Warner to offer music via Amazon without DRM
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The move is a blow to Apple's iTunes Store, which has persuaded only EMI and a handful of independent labels to let it offer their tracks in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format it launched in May.
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Warner Music Group, a major holdout on selling music online without copy protection, caved in to the growing trend Thursday and agreed to sell its tunes on Amazon.com Inc.'s digital music store.
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The popular site is aiming to beat Amazon online with a selection of unrestricted MP3 downloads.
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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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To reach iPod owners, music companies have been forced to choose between Apple's copy-protection scheme, or no copy protection at all. With the launch of Amazon's download service Tuesday, the choice is clearer than ever.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment will crack open the door to its music vaults on Jan. 15, taking the DRM copy-prevention wrapper off a limited selection of downloadable tracks.The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM (digital rights management), from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada.The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card&#39;s covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears&#39; &quot;Blackout&quot; and Barry Manilow&#39;s &quot;The Greatest Songs of the Seventies.&quot;In contrast, online retailer&#160;Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks&#160;in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple&#39;s&#160;iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks&#160;in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.About 4,500 retail outlets in the U.S. will sell the Platinum MusicPass cards by the end of the month, including Best Buy, Target, Trans World, Fred&#39;s, and Winn-Dixie, according to Sony-BMG. In Canada, the cards will sell through Best Buy, CD Plus, and Wal-Mart, and later through record store HMV.Online sales will &quot;ultimately be part of the game plan&quot; for at least one of those retail outlets, said a source familiar with the offering.With Valentine&#39;s Day approaching, Sony-BMG is counting on demand for gift cards to boost sales of the downloads, as well as the collectible nature of the cards themselves, which feature images of the artists and information about the albums.Sony-BMG will offer &quot;expanded&quot; versions of two of the initial offerings -- Celine Dion&#39;s &quot;Taking Chances&quot; and Kenny Chesney&#39;s &quot;Just Who I Am: Poets &amp; Pirates.&quot; These will retail for around $19.99 and in addition to the Platinum version will also include an additional album from the artist&#39;s back catalog.When they first considered online music sales, major record labels initially insisted that download services such as Apple&#39;s iTunes Store encrypt their tracks with DRM technology to prevent copying.Smaller labels sold unprotected MP3 files through sites like eMusic.com, gambling that the increased sales and notoriety that would come with easier access to their music would outweigh sales lost through unauthorized copying.That argument eventually won favor with Apple, which last May began offering tracks from EMI without DRM for a small premium, later bringing the price down to the same $0.99 it charges for other tracks with DRM.Amazon followed suit in September, selling unprotected MP3 files from EMI and Universal. Warner joined them on Dec. 28.The record companies all say they hope the move will lead to greater online music sales.Sony-BMG said it hopes its combined model, selling a download pass through a physical store, will lead to greater sales of physical and digital music.Albums need a boost, as the number sold in the U.S. dropped again last year, even as the number of music purchases rose, market watcher Nielsen SoundScan reported last week.U.S. music buyers made 1.4 billion music purchases in 2007, up from 1.2 billion a year earlier, Nielsen said.Nielsen counts a purchase as an album, single, CD or online download. Within that figure, digital track sales rose from 582 million to 844 million as buyers cherry-picked the tracks they liked from albums available online, while physical album sales (whether sold in-store or over the Internet, but excluding downloads) fell to 451 million in 2007, from 556 million in 2006, it said.But if U.S. consumers are making more music purchases, they may be spending less: Nielsen also counts something it calls track-equivalent album sales, in which it counts 10 track downloads as the equivalent of an album. By that measure, track-equivalent album sales fell 9.5 percent to 585 million in 2007, from 646 million in 2007.&#160;
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Amazon.com said its digital music store will now offer songs from Sony BMG Music Entertainment without  digital rights management protection.
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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.
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Amazon.com  has signed on  Warner Music Group  to its music download service, which  aims to compete with Apple's  industry-dominating  iTunes online store.
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Amazon.com has launched a trial of Amazon MP3, its much-anticipated music download service.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the last major music label holding out against selling music online without copy protection, relented Thursday and announced Amazon.com Inc.'s digital music store will carry songs by its artists.
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Warner Music Group Corp., the world's fourth-largest record firm, said a plea by Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs to let songs be sold on the Web without copy protection software lacks "logic or merit."
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DRM-free at last? Amazon looks set to plough into the digital music market next year. The retailer started romancing music labels last week.â¦
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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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By Jefferson Graham  LOS ANGELES -- The music industry is looking ahead to life without copy protection.
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DRM-free MP3s from music label to be sold on US website Warner Music Group is making its music available for download from Amazon in MP3 format without Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection, enabling the free sharing of music.â¦
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Amazon.com Inc  on Tuesday  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 service.