordings without DRM. The DRM-encumbered tracks will play on authorized iPods, iPhones, PCs, and Macs -- but won&#39;t play on digital music players from other vendors. Unprotected AAC files will also play on many mobile phones, PCs running Linux with the appropriate software, and even Microsoft&#39;s Zune digital music player.WMA files without DRM will play on PC or Macs using Windows Media Player, and some phones and digital music players -- although typically not on the same ones that play AAC files. Microsoft has also introduced a range of DRM systems enabling online stores to sell locked WMA files -- and later abandoned some of them, leaving a certain amount of confusion and doubt about whether devices and songs branded &quot;PlaysForSure&quot; really will play for sure.Industry executives expect initiatives such as iTunes Plus and Amazon MP3, which remove the DRM locks placed on music downloads by an earlier generation of music services, will encourage consumers to buy more music.Warner believes that giving consumers the assurance that the music they purchase can be played on any device they own will only encourage more sales of music, it said Friday.It may also persuade music-buyers to look at other brands of digital music player such as the Zune range from Microsoft, ending Apple&#39;s dominance of that market segment.With the locks off the music, Apple also faces the prospect of a price war with Amazon, which offers 1 million of its MP3 tracks for just $0.89, compared to the $0.99 Apple charges for all its tracks. Before the launch of Amazon MP3, Apple also charged a $0.30 premium for tracks in the iTunes Plus format, which is recorded at a higher quality than the DRM-encumbered versions. Other Amazon tracks sell for $0.99.
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Warner Music Group becomes the latest big studio to sell DRM-free tunes through Amazon.com.
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London will be equipped with vending machines that sell individual songs.    Also: Adobe Reader 7.0 lets viewers edit text on Acrobat & hellip;.  Yahoo competes with rivals by expanding its free e-mail storage space  & hellip;. and more.